Through dialogue and small group work, participants sought to create a shared understanding of how key threats to human rights are shaped by geopolitical developments.
Participants discussed the potential of negative scenarios in four areas: 1) The UN80 ambitious and system-wide reform effort is unsuccessful; 2) non-human rights bodies are significantly weakened; 3) anti-rights movements win; and 4) public support for human rights declines further due to economic insecurity. This led to fuller discussions about the extent of the threats and challenges being faced, and what some responses could look like.
Key points are highlighted below:
Attacks on human rights are increasing because human rights are powerful. They reject exceptionalism, they set limits on arbitrary power, and they affirm equality. Accountability through human rights monitoring, documentation, and reporting are not bureaucratic exercises; they ensure accountability and future justice.
As people around the world continue to demand dignity, equality, and justice the systems designed to protect those demands are under strain and subject to severe uncertainty. Human rights are being questioned in public discourses, are significantly underfunded, and in some contexts deliberately undermined.
Anti-rights and politically conservative actors are vocal and powerful in their reach, and their mobilisation is paradoxically framed in rights violations. Authoritarianism is rising and for the first time in decades autocracies are outnumbering democracies.
The erosion of international human rights law is a fundamental concern. The normative framework that has guided international relations for decades is weakening, and legal norms are being sidelined in contexts of conflict and violence such as in Gaza, Myanmar, Ukraine and Haiti.
The pushback against the rights of women and girls and gender equality is another troubling trend. Gains achieved over decades are being eroded through strategic and well-coordinated actions such as shrinking civic space, rising disinformation, and increasing attacks on defenders of the rights of women and girls. Yet evidence from the past 25 years shows that inclusion of women is a precondition for sustainable peace.
The re-emergence of relativist arguments suggesting human rights are optional, conditional, or negotiable is also a major threat. This is reinforced by the weakening of respect for international law, including human rights laws and institutions. Furthermore, securitisation narratives increasingly treat human rights as optional.
Traditional values and the security rhetoric are used to justify exclusion and discrimination, and this disproportionately targets women and girls, minorities, migrants, LGBTQI+ persons, persons with disabilities, youth, and those who defend these groups.
Simultaneously, the human rights ecosystem and overseas aid is facing a severe funding crisis at precisely the moment when needs of the most vulnerable are escalating. The practical consequences are the loss of hundreds of UN staff positions, closure of country presences, postponement of treaty body reviews, and reduced investigations and special procedure visits.
Examples from the Asia Pacific region highlighted that militarisation and backsliding of women’s rights results in displacement, violence, and insecurity. An intersectional perspective on human rights has a strong value, especially as women’s and gender equality organisations are increasing experiencing a reduction in funding.
The challenges faced are not isolated and independent, but rather present a system-wide stress with mutually reinforcing pressure points that are likely to define human rights trajectories over the coming year. The universality of human rights is the foundation of credible multilateralism and must be protected. The system needs to be able to defend the most vulnerable and marginalised people, not only as an expression of values but as indispensable to its legitimacy, coherence and long-term survival.
Participants shared initial reflections on where to take action, which were further developed throughout the rest of meeting, and included the following general points:
- Reject business as usual.
- Encourage new discussions and test longstanding assumptions.
- Forge new global alliances and coalitions across borders and sectors, including across middle powers.
- Work together better among social and youth movements, civil society, and government representatives.
- Develop strategic communication, narratives, and language about human rights and enter current discourses purposefully.