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	Rising inequality is a wake-up call for human rights by Ignacio Saiz Open Global Rights, agencies   The challenges that economic inequality poses for human rights are not the death knell for the movement but a wake-up call for a more holistic approach.   In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, provocatively titled “How the Human Rights Movement Failed”, Yale professor Samuel Moyn slams the human rights movement for failing to address rising economic inequality and other socioeconomic grievances, which have contributed to the rise of populist authoritarianism. This criticism is not without merit, as much of the human rights movement has indeed been late to the game on these issues, and continues to relegate economic and social rights to the marginalized status of “phantom rights”.   As with other recent laments about the “end of human rights”, Moyn’s article has generated a lot of attention and knowing nods. Yet his argument is based on a very narrow, partial and selective view of the extraordinary range, diversity and ambition of the global human rights movement. In particular, Moyn’s account overlooks the significant efforts of economic and social rights activists worldwide to challenge socioeconomic injustices, including the current escalation in economic inequality.   Questions of “distributional fairness” may not be high on the agenda of international NGOs focusing primarily on civil and political rights, but they have been central to the work of organizations such as the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) that are using human rights strategies to tackle extreme economic inequality and the policy trends that fuel it. Whether exposing the inequitable impacts of austerity measures across the globe or taking tax havens to task at the UN, CESR and its partners have leveraged human rights norms and oversight bodies to press for governmental accountgueability in areas of policy that have traditionally been rights-free zones, but are critical for the reduction of inequality. Others in the global movement for economic and social rights, from grassroots groups to international coalitions, are fighting unjust trade policies, corporate impunity, the financialization of public goods and many other factors driving the inequality crisis.   Although efforts to deploy the tools of human rights in the fight against economic inequality may seem nascent, it is important to remember the role played by the human rights movement in achieving earlier safeguards against income inequality, such as worker’s rights to collective bargaining, the right to primary education, or the right to social security.   Likewise, without laws against gender and racial discrimination brought about thanks to the women’s rights and civil rights movements, wealth and income inequalities would be even more gaping. But many of these historic advances are now taken for granted.   Nevertheless, as we argued earlier in this OpenGlobalRights series on economic inequality and human rights, there are many challenges the human rights community urgently needs to address if it is to be a relevant actor in the field. These challenges are conceptual, normative, strategic and methodological.   The increasing concentration of wealth needs to be understood not just as an incidental human rights concern, but as an inherent injustice and the product of a web of regressive policies that systematically flout governments’ economic and social rights obligations.   How the full panoply of human rights norms can be applied more effectively to constrain the current drivers of economic inequality needs much further exploration. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the treaties that flow from it may be silent on the gap between the rich and the poor, but they have a great deal to say about the policies that perpetuate this disparity. At their core is a concern for substantive equality in all areas of human well-being.   Thanks in part to growing civil society advocacy, human rights oversight mechanisms—from constitutional courts to UN treaty bodies—have become more assertive in applying these norms to challenge or reverse inequality-inducing measures, from the imposition of regressive sales taxes in Colombia to the discriminatory denial of health care to migrants in Spain.   But a key strategic challenge is how to take human rights arguments into other arenas with more direct influence over economic policy setting, such as the IMF, or forums for accountability in development, particularly in light of the new global sustainable development goal to reduce inequality.   It is telling that, while parts of the human rights movement fret over the declining influence of human rights, many development advocates including Oxfam have embraced human rights discourse and tools in their campaigning around extreme inequality.   Such relationships with actors beyond the traditional human rights movement are crucial in building broader alliances to fight inequality. Economic and social rights groups such as CESR have joined forces with development organizations, tax justice campaigners, trade unions, and environmental groups, to leverage human rights around the fairer distribution of resources, and to propose alternative models and paradigms.   Collaboration across sectors can help the human rights movement develop more effective interdisciplinary tools of research and advocacy, as traditional methods of “naming and shaming” and events-based analysis are ill-equipped to deal with chronic socioeconomic deprivation.   It is valid to ask what impact current human rights strategies can have in confronting the systemic injustices underpinning widening inequalities—an inquiry in which CESR and its allies worldwide are engaged with increased urgency since the turning tide of 2016. But the starting point of any constructive critique should be a nuanced assessment of the current state of the field.   The blanket assertion that the human rights movement has “made itself at home in a plutocratic world” and is “drawing the wrong lessons” from the current context loses credibility by leaving out the rich experiences of economic and social rights activists across the globe, as well as the reflective responses to the threat of populism which have emerged from some of the movement’s thought leaders.   The most erroneous lesson of all would be to give up on human rights as a counter-power to the ravages of neoliberalism based on such a selective and distorted reading of the challenges in the field. In the compelling book that his NYT piece promotes, Moyn acknowledges the rise of social rights activism over the last twenty-five years, but claims that these rights “generally concern a threshold above indigence, not how far the rich tower over the rest.” Their “individualist and anti-statist basis,” he argues, doom the human rights movement to offer no meaningful response to rising material inequality.   Yet these limitations are not inherent to the human rights framework, which is constantly evolving. Beyond the movement’s mainstream—particularly on the frontiers of socioeconomic rights advocacy and allied struggles for distributive justice—a more transformative human rights agenda is being honed. New alliances are emerging to tackle economic inequality as an intrinsic human rights concern, and to fulfil the egalitarian aspiration of the UDHR through new approaches to rights claiming.   Viewed from this perspective, there is evidence for hope that human rights—understood holistically—can be an effective bulwark against the deprivations and disparities driven by market fundamentalism. This is no time to abandon the challenges this entails. Instead, we must learn from and build on the initiatives worldwide which have successfully invoked the power of human rights to tackle the injustice of extreme inequality.   * Ignacio Saiz is executive director of the Center for Economic and Social Rights and former director of policy at the international secretariat of Amnesty International: http://bit.ly/2IX3AX7   http://www.openglobalrights.org/economic-inequality-and-human-rights/ Visit the related web page
	The U.S. president has revived the fear of a nuclear holocaust for a new generation by Toronto Star, Ploughshares Fund, agencies   The U.S. president has revived the fear of a nuclear holocaust for a new generation, by Rick Salutin. (Toronto Star)   The first age of nuclear nightmares came in the 1950s and 1960s. They chiefly afflicted the young. Their parents had experienced nuclear realities by way of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was part of a war, and ended it. It was normalized and rational, though in a basically ungraspable way.   Their kids grew up in a peaceful world haunted by nuclear terrors. Their teachers taught them to “duck and cover” beneath their desks if they saw the nuclear flash. They had nightmares (and waking ones) of it. The only moment of apparent imminence came during the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis. It all receded gradually, via détente, a non-proliferation treaty and the Cold War’s demise.   Now it’s back. The minds of the young (in particular) are haunted by nuclear annihilation. If, at this moment, as you’re reading, you saw a nuclear flash illuminate the sky, you’d be shattered but not surprised. It’s there again as imminent, due largely, but not solely, to Trump. Why not solely? Because generations of earlier leaders failed to act to eliminate those weapons and instead built dazzling models of international relations based on them. Trump has arrived, in a way, to demonstrate the true meaning of their bullshit.   Why especially among youth? They have a future but no (adult) past, and fear they won’t live to see it. The rest of us have already had lives we steered ourselves. “Do you think God can exist in a world with nuclear weapons?” asked a millennial — not hysterically, matter-of-factly. They are a quirky demographic.   Along with daily, waking horrors, come new ways to think about politics. I had a friend, the late Art Pape, who left university in his second year, in 1962, to become Canada’s first full time worker for nuclear disarmament. It seemed daring then. Later that image morphed into elderly white people in Birkenstocks demonstrating outside nuclear facilities and looking like Jeremy Corbyn.   Now, remarkably, Corbyn is young again! In a U.K. parliamentary debate on renewing the Trident missile system, he was pilloried by his political and media peers for saying, “I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to go about dealing with international relations.”   Another millennial I know was inspired, almost transported, by those words. Corbyn has been saying them in some form for half a century. The respectable voices in politics and public discourse simply snicker at his phrasing. But when the young hear it, in sober, adult forums, it gives them hope: they aren’t alone.   In fact, what Corbyn says is entirely sensible, it’s pure reason, and when the nuclear flash happens, and the skin is dripping off the faces of vast urban populations, everyone will suddenly get it. The sages of Mutual Assured Destruction will smack their own foreheads and say, “How did we miss that?” http://bit.ly/2gEBqXN   Dec. 2017   Local Newspaper''s full page feature on nuclear radiation survival stirs panic in China, by Oiwan Lam for Global Voices.   On December 6, 2017, Jilin Daily published a full-page feature on nuclear weapons and how to protect oneself in case of a nuclear radiation. This led many, in particular, residents from northern China to ask if the newspaper report is an anticipation of a United States military action against North Korea''s missile test.   Jilin province is located in north China near North Korea. Jilin Daily is affiliated with the local government of the province.   On November 29, North Korea launched a test on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching all part of U.S. mainland. Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump warned to bring a “rain” of “fire and fury” on North Korea if the country’s leader Kim Jong Un continued to threaten U.S. security. China, in particular the northern part of China, would be affected by the “rain”.   Meanwhile, another leaked document from Jilin’s China mobile company indicated that the Jilin government has established five refugee sites in Changbai province, which shares 260 kilometers of border with North Korea.   Public discussion regarding potential warfare in North Korea was deleted quickly from social media platforms. Even party-affiliated Global Times had to withdraw its editorial upon publishing online (retrieved via Voices of America): Translation Original Quote:   ''Currently, tension is mounting in the Korean Peninsula. North Korea has launched six nuclear tests and it is believed that the country is already equipped with a nuclear bomb. Moreover, its missile launching technology has reached a breakthrough this year and has successfully launched a missile that can reach all parts of the U.S. continent. The U.S has vowed that it would destroy North Korea economy and exercise military pressure. The risk of military conflict between the U.S and North Korea has escalated. Jilin shares border with North Korea, the whole page feature on nuclear radiation precaution is believed to be a reaction to the risk of warfare in the Korean peninsula''.   Despite censorship, anxious posts about military conflicts keep popping up on popular Chinese social media platform Weibo. One Weibo user believes that the news feature published by Jilin Daily was approved by the central government:   Translation Original Quote:   ''This is not a joke. You all know that news censorship in China is very strict. Such kind of content has to be approved by senior officials before circulation. The leaders want to tell you something but can’t say that explicitly. Fellows in Dongbei (northern China), please observe the U.S consulate in Shenyang, if they retreat, run away''.   Even though state-affiliated news outlets had tried to downplay the possibility of a war, many are still worried about radiation if military action was taken by the U.S. against North Korea''s nuclear facilities:   Translation Original Quote:   ''Even if the nuclear missile exploded in the sky, Dongbei area will still be endangered, right?''   More critical comments blamed the government for the nuclear crisis:   Translation Original Quote:   ''To prevent a North Korea nuclear missile attack, South Korea and Japan are equipped with Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), MIM-104 Patriot and Aircraft Carriers; Taiwan has Phased Array Warning System, Russia has Voronezh-M radar system as precaution. China is the only country which cannot clearly detect and counter North Korea missiles. Now with the threat of H-bomb, people in Jilin can only rely on newspapers which educate people with radiation common sense. Where have all the patriotic youths who protested against the THAAD by crushing Korean vehicles gone? Shouldn’t you be standing in the front line?''   Translation Original Quote:   ''Since government with Chinese character [China government] has been supporting North Korea in secret, the country eventually got its nuclear weapon. Now it is threatening the security of all people in the world. Hence, the government with Chinese character should be responsible for all adverse effects of the North Korea nuclear crisis''. http://bit.ly/2BSZwTD http://summit2017.globalvoices.org/   * International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) - Nobel Lecture: http://bit.ly/2jmuyzF   http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/does-america-even-have-missile-defense/9077470 http://www.ploughshares.org/ http://harpers.org/archive/2017/12/destroyer-of-worlds/ http://mondediplo.com/openpage/intermediate-range-nuclear Visit the related web page
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