Rights as Usual

This blog post is by Dr Dalia Palombo. It introduces the blog symposium on The Many Faces of Human Rights: Revisiting Imperialist Legacies? Dr Palombo was one of the organisers of the seminar held in December 2024 in Tilburg (the Netherlands) on the same topic.

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Human rights are often depicted as universal, but there is no agreement as to what this truly means. Whilst human rights are a mainstream language, they become situated in a particular economic, cultural and geographical context and convey different meanings to various people and communities.

In the business and human rights context, my main field of research, the use of human rights at the same time as a mainstream language and as locally embedded values with different meanings is evident. A good example of this dichotomy between mainstream and localised human rights values is the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva. Year after year, one cannot avoid noticing how, at the UN Forum, indigenous chiefs, the representatives of farmers and a plethora of subaltern communities are in the same room as the CSR officers and the top consultants of some of the biggest and most powerful multinationals in the world. Whilst they all speak the language of human rights, they unfortunately often do not speak to each other, and they interpret human rights as meaning very different things. As a result, the language of human rights is often captured and used to the advantage of the most powerful people in the room. Against this background, two fundamental questions to explore are: To what extent is it possible to recapture the business and human rights field from below? And, in this recapturing, what could the role of situated rights and locally embedded values be? Together with my team, composed of four research fellows, Dr. Nojeem Amodu, Dr. Flavia do Amaral Viera, Dr. Nairita Roy Chaudhuri, and Ms. Ayako Hatano, I am investigating these questions as part of the project Imperialism, Business & Human Rights | Tilburg University.

During the seminar “The Many Faces of Human Rights” at Tilburg Law School, we explored the counter-hegemonic meanings and implications of situated rights across various geographies and approaches. This blog symposium reflects the seminar’s findings.

In our investigation, we found that at the grassroots level, people and communities often use the language of human rights to frame their counter-hegemonic struggles. Yet their different historical, philosophical, sociological and anthropological understandings of rights, justice and dignity significantly change the faces of human rights across the world. The diverse meanings and variations of rights both challenge and reinforce their universality: on the one hand, situated rights are a challenge to universal values, on the other hand, the use of the human rights language by a plethora of peoples and communities across the world legitimises it as a global tool to fight injustices.

Imperialism has a significant role in this debate. Human rights have been and are currently used as tools to fight the imperialism of powerful actors such as former colonial states, oppressive governments, and multinational enterprises, detrimentally impacting people and the planet. However, human rights are not only historically embedded in European values but also captured by powerful states and non-state actors to endorse their imperialist agenda and rhetoric. Inevitably, imperialist legacies impact how people and communities experience and understand human rights across the world.

This symposium investigates how locally embedded values mobilised by various people and communities challenge, resist or reinforce the imperialist legacies that shape the meaning and goals of human rights. It focuses on four examples in which the right’s rhetoric is situated in a particular context. In this sense, each blog post explores one face of human rights. It investigates how this face is perceived and used by various people and communities situated in Africa, Latin America, East Asia and India.

Blog Posts in the Symposium

The Afro-communitarian Face of Human Rights (Nojeem Amodu).

Building Pathways between Business and Human Rights and Just Transition Processes: Addressing the Role of Corporations in Latin America (Flavia do Amaral Viera).

The Need to Vernacularize Climate Change Adaptation Rights in India (Nairita Roy Chaudhuri).

Hate Speech and Business and Human Rights: A Case in the East Asian Context (Ayako Hatano).