Samuel Moyn - What human rights missed: the larger agenda

Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University, looks at the triumph (or failure) of human rights.

About Samuel Moyn

"I am Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University.

I’m a historian of morality; at least, that’s how I think of myself. I’ve studied where ideas about morality come from and the philosophers who’ve propounded them. For the past decade or so, I’ve been interested in movements that try to make the world a better place: things like the human rights movement or the mobilisation to make war less cruel."

Selective rights

Human rights became triumphant around the end of the Cold War. As a new language of idealism and politics, they are selective. Like all things human, they prioritise certain things over others. Namely, the whole idea of human rights is that there are sacrosanct entitlements: free speech, integrity of the body, maybe some notion of sufficient provision, like enough housing or health, that every human deserves. However, what we’ve seen is that certain other priorities can get lost when human rights achieve the prominence they have in our world.

Key Points

• Human rights become sacrosanct entitlements but do not alleviate inequality.
• International human rights movements and law create stigma in the international system.
• We should reclaim human rights as part of local politics and in relation to a larger agenda.