‘Equality Can’t Wait’: Challenging Inequality in and through the International Human Rights System
| Author | Lizzy Willmington |
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‘Equality Can’t Wait’: Challenging Inequality in and through
the International Human Rights System
Lizzy Willmington*
This Article will explore the structural inequality between civil and
political rights and economic, social and cultural rights. It will explore
the asymmetry that stifles the radical origins and potential of
international human rights laws, particularly with regard to access to
civil society actors. With investigation into austerity measures and
increasing poverty in the UK, this Article demonstrates examples of
civil society actors countervailing institutional power. Participation
and Practice in Rights (PPR) supports people who have had their
human rights violated to can hold the Northern Irish and British
government accountable to their international human rights
obligations by using the international human rights mechanisms.
‘We speak of people possessing “universal human rights” usually in those contexts
where the people have, in fact, no rights and no way to assert rights.’1
‘There’s really no such thing as the “voiceless”. There are only the deliberately silenced,
or the preferably unheard.’2
I. INTRODUCTION
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states: ‘All
human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’3 All subsequent
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* Lizzy Willmington received an MA in International and Comparative Legal Studies at SOAS,
University of London and a BA (Hons) in History of Art from the University of Leeds. She
would like to thank Professor Lynn Welchman, as well as Isabella Mighetto and Rosy Mack
from the Feminist Theory Writing G roup for their valuable discussions and insights. L izzy has
since sought to build on the themes elucidated in this Article. She is currently working with the
London Fairness Commission, which aims to develop and recommend policies for a fairer and
more equal London.
1 Gil Gott, ‘Race, Rights and Reterritorialization’ (2011) 1(3) Columbia Journal of Race & Law
302, 306.
2 Arundhati Roy, ‘Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology’ (The Sydney Morning
Herald, 4 November 2004)
accessed 17 April 2015.
(2016) Vol. 3, Issue 1 Lizzy Willmington
SOAS LAW JOURNAL
133
instruments of international human rights law enshrine equality and dignity as
their premise.4 This foundational document was drawn up in the wake of two
world wars, asserting its primary aim as the ‘creation of a harmonious and just
society’.5 However, following the release of Oxfam’s 2015 Extreme Inequality
Report, it is clear that this objective remains elusive. The richest one per cent of
people in the world own 48 per cent of global wealth, whilst the remaining 52
per cent is dominated by the next richest 20 per cent. This means that 80 per
cent of the world’s population owns only 5.5 per cent of global wealth.6 This
rate of increasing inequality will see the richest one per cent and the remaining
99 per cent hold equal shares of global wealth distribution in 2015. Similarly as
staggering have been the changes in the size and composition of this one per
cent; between 2010 and 2014, the proprietors of the said one per cent have
reduced in number from 388 to 80 individuals.7 As Costas Douzinas stated in
2000, ‘[a]t no point in history has there been a greater gap between the poor and
the rich in the Western world and between the north and the south globally’.8
After a temporary interruption of this inequality, largely due to the 2008 global
financial crisis,9 it is clear that we have returned to this situation of gross
inequality in wealth distribution. Almost 70 years after the adoption of the
UDHR, global inequality has reached its highest rate yet, notwithstanding that
we are in a position where we have the resources to eradicate world poverty.
As Pogge observes, ‘[n]ever has poverty been so easily avoidable’.10 Yet the goal
of poverty eradication is nowhere near being realised. Faced with this stark
reality, we really need to ask ourselves some important – and uncomfortable –
questions. Is the current international human rights system working? Or rather,
who is the system working for?
II. REFRAMING THE DEBATE
Drawing on the work of critical legal scholars, I will analyse how the
development of the international human rights system has stifled the radical
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3 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted 10 December 1948 UNGA Res 217 A(III)
(UDHR) art 1.
4 For a list of treaties, see ‘The Core International H uman Rights Instruments and Their
Monitoring Bodies’ (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner)
2015.
5 Ilias Bantekas and Lutz Oette, International Human Rights Law and Practice (CUP 2013) 12.
6 Oxfam, Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More (Oxfam Issue Briefing, January 2015) 2.
7 ibid 3.
8 Costas Douzinas, The End of Human Rights (Hart Publishing 2000) 2.
9 Oxfam (n 3).
10 Thomas Pogge, ‘Poverty and Human Rights’ in Rhona KM Smith and Christian V an den
Anker (eds), The Essentials of Human Rights (Hodder Arnold 2005).
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