Introduction: Human Rights and Economic Inequality

• Published in: Humanity (Philadelphia, Pa.) Pa.), 2019-12, Vol.10 (3), p.363-375
• Main Authors: Brinks, Daniel, Dehm, Julia, Engle, Karen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Austerity policy; Citizenship; Deployment; Disability; Discourse; Discrimination; Disorders; Distributive justice; Economic crisis; Economic development; Economic growth; Economic inequality; Economic rights; Economics; Equal rights; Equality; Human rights; Human rights violations; Income distribution; Income inequality; Inequality; Interdisciplinary aspects; International finance; International law; Neoliberalism; Political dissent; Poverty; Prescription drugs; Profits; Prohibition; Race; Religion; Sexuality; Social inequality; Violations; Wealth
• ISSN: 2151-4364; 2151-4372; 2151-4372
• DOI: 10.1353/hum.2019.0019

Socioeconomic inequality has been called "the defining challenge of our time," and "the root of all social evil."1 Inequalities in income and wealth are growing, and quite clearly affect human rights. They powerfully determine who can avoid harm and reap profits from human rights violations as well as who will bear the cost of and suffer from ongoing harms. But might human rights also affect persistent inequalities? Might they provide useful tools for ameliorating economic inequality? Might they sometimes exacerbate it?These are some of the questions we posed to the interdisciplinary group of contributors to this dossier.2 We acknowledged that international human rights law and discourse have long focused, at least in principle, on the promotion of what is often termed "status equality," by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of numerous attributes including race, nationality, religion, and sex. More recently, the prohibition has been extended to areas such as disability and sexuality. Notwithstanding the inclusion of property and birth in the Universal Declaration's list of prohibited bases of discrimination, some have argued that human rights law and discourse have largely remained inattentive to inequalities of wealth and income-within countries, among countries, and globally. To the extent that economic issues have entered the human rights arena, the argument goes, they primarily have done so with the aim of poverty reduction, through the deployment of social and economic rights, and the right to development. Moreover, by some accounts, these approaches not only remain on the margins of human rights but also are often embedded in prescriptions for development that focus on economic growth, and neglect the distributive consequences of that growth. To the extent that human rights concentrate only on achieving minimum standards for a dignified existence, they may well ignore the growing distance between the poor and the wealthy.