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ABOUT THE PROMISE INSTITUTEThe Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law is the center of humanrights education, research and advocacy at UCLA and regionally. We work to empower thenext generation of human rights lawyers and leaders, generate new thinking on humanrights, and engage our students and research to drive positive real world impact.S. Priya Morley, Director, International Human Rights Clinic & Racial Justice Policy Counseland UCLA Law students Melissa Hendrickse and Chuma Bubu.PREPARED BY

IntroductionDespite its core commitments to equality and non-discrimination, racial justiceand equality have remained marginal within the global human rights agenda to date.Moreover, the international human rights system has been accused of reproducing theracial subordination and inequities that it purports to address: “racism is not outside oftheir systems but is instead an institutionalized feature of these systems.”1Third WorldApproaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholarship has offered valuable critiques ofthe international human rights system, regarding it as the latest iteration in a longhistory of imperial domination of the Third World by the West. In his seminal critique,Savages, Victims, Saviors, Makau Mutua describes human rights advocates as the latestaddition to the long queue of the “colonial administrator, the Bible-wielding Christianmissionary, the merchant of free enterprise, the exporter of political democracy.”2The global racial justice uprising sparked by the police murder of George Floyd inMay 2020 led many within and outside the international human rights system tointerrogate how it could better respond to racial subordination and inequality.Confronting the critiques of the human rights frame and bringing race back from themargins of the international human rights agenda offers a path towards this goal andtowards realizing the emancipatory potential of the human rights project morebroadly.3This primer is intended to be a resource for students, practitioners, and scholarswho are interested in thinking critically about race and human rights. As such, this3On March 8, 2019, UCLA School of Law's Promise Institute, Critical Race Studies Program (CRS), International andComparative Law Program (ICLP), and Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs (ILA) hosted a one-daysymposium entitled Critical Perspectives on Race and Human Rights: Transnational Re-Imaginings. The symposiumbrought together Critical Race Theory (CRT), Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), and human rightsscholars, including the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to think critically about the roleof human rights in achieving racial justice and equality. Some of the papers presented at this symposium weresubsequently published in JILFA's Spring 2020 issue. For more information about this and related convenings, see: S.Priya Morley, Trans-National Re-Imaginings: UCLA School of Law’s Inaugural Series of Convenings on Race, Empire andHuman Rights, https://promiseinstitute.law.ucla.edu/project/race-human-rights-reimagined-initiative/.2Makau Mutua, Savages, Victims, Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights, 42 HARV. INT’L. J. 201, 218 (2001).1E. Tendayi Achiume, Transnational Racial (In)Justice in Liberal Democratic Empire, 134 Harv. L. Rev. F. 378, 380 (2021).3

primer offers a brief introduction to the core United Nations mechanisms andinternational human rights treaties which seek to address global racial inequality anddiscrimination. It then explores the critiques of the human rights doctrine and itslimitations for achieving racial justice and equality. Finally, it interrogates the future ofhuman rights and racial justice.Definition: The Third WorldFor TWAIL scholars, the term “Third World” refers broadly to a “historicallyconstituted, alternative and oppositional stance within the internationalsystem.”4More specifically, the Third World denotes a grouping of stateswhich share a set of “geographic, oppositional, and political realities thatdistinguish it from the West.”5However, this grouping does not imply ahomogeneity or absence of diversity among the countries that constitute it. Tothe contrary, the Third World is made up of “a diverse set of countries,extremely varied in their cultural heritages, with very different historicalexperiences and marked differences in the patterns of their economics.”6Notwithstanding these differences, Third World countries share a “stream ofsimilar historical experiences across virtually all non-European societies thathas given rise to a particular voice, a form of intellectual and politicalconsciousness.”7This consciousness reflects a particular “oppositionaldialectic” between European and non-European states, informed by thehistory of colonialism, extraction, and exploitation of the latter by the former.Importantly, TWAIL scholars have wielded the term Third World instead ofother designations with derogatory connotations such as “less-developed”,“developing” or “underdeveloped,” which convey a relative lack of “progress”or development as compared to the West. Rather, the term Third World has7Id.6B.S. Chimni, Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto, 8 INT’L COMMUNITY L. REV. 1, 4 (2006) citing P.WORSLEY, THE THREE WORLDS: CULTURE AND WORLD DEVELOPMENT 306 (1984).5Makau Mutua, What is TWAIL? 94 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ASIL ANNUAL MEETING 31 (2000).4Karin Mickelson, Rhetoric and Rage: Third World Voices in International Legal Discourse, 16 WIS. INT’L, L.J. 353, 360(1998).4

been invoked as a “counter-hegemonic term that is designed to rupturereceived patterns of thinking.”8Definition: Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) is a “historically locatedintellectual and political movement,”9characterized by a “distinctive way ofthinking about what international law is and should be,”10which is groundedin the perspectives and experiences of the Third World. Since its inception,TWAIL has developed into an “expansive, heterogenous and polycentricdispersed network andfield of study.”11Although TWAIL scholars varysignificantly in their emphases, they share certain fundamental political andideological commitments. These include a recognition of the centrality of the“colonial encounter between Europeans and non-Europeans” to thedevelopment of international law, the complicity of international law inlegitimizing imperial conquest and colonialism, and the fact thatcontemporary international law is structured in ways that entrench andperpetuate the legacy of colonial subjugation and disempowerment.12Ultimately, TWAIL scholars seek to “transform international law from alanguage of oppression to a language of emancipation—a body of rules andpractices that reflect and embody the struggles and aspirations of Third Worldpeoples and that, thereby, promote truly global justice.”13TWAIL is thus a“fundamentally reconstructive movement that seeks a new compact ofinternational law.”1414Mutua, What Is TWAIL?, supra note 5, at 38.13Anghie & Chimni, Third World Approaches to International Law, supra note 10, at 186.12Gathii, TWAIL: A Brief History of Its Origins at 30.11James Thuo Gathii, TWAIL: A Brief History of Its Origins, Its Decentralized Network, and a Tentative Bibliography, 3 TRADEL. & DEV. 26 (2011).For a comprehensive account of the origins and history of TWAIL, see Gathii, TWAIL: A Brief History of Its Origins;Anghie & Chimni, Third World Approaches to International Law and Individual Responsibility in Internal Conflict; KarenMickelson, Taking Stock of TWAIL Histories, 10 INT’L COMMUNITY L. REV. 355 (2008).10Antony Anghie & B. S. Chimni, Third World Approaches to International Law and Individual Responsibility in InternalConflict, 36 STUD. TRANSNAT’L LEGAL POL’Y 185 (2004).9Mutua, What Is TWAIL?, supra note 5, at 38.8Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Locating the Third World in Cultural Geography, THIRD WORLD LEGAL STUD. 1, 3-4 (1998-1999).5

Core International Human Rights TreatiesThe first major international human rights instrument was the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights (UDHR),15adopted in 1948 by the United Nations GeneralAssembly (UNGA). In 1966, the UNGA adopted two core human rights treaties: theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights16(ICCPR) and the InternationalCovenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights17(ICESCR). Together, the UDHR,ICCPR, and ICESCR constitute the International Bill of Human Rights. The Human RightsCommittee18and Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights19are responsiblefor monitoring states’ implementation of the ICCPR and ICESCR, respectively.The principles of equality and non-discrimination are enshrined in each of thesecore human rights treaties. The UDHR affirms that all human beings are born free andequal in dignity and rights and that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedomsset out therein, without distinction of any kind, in particular as to race, color, ornational origin.20Both the ICCPR and ICESCR require state parties to respect orguarantee the rights contained in each treaty without discrimination or distinction ofany kind as to “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, nationalor social origin, property, birth or other status.”21In addition, several other treaties focus specifically on the prohibition ofdiscrimination, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms ofDiscrimination against Women22(CEDAW) and the International Convention on the22G.A. Res. 180, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Dec. 18, 1979)[hereinafter CEDAW] https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cedaw.aspx21See ICCPR, art.2(1) and ICESCR, art. 2(2).20UDHR, art. 1.19Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, OHCHRhttps://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/cescr/pages/cescrindex.aspx (last visited Mar 16, 2022).18Human Rights Committee, OHCHR, https://www.ohchr.org/en/treaty-bodies/ccpr (last visited Mar 16, 2022).17G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, (Dec.16, 1966) [hereinafterICESCR]. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cescr.aspx16G.A. Res 2200A (XXI), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (Dec. 16, 1966), [hereinafter ICCPR).https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx15G.A. Res. 217 (III) A, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Dec. 10, 1948) [hereinafter UDHR].https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights6

Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination23(ICERD). The implementation of thesetwo treaties is monitored by the Committee on the Elimination of DiscriminationAgainst Women and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,respectively. Both instruments have been ratified by a majority of countries around theworld.24ICERD defines “racial discrimination” as “any distinction, exclusion, restrictionor preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has thepurpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, onan equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic,social, cultural or any other field of public life.”25The United States has lagged behind other countries significantly in itsratification of these treaties. The United States ratified the ICCPR in 1992 but has notratified the ICESCR. The United States signed ICERD in 1966 but only ratified the treatyin 1994, subject to several reservations. Despite being a state party to ICERD for almostthree decades, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has observedthat there remain “persistent disparities in the enjoyment of human rights andfundamental freedoms, based on race or ethnic origin” in the United States.26Beyondthe ICCPR and ICERD, there are only a few other core international human rightstreaties that the United States has actually ratified, such as the Convention AgainstTorture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and twooptional protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although the UnitedStates signed CEDAW in 1980, it has not yet ratified it.27Importantly, the United States27Melanne Verveer & Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Why ratifying the convention on the elimination of discrimination againstwomen (CEDAW) is good for America’s domestic policy, GEORGETOWN INSTITUTE OF WOMEN PEACE AND SECURITY (Feb. 18, 2021).https://giwps.georgetown.edu/why-ratifying-the-convention-on-the-elimination-of-discrimination-against-women-cedaw-is-good-for-americas-domestic-policy/26CERD, Concluding observations on the combined seventh to ninth period reports of the United States of America, U.N.Doc. CERD/C/USA/CO/7-9 (Sep. 25, 2014), para 7.25ICERD, art. 1.24There are 182 state parties to ICERD and 189 state parties to CEDAW. OHCHR dashboard,OHCHR,https://indicators.ohchr.org/ (last visited Jun 3, 2022).23G.A. Res. 2106 (XX), International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, (Dec. 21,1965) [hereinafter ICERD] https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cerd.aspx7

has also not yet ratified ICESCR,28a treaty which has direct relevance to marginalizedcommunities vulnerable to multiple forms of discrimination.29The Role of the Global Southin the Creation of International Human RightsThe development of international human rights law is intertwined with thehistory of struggle against racial subordination and inequality.30For example, ICERDwas thefirst major human rights treaty to be adopted, predating both the ICCPR andICESCR.31However, the dominant narrative of the history of human rights oftenoverlooks this fact, focusing on the adoption of the International Bill of Rights (UDHR,ICCPR, and ICESCR) as the defining moments of the human rights movement. Thefailure to recognize the significance of ICERD to the development of human rightsobscures the important historical role and contributions of the Third World. Individualsand states from the Third World were the main driving force behind ICERD, leading therest of world in understanding racial injustice and inequality as a fundamental humanrights issue.32Thefirst international actors to introduce sanctions against apartheidSouth Africa were states from the Third World—India and Jamaica.33The dominant33Ibid.32Ibid.31Achiume, Transnational Racial (In)Justice in Liberal Democratic Empire, at 396, fn 75.30See for example, STEVEN L.B. JENSEN, THE MAKING OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS (2016); Makau Mutua, Savages, Victims andSaviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights, supra note 2; Achiume, Transnational Racial (In)Justice in Liberal DemocraticEmpire, supra note 1, at 396, fn 75.29For example, in its concluding observations on the United States’ 2014 periodic report, the Committee on theElimination of Racial Discrimination found that:Bearing in mind the indivisibility of all human rights, the Committee encourages the State party to considerratifying international human rights treaties which it has not yet ratified, in particular treaties with provisionsthat have a direct relevance to communities that may be the subject of racial discrimination, such as theInternational Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Formsof Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Convention on theProtection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, the Convention on the Rights ofPersons with Disabilities, and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from EnforcedDisappearance.See CERD, Concluding observations on the combined seventh to ninth period reports of the United States of America, id. Atpara 29.28OHCHR dashboard,OHCHR, https://indicators.ohchr.org/ (last visited Jun 12, 2022).8

historical narratives also leave out the fact that many Western states fervently opposedICERD, “reluctant to see the colonial staples of racial injustice and inequality placed onthe transnational human rights agenda.”34Nevertheless, these narratives privilege thecontributions of the West to human rights, obscuring the ways in which the Third Worldled and “civilized the West.”35As well as erasing the significance of ICERD, prevailing narratives obscure theinfluence of political struggles for racial equality on the emergence of the human rightsdiscourse. For example, the contributions of the global campaign against slavery andthe decolonization movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, are usually omittedfrom the history of human rights. Steven Jensen argues that “[d]ecolonizationwas—through its structural transformation of international politics—a decisive factorthat actually enabled human rights.”36Moreover, decolonization served as the very“source of energy” behind the introduction of the resolution by several African statesproposing the creation of an international convention on the elimination of racialdiscrimination, supported by a coalition of African and Asian nations.37E. Tendayi Achiume has emphasized that “[w]hereas the Third World nationstates are typically cast as backward or recalcitrant on human rights issues, theirinitiative...has been quintessential in framing racial injustice and inequity as afundamental human rights concern.”38Despite their pivotal role in shaping earlierarticulations of the human rights agenda, the concerns and interests of the Third Worldhave since been marginalized in the global human rights system. For example, the issueof global inequity and the necessity of reforming international economic structures todisrupt the legacies of colonialism was a principal concern for newly independent ThirdWorld states.39However, global distributional inequalities have erased this from the39See for example, Anthony Anghie, Whose Utopia? Human Rights, Development, and the Third World, 22 QUI PARLE 66(2013).38Ibid.37Achiume, Transnational Racial (In)Justice in Liberal Democratic Empire, supra note 1, at 396, fn 75.36Id., at 277.35JENSEN, THE MAKING OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS, supra note 30, at 279.34Ibid.9

agenda of modern human rights discourse, which has come to be characterized by anemphasis on civil and political rights.40We discuss this in further detail in the critiquesof the human rights system below.Anti-Racism Initiatives Within the United NationsIn addition to the adoption of the human rights treaties discussed above, theUnited Nations has established several special procedure mechanisms to eradicateracism and racial discrimination around the world. In 1993, the UN Human RightsCouncil (then called the Commission on Human Rights) created the mandate of UNSpecial Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobiaand related intolerance (Special Rapporteur). The Special Rapporteur is an independentexpert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor violations ofinternational law, transmit urgent appeals and communications to states, undertakefact-finding country visits, and submit reports to the UN Human Rights Council andUNGA.41The United Nations has held several convenings focused on these topics.42TheWorld Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and RelatedIntolerance, which was held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, led to the Declaration andProgramme of Action (Durban Declaration).43As the most comprehensive andfar-reaching UN pronouncement on racial discrimination and inequality to date, theDurban Declaration represented a historic advancement in putting racial justice on theglobal human rights agenda. The Conference and resultant Declaration were alsohistoric in that they named slavery and the slave trade as major sources of racism and43U.N. Doc. A/CONF.189/12, World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and RelatedIntolerance: Declaration and Programme of Action (Sep. 8, 2001) [hereinafter Durban Declaration].https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/Durban_text_en.pdf42Conferences | racism, UNITED NATIONS, https://www.un.org/en/conferences/racism (last visited Mar 16, 2022).41This position was held by Achiume from 2017 to 2022.40Ibid.10

discrimination against racially marginalized people, and acknowledged that the effectsof colonialism continue to shape social and economic inequalities throughout theworld.44The timing of the Durban Conference, immediately before 9/11, halted themomentum it built and impeded the implementation of the Durban Declaration.However, the Durban Declaration led to the creation of the UN Working Group ofExperts on People of African Descent, which is comprised offive independent globalexperts.45The Working Group monitors violations of international law and makesproposals for the elimination of racial discrimination against people of African descent.Since its establishment in 2002, the mandate of the Working Group has beenperiodically extended by the UN Human Rights Council. To date, the Working Group hasissued several reports concerning racial discrimination faced by people of Africandescent, the latest of which was published in 2021 and addresses the topic ofEnvironmental justice, the climate crisis and people of African descent.46In August 2021, 20 years after the Durban Conference, the UNGA established theUN Permanent Forum of People of African Descent that will work to implement thevision of the Durban Declaration.47This advisory board will work with the UN HumanRights Council and serve as a consultation mechanism for people of African descentand other stakeholders. It will “contribute to the elaboration of a UN declaration – a‘first step towards a legally binding instrument’ on the promotion and full respect of therights of people of African descent.”48In March 2022,five additional experts wereappointed to the existing panel offive members.4949President of the Human Rights Council appoints members of Permanent Forum on People of African Descent,OHCHR (March 8, 2022)https://www.ohchr.org/en/news/2022/03/president-human-rights-council-appoints-members-permanent-forum-people-african-descent48General Assembly creates new Permanent Forum of People of African Descent, UN NEWS (Aug. 2, 2021).https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/08/109693247U.N. GA Res. 75/314 (Aug. 2, 2021).https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N21/213/97/PDF/N2121397.pdf?OpenElement46Human Rights Council, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/48/78 (Sep. 21, 2021).https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/wg-african-descent/annual-reports45Working Group of experts on people of African descent, OHCHR, (last visited Mar 16, 2022).https://ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Racism/WGAfricanDescent/Pages/WGEPADIndex.aspx44Durban Declaration, art. 13 & 14.11

The Limits of the UN Human Rights Systemto Achieve Racial JusticeDespite these affirmative steps, trans-national racism, racial inequality, anddiscrimination remain pervasive. Even though, as W.E.B. Du Bois described, the“problem of the color line” was one of the key global issues of the twentieth century,50race has remained marginal to international human rights discourses.51Notwithstanding the almost 60 years of ICERD’s existence, the broader internationalhuman rights universe continues to be characterized by a “general neglect of racialequality.”52The United Nations has been criticized by both the Special Rapporteur and theWorking Group for failing to take adequate steps towards the eradication of racialdiscrimination and inequality. For instance, in light of the UN Human Rights Council’slackluster response to the U.S. racial justice uprisings in summer 2020, Achiume arguedthat “the international human rights frame not only is neglectful of racial justice, butalso can suppress the most promising avenues for achieving this racial justice, as thisframe has notably done since its inception.”53Western states exercised their power todilute the radical demands for racial justice at the “Urgent Debate,” an emergencyspecial session of the UN Human Rights Council held in 2020 in response to thetransnational racial justice uprising triggered by the murders of George Floyd andBreonna Taylor by police in the United States.54At the Urgent Debate, civil society andsocial movements demanded accountability for police violence in the United Statesspecifically, calling for a commission of inquiry to investigate police brutality againstracially marginalized groups in the United States.55In the end, the UN Human Rights55Ibid.54Ibid. The Urgent Debate was triggered by the transnational racial justice uprising in response to the murders ofGeorge Floyd and Breonna Taylor and calls from their families, together with the families of other black Americanskilled by police brutality.53Achiume, Transnational Racial (In)Justice in Liberal Democratic Empire, supra note 1, at 397.52Achiume, Putting Racial Equality onto the Global Human Rights Agenda.51E. Tendayi Achiume, Putting Racial Equality onto the Global Human Rights Agenda, 28 SUR INT’L J. ON HUM. RTS. 141(2018). See also Anna Spain Bradley, Human Rights Racism, 32 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 1 (2019).50W.E.B. DU BOIS, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK, 3 (2003).12

Council adopted “a consensus resolution,” which directed the High Commissioner ofHuman Rights (OHCHR) to prepare a report but failed to mention the United Statesexplicitly or include any substantive enforcement mechanisms.56Achiume has arguedthat the process of arriving at this weaker resolution is “demonstrative of the complicityof states, particularly Western ones, in ‘maintaining and perpetuating entrenchedsystems of racism and white supremacy.’”57Pursuant to the UN Human Rights Councilresolution, the OHCHR released a report in June 2021 setting out a four-point agendatowards transformative change for racial justice and equality.58The Report waspresented to the UN Human Rights Council in July 2021, following which the Counciladopted a resolution establishing an independent expert mechanism to further racialjustice and equality in law enforcement, “especially where relating to the legacies ofcolonialism and the Transatlantic slave trade in enslaved Africans.”59The mechanismformally visited the United States in April-May 2023.60Common Critiques of Human RightsThe logics of imperialism and racism permeate not only the operation ofinternational human rights institutions but the very doctrinal foundations ofinternational human rights. Many scholars understand the failure of human rights todisrupt systems of racial hierarchy and inequality to be a consequence of the normativeorigins and commitments of the doctrine. In particular, the “defining” features of theinternational human rights doctrine, its supposed universal, timeless, non-partisan, and60OHCHR, Independent Expert Mechanism on Racism and Law Enforcement to visit the United States (April 21,2023).https://www.ohchr.org/en/media-advisories/2023/04/independent-expert-mechanism-racism-and-law-enforcement-visit-united59U.N. Human Rights Council Res. 47/21, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/RES/4721 (July 13, 2021).https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G21/199/03/PDF/G2119903.pdf?OpenElement58Rep. of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Concerning UN Promotion and protection of the human rightsand fundamental freedoms of Africans and of people of African descent against excessive use of force and otherhuman rights violations by law enforcement officers, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/47/53 (June 1, 2021).https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G21/122/03/PDF/G2112203.pdf?OpenElement.57Id., at 388.56Ibid.13

non-ideological nature, are seen to contribute to the preservation of existing globalracial hierarchies and geopolitical power imbalances in the international system.61Thefollowing section presents some common critiques of international human rights thathuman rights scholars and practitioners should grapple with, particularly in their effortsto advance racial justice and equality through a human rights frame.Challenging the Universality of Human Rights:Human Rights Doctrine as a Eurocentric ProjectSince its inception, international human rights law has pronounced its “universalmorality and timeless righteousness.”62One of the earliest articulations of moderninternational human rights law, the UDHR, proclaims itself to be “the common standardof achievement for all peoples and all nations.”63In this sense, international humanrights is understood to be inherently applicable to all humankind regardless of timeand place. However, critiques of the human rights frame have challenged thisassertion, arguing that claims to universality obscure the culturally specific features ofthe doctrine. These critiques point out that the human rights doctrine has its roots in aspecific intellectual tradition and historical location: Western, particularly European,thought.64International human rights law is therefore not universal, but a Eurocentric64See e.g. Jack Donnelly, Human Rights and Western Liberalism, in HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 31(Abdullahi A. An-Na’im & Francis M. Deng eds., 1990); Virginia Leary, The Effect of Western Perspectives on InternationalHuman Rights, in HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 15 (Abdullahi A. An-Na’im & Francis M. Deng eds.,1990); Issa G. Shivji, Constructing A New Rights Regime: Promises, Problems and Prospects, 8 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIEs 253,254 (1999); Mutua, Savages, Victims and Saviors, supra note 2; Rémi Bachand, Critical Approaches and the Third World:Towards a Global and Radical Critique of International Law, SPEECH AT UNIVERSITY MCGILL, (March 24, 2010).63UDHR, preamble.62Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights, at 607.61See e.g., Makau Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights 36 VIR. J. INT’L L. 589 (1996); MAKAU MUTUA, HUMAN RIGHTS STANDARDS:HEGEMONY, LAW, AND POLITICS 167 (2016).14

intellectual and political project.65Such critiques seek to historicize, localize, andcontextualize the emergence of human rights norms, to make visible the “genealogicalconnection that ties them to the historical setting in which they were elaborated.”66These critiques also challenge the presentation of international human rights asnon-ideological or apolitical.67Human rights discourse has typically positioned itself asexisting outside of politics, as a form of “antipolitics” or a “moral discourse centered onpain and suffering rather than political discourse.”68Critics have contested thischaracterization, arguing that human rights carry an implicit political vision and that the“language and commitments of international human rights is quintessentially liberal.”69Thus, rather than being ideologically and politically neutral, international human rightsexpresses a distinctive normative and ideological vision: Western liberalism.70Liberalism is defined by its emphasis on securing individual liberty through democraticpolitical institutions and the protection of liberty, autonomy, and property against state70Ibid. See also Makau Mutua, The Banjul Charter and the African Cultural Fingerprint: An Evaluation of the Language ofDuties, 35 VA. J. INT’L L. 339, 341 (1995). Mutua argues that:“The sacralization of the individual and the supremacy of the jurisprudence of individual rights in organized politicaland social society is not a natural, “transhistorical,” or universal phenomenon, applicable to all societies, withoutregard to time and place.”69Achiume, Transnational Racial (In)Justice in Liberal Democratic Empire, supra note 1, at 379.68Wendy Brown, “The Most We Can Hope For…”: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism, 103 SOUTH AFRICAN QUARTERLY451, 453 (2004).67See e.g. Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights, supra note 61; Anthony Anghie, International human rights law and adeveloping world perspective in ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW 109 (ed. 2013); Bachand, CriticalApproaches and the Third World: Towards a Global and Radical Critique of International Law, supra note 65; MUTUA, HUMANRIGHTS STANDARDS: HEGEMONY, LAW, AND POLITICS, supra note 61; Barreto, Decolonial Thinking and the Quest for DecolonisingHuman Rights.66Barreto, Decolonial Thinking and the Quest for Decolonising Human Rights, at 490.65See B.S. SAYYID, A FUNDAMENTAL FEAR: EUROCENTRICISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF ISLAMISM (2003) 285. Sayyid definesEurocentricism as a “multidimensional attempt to restore Western cultural practices as universal.”See e.g., Anghie, International human rights law and a developing world perspective, supra note 39 at 109; Mutua,Ideology of Human Rights, supra note 61; Binder Guyora, Cultural Relativism and Cultural Imperialism in Human RightsLaw, 5 BUFF. HUM. RTS. L. REV. 211 (1999); A. SHARMA, ARE HUMAN RIGHTS WESTERN? A CONTRIBUTION TO THE DIALOGUE OF CIVILIZATIONS(2006); Sebastian Bonnet, Overcoming Eurocentrism in Human Rights: Postcolonial Critiques-Islamic Answers? 12 MUSLIMWORLD. J. HUM. RTS 1 (2015); Walter D. Mignolo, Who Speaks for the “Human” in Human Rights? 5 HISPANIC ISSUES ON LINE 7(2009); José-Manuel Barreto, Decolonial Thinking and the Quest for Decolonising Human Rights 46 ASIAN J. SOC. SCI. 484,490 (2018).15

incursion.71It is argued that the international human rights corpus reflects thenormative commitments of liberalism through its privileging of the individual over thecollective, and the prioritization of civil and political rights over economic, social, andcultural rights.72Moreover, this construction of rights suggests, both implicitly andexplicitly, that a particular political system is required in order to effectuate humanrights, namely a liberal democracy.73For many human rights doctrinalists, Westernliberal democracy and human rights are “virtually tautological.”74The Eurocentric orientation of international law is further evidenced in its failureto reflect the wisdom, cultures, and values of Third World peoples or to speak to theirurgent realities and lived experiences.75In this vein, TWAIL and postcolonial scholarshave argued that “the transplantation of the narrow formulation of Western liberalismcannot adequately respond to the historical reality and the political and social needs” ofthe Third World.76During his time as president of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Nyererefamously asked: “What freedom has our subsistence farmer?…Only as his poverty isreduced will his existing political freedom become properly meaningful and his right to76Makau Mutua, The Banjul Charter and the African Cultural Fingerprint, supra note 75.75See e.g. Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights; Barreto, Decolonial Thinking and the Quest for Decolonising Human Rights,supra note 65; ABDULLAHI AHMED AN-NA'IM & FRANCIS DENG, (EDS.) HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES (1990);Upendra Baxi, Voices of Suffering and the Future of Human Rights, 8 TRANSNAT'L L. & CONTEMP. PROBS. 125 (1998); JosiahA.M. Cobbah, African Values and the Human Rights Debate: An African Perspective, 9 HUM. RTS. Q. 309 (1987); MakauMutua, The Banjul Charter and the African Cultural Fingerprint: An Evaluation of the Language of Duties, 35 Va. J. Int’l L.339 (1995); Sebastian Bonnet, Overcoming Eurocentrism in Human Rights: Postcolonial Critiques-Islamic Answers? 12MUSLIM WORLD. J. HUM. RTS 1 (2015); Hakimeh Saghaye-Biria, Decolonizing the “Universal” Human Rights Regime:Questioning American Exceptionalism and Orientalism, 4 REORIENT 59 (2018); Bilahari Kausikan, An East Asian Approach toHuman Rights, 2 BUFF. J. INT’L L. 263 (1996) but cf. Amartya Sen’s critique of the “Asian Values” debate in Amartya Sen,Human Rights and Asian Values, 217 THE NEW REPUBLIC 33 (July 14, 1997).See also Upendra Baxi, Taking Suffering Seriously in LAW AND POVERTY 32 (U. Baxi ed., 1988) (“the contradiction betweendeclarations of individual rights rooted in human worth, and the reality of grinding poverty of millions mutilatinghuman life itself in poor countries poses a challenge not only to the intellectual integrity of human rightsjurisprudence but brings into question the legitimacy of the judiciary and legal profession presented as the founts ofjustice, fairness and equality”).74Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights, supra note 61, at 592.73Achiume, Transnational Racial (In)Justice in Liberal Democratic Empire, supra note 1, at 379.72Chimni, Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto, supra note 6, at 17.71See eg. UDAY SINGH MEHTA, LIBERALISM AND EMPIRE 3 (1999); Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights, supra note 61, at 601; RATNAKAPUR, GENDER, ALTERITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS 5 (2018).Singh provides a useful definition of liberalism as the normative commitment to:“securing individual liberty and human dignity through a political cast that typically involves democratic andrepresentative institutions, the guaranty of individual rights of property, and freedom of expression, association,and conscience, all of which are taken to limit the legitimate use of authority of the state.”16

human dignity become a fact of human dignity.”77The emphasis of international humanrights on liberal politics as panacea fails to address the root causes of the economicinequality and poverty which constitute some of the main challenges faced by much ofthe Third World.78Moreover, human rights discourse often elides the fact that theeconomic inequality experienced by the Third World is itself a historical product ofexploitation and underdevelopment by Western countries.79Human Rights Doctrine as a “Racist and Colonial Project”Implicit in the claims of human rights doctrine to universality is an impulse touniversalize Eurocentric norms and values.80Critics have argued that by presentingWestern liberal democracy and human rights as co-constitutive, human rights doctrineprojects a Western civilizational standard for all humanity. It demands that the ThirdWorld “climb the civilizational ladder” to Western style liberal democracy, while castingthose non-Western societies which fail to do so as inherently backward.81As MakauMutua observed, the international human rights corpus reflects a “binarized view of theworld in which the European West leads the way and the rest of the globe follows in astructure that resembles a child-parent relationship.”82This has led many scholars tocharacterize human rights doctrine as inherently racist and an extension of thecivilizing mission of colonialism, or, at the least, a continuation of a long history of82Makau Mutua, Human Rights: A Political & Cultural Critique 8-9 (2002).81Mutua, Savages, Victims and Saviors, supra note 2 at 243. See also Nelson Maldonado-Torres, On the Coloniality ofHuman Rights, 114 REVISTA CRÍTICA DE CIENCIAS SOCIAIS 117 (2017); Barreto, Decolonial Thinking and the Quest for DecolonisingHuman Rights, supra note 65, SHELLY WRIGHT, INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS, DECOLONIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION: BECOMING HUMAN(2001); Sundhya Pahuja, The Postcoloniality of International Law, 46 HARV. INT’L L. J. 459 (2005).80Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights, supra note 61.79See for example, WALTER RODNEY, HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA (1972).78Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights, supra note 61, at 636.77I.G. SHIVJI, THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA 40 (1989).17

imperial domination of the Third World by the West.83This understanding ofinternational human rights forms part of a broader critique of international law asbeing “based on the supremacy of white European peoples over non-Europeans, andthe “duty” of the former to civilize and control the latter.”84Some decolonial scholarshave also argued that the very concept of “humanity” itself and who is consideredhuman for purposes of asserting rights is informed by ideas of colonial difference andrace.85Makau Mutua famously described the human rights corpus as enacting, what hedescribes as, a “savages, victims, and saviors” metaphor.86This metaphor is marked bypatent racial connotations,87through which the “international hierarchy of race andcolor is reintrenched and revitalized.”88In this sense, rather than helping to dismantlethe global racial hierarchy, the international human rights corpus contributes to itspreservation. The critique of the savior-victim script of international human rights has88Id. at 207.87Mutua records that “[i]n the human rights narrative, savages and victims are generally non-white andnon-Western, while the saviors are white.” He cautions that there is also a sense in which human rights “can be seenas a project for the redemption of the redeemers, in which whites who are privileged globally as a people – who havehistorically visited untold suffering and savage atrocities against non-whites – redeem themselves by “defending” and“civilizing” “lower,” “unfortunate,” and “inferior” peoples.” Mutua, Savages, Victims and Saviors, supra note 2, at 207-8.86Mutua, Savages, Victims and Saviors: supra note 2. According to Mutua, the “grand narrative of human rightscontains a subtext that depicts an epochal contest pitting savages, on the one hand, against victims and saviors, onthe other.” The “savage” refers to the backward illiberal, anti-democratic or otherwise authoritarian state whichviolates the rights and dignity of its citizens, the “victims.” The victimfigure is a “powerless, helpless innocent whosenaturalist attributes have been negated by the primitive and offensive actions of the state.” Finally, the “savior” refersto the human rights corpus itself, namely the United Nations, Western governments, internationalnon-governmental organizations and Western charities. These actors position themselves as saviors or redeemerswho rescue, protect and vindicate victims while restraining and civilizing the savage responsible states.85Mignolo, Who Speaks for the “Human” in Human Rights?, supra note 65 at 17. Mignolo argues that “[h]umanity hasbeen created upon philosophical and anthropological categories of Western thought and based on epistemic andontological colonial differences.”84Mutua, What is TWAIL?, supra note 5, at 36.83See e.g., Anghie & Chimni, Third World Approaches to International Law and Individual Responsibility in InternalConflict, supra note 10 at 193 (“What is remarkable is the way in which the project of the civilizing mission hasendured over time, and how its essential structure is preserved in certain versions of contemporary initiatives, forexample, of “development,” democratization, human rights, and “good governance,” which posit a Third World that islacking and deficient and in need of international intervention for its salvation.”)Mutua, What is TWAIL?, supra note 5 (“The lastfive centuries of European hegemony manifest a pattern. The patternis the long queue of the colonial administrator, the Bible-carrying missionary come to save the heathens, thecommercial profiteer, the exporter of political democracy, and now the human rights crusader.”)See also Mutua, Savages, Victims and Saviors: supra note 2; Bachand, Critical Approaches and the Third World, supranote 65; MAHMOOD MAMDANI, SAVIOURS AND SURVIVORS: DARFUR, POLITICS AND THE WAR ON TERROR (2010).18

also been raised by postcolonial feminist scholars, specifically in relation to Westernresponses to violations of the human rights of Third World women.89Women’s Human Rights as an Extensionof the Civilization MissionFeminists of color and TWAIL scholars have pointed out the failure of formalequality to address inequalities at the intersection of race, class, geography, and otherpoints of disadvantage.90In her discussion of the twenty-year U.S. war in Afghanistanand its effect on women through the lens of TWAIL, Ratna Kapur criticizes themotivation to “emancipate” Afghan women in what has been referred to as thefirst“feminist war”.91The notion of rescuing the “other woman” has been an intrinsic featureof international and human rights legal interventions.92In this narrative, the “otherwoman” is almost always from the Third World and is almost always seen as left behindin the movement towards liberal ideas of progress and modernity.93For Kapur, theproblem is that invading Afghanistan mobilized the negative assumptions ascribed tothe veil as an oppressive and subordinating practice of the religion of Islam towardswomen, and gender equality became the antidote.9494Id. at 272. “The veil” is used generically to include its various manifestations being the hijab, jilbab, abaya, niqab,burqa, and chador.93Ratna Kapur, The First Feminist War in all of History, at 271.92Ratna Kapur, The First Feminist War in all of History”: Epistemic Shifts and Relinquishing the Mission to Rescue the “OtherWoman 116 AJIL UNBOUND 270, 270 (2022). See also Ratna Kapur, The Tragedy of Victimization Rhetoric: Resurrecting the“Native” Subject in International/Post-Colonial Feminist Legal Politics 15 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 1 (2002).91Catherine Powell and Adrien K. Wing, Introduction to the Symposium on Feminist Approaches to International Law, at262.90Catherine Powell and Adrien K. Wing, Introduction to the Symposium on Feminist Approaches to International LawThirty Years On: Still Alienating Oscar? 116 AJIL UNBOUND 259, 261 (2022). See also Kimberlé Crenshaw, Demarginalizingthe Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and AntiracistPolitics, U. CHI. LEGAL F. 139 (1989); Angela P. Harris, Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory, 42 STAN. L. REV. 581(1990).89See e.g., Chandra T. Mohanty, Under Western Eyes; Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses, 30 FEMINIST REV. 61(1988); Ratna Kapur, The Tragedy of Victimization Rhetoric: Resurrecting the ‘Native’ Subject in International/Post-ColonialFeminist Legal Politics, 15 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 1 (2002); Sara Salem, Feminist critique and Islamic feminism: The question ofintersectionality, 1 THE POSTCOLONIALIST 1 (2013); OYERÓNKE OYEWUMÍ (ED.), AFRICAN WOMEN AND FEMINISM: REFLECTING ON THE POLITICSOF SISTERHOOD (2003); ADRIEN K. WING, GLOBAL CRITICAL RACE FEMINISM: AN INTERNATIONAL READER (2000).19

Postcolonial feminists and TWAIL critiques have long interrogated the so-calledgains of feminism within the institutional framework of human rights. They argue thatthe array of more rights and resolutions in favor of women have not necessarily led tomore liberation for women in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.95Instead, theyhave had both regulatory as well as disempowering and exclusionary effects.96Simultaneously “the epistemic violence produced through the advancement of liberalimperial endeavors in the name of women’s rights have assumed knowledge about the‘other woman’ without doing the hard work of knowing her”.97The Human Rights System as “Hypocritical”Critics have also described the operation of the broader international rightssystem as marked by hypocrisy and inherent contradiction. They observe that humanrights discourse has historically been characterized by a “heaven-hell” binary distinctionbetween “an all but ‘perfect’ West and an all but ‘hellish’ Third World.”98This divides theworld into two types of societies: Western societies free of human rights violations andThird World societies which are “virtually constituted by incessant epidemics of themost horrendous sorts of human rights violations.”99Even though Western countriesare notorious for human rights violations against racial and ethnic minorities withintheir own borders and against Third World migrants who seek to cross these borders,the West is typically shielded from human rights scrutiny or intervention.100Humanrights violations are presented as a problem of the Third World, with internationalinstitutions and Western human rights groups focusing almost exclusively on human100See e.g. Achiume, Transnational Racial (In)Justice in Liberal Democratic Empire, supra note 1.99Id. at 566.98Obiora C. Okafor & Shedrack C. Agbakwa, Re-Imagining International Human Rights Education in Our Time: BeyondThree Constitutive Orthodoxies, 14 LEIDEN J. OF INT’L L. 563 (2001).97Id.96Id.95Id. at 274.20

rights abuses in “backward” non-Western states.101This hypocrisy is heightened by thefact that the West has, by and large, failed to make reparation for the immense humanrights violations of slavery and colonialism and their persisting legacies of racialinequality, subordination and discrimination.102Human Rights as "Stratagems of Imperialistic Foreign Policy”103Related to the criticism of the double standards of the human rights system, isthe argument that the rhetoric of rights has been co-opted by the West to advance itsown strategic, geopolitical and security interests.104At the core of this critique is theassertion that the West instrumentalizes international human rights, invoking thelanguage of rights to legitimize its neoliberal and military interventions in the ThirdWorld.105This argument is also particularly salient in relation to internationalfinancialinstitutions such as the World Bank, which are accused of deploying the human rights105See e.g. Baxi, Voices of Suffering and the Future of Human Rights, supra note 75, at 147; O. A. Badaru, Examining theUtility of Third World Approaches to International Law for International Human Rights Law, 10 INT’L COMMUNITY L. REV. 379(2008); RATNA KAPUR, GENDER, ALTERITY, AND HUMAN RIGHTS 7 (2018).104See e.g. Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights, supra note 63.103Upendra Baxi, Voices of Suffering and the Future of Human Rights, supra note 75, at 147 (title casing added).102See e.g. OLÚFẸMI O. TÁÍWÒ, RECONSIDERING REPARATIONS (2022);Rep. of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and racialintolerance, UN Doc. A/74/321 (August 21, 2019).https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N19/259/38/PDF/N1925938.pdf?OpenElement.The West has also ignored growing calls for “climate reparations,” which demand that the West accounts to the restof the world for its historical and continuing role in the current climate crisis. There is increasing evidence showingthat the historical forces of racial capitalism, colonialism, slavery and their devastating ecological imprints havedriven the process of climate change. Moreover, countries of the Global North continue to consume most of theworld’s natural resources and generate the vast majority of pollution and waste. Despite the West's disproportionatecontribution to the climate crisis, it is countries of the Global South that are most vulnerable to the effects of climatechange. The asymmetrical relationship between responsibility for and vulnerability to climate change has given riseto arguments that the Global South is owed climate reparations by the Global North.See e.g. Maxine Burkett, Climate Reparations, 10 MELB. J. INT’L. L. 509 (2009); Olúfémi O. Táíwò and Beba Cibralic, TheCase for Climate Reparations, FOREIGN POLICY (October 10, 2020); Maxine Burkett, Root and Branch: Climate Catastrophe,Racial Crises, and the History and Future of Climate Justice, 134 HARV. L. REV. F. 326 (2021); Carmen G. Gonzalez, RacialCapitalism, Climate Justice, and Climate Displacement, 11 OÑATI SOCIO-LEGAL SERIES 108 (2021); Usha Natarajan & KishanKhoday, Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law, 27 LJIL 573 (2014).101Id.; see also Mutua, Ideology of Human Rights, supra note 63, at 609; Makau Mutua, Human Rights InternationalNGOs: A Critical Evaluation, in NGOS AND HUMAN RIGHTS: PROMISE AND PERFORMANCE 151 (ed., 2001).21

discourse to discipline governments of the Third World into the adoption of economicliberalization and free markets.106This has given rise to what TWAIL and postcolonialscholars have termed a “market friendly version”107or “neo-liberal rendition” of humanrights.108Wendy Brown has remarked how international human rights act as a “guise inwhich super power global domination drapes itself” as well as “a guise in which theglobalization of capital drapes itself.”109This rendition of human rights elides the waysin which neoliberal economic policies, such as the structural adjustment programs ofthe World Bank and International Monetary Fund, frequently have devastating socialand economic consequences for Third World populations, exacerbating or creating theconditions for human rights violations.110The instrumentalization of human rights bythe West to serve its own geopolitical interests links to TWAIL critiques of internationallaw and politics more broadly as instruments of Western hegemony and imperialism.111Conclusion: The Future of Human Rights Normsand Their Emancipatory PotentialDespite the acknowledged normative and cultural deficits of international humanrights norms, the human rights framework retains the potential for progressive,emancipatory politics. Indeed, the critiques of human rights emerging from “Africans,Asians, Muslims, Hindus, and a host of critical thinkers from around the world are oneavenue through which human rights can be redeemed and truly universalized.”112112Mutua, Savages, Victims, and Saviors, supra note 2, at 243.111See e.g. ANTHONY ANGHIE, IMPERIALISM, SOVEREIGNTY AND THE MAKING OF INTERNATIONAL LAW (2007); JOSÉ-MANUEL BARRETO (ED.),HUMAN RIGHTS FROM A THIRD WORLD PERSPECTIVE: CRITIQUE, HISTORY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW (2013); Mutua, What is TWAIL?, supra note5, Chimni, Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto, supra note 6; Mickelson, Rhetoric and Rage, supranote 4; Pahuja, The Postcoloniality of International Law, supra note 81.110See e.g., Anghie, Anthony, Whose Utopia? Human Rights, Development, and the Third World, supra note 39; Badaru,Examining the Utility of Third World Approaches to International Law for International Human Rights Law, supra note 105.109Brown, “The Most We Can Hope For…”: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism, supra note 68, at 451.108Anghie, International human rights and a developing world perspective, supra note 67, at 120.107Upendra Baxi, Voices of Suffering and the Future of Human Rights Symposium: International Human Rights at Fifty: aSymposium to Commemorate the 50thAnniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 8 TRANSNAT’L L. & CONT.PROB. 125, 163–64 (1998).106Anghie, International human rights and a developing world perspective, supra note 67, at 119-20.22

Decolonial scholars have advocated that, together with these critiques, there mustcome a process of “retrieving as valid a tradition of human rights that hasflourished inthe colonised world since the 16th Century.”113Through this movement for the‘decolonization’ and/or ’multiculturalization’ of human rights, a cross-cultural,post-imperial conception of human rights can be built.As recently demonstrated, the international human rights system hasemancipatory potential despite its limitations. Transnational solidarity and socialmovements, like Black Lives Matter and the Via Campesina international peasant’smovement, continue to use the international human rights regime to challenge thesystem from within. Other marginalized groups such as domestic workers have usedthe language of human rights to organize, marshal international solidarity, and ask forinclusion in a framework that ensures their access to decent work. As these movementsillustrate, human rights framing and rights-assertion remains important for historicallymarginalized groups.By centering race and empire within our work, we can create radical newpossibilities for fundamentally rethinking and expanding the normative scope ofhuman rights, in particular to counter the marginalization of racial justice in theinternational human rights corpus to date. As the racial justice uprisings of 2020 havemade clear, racial subordination is a global, transnational phenomena and so too mustbe efforts to organize against it.113Barreto, Decolonial Thinking and the Quest for Decolonising Human Rights, supra note 65, at 490.23

F O L L O W U S @ p r o m i s e i n s t U C L Ap r o m i s e i n s t i t u t e @ l a w . u c l a . e d u3 8 5 C h a r l e s E . Y o u n g D r i v e E a s tL o s A n g e l e s , C a l i f o r n i a 9 0 0 9 5W R I T E U Sp r o m i s e i n s t i t u t e . l a w . u c l a . e d u