Institutional human rights strength does not measure human welfare

Evidence

And yet there is more at stake in Alston’s intervention than a concern for poverty and inequality in their own right. This long-time human rights lawyer is also concerned to salvage the ‘legitimacy of the overall human rights enterprise’. If the human rights movement is currently facing powerful contestation globally, he writes, this is largely due to the perception that its preoccupations ‘do little or nothing to address the most abiding and pressing challenges confronted by a large part of humanity’. Although Alston’s attention to social and economic rights, poverty and economic equality is salutary, the interests of the ‘human rights enterprise’ are not necessarily identical with those of that ‘large part of humanity’ whose most pressing concerns it has so far failed to address. It is therefore not obvious that bolstering the threatened legitimacy of that ‘enterprise’ is the surest way to address humanity’s most pressing challenges. Despite their claim to work in the interests of all human beings, the strength of official human rights organisations and institutions is not necessarily an index of the state of humanity itself. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 444

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ethics-of-markets debate over whether human-rights institutions serve the poor or their own legitimacy concerns; also resonates with critiques of NGO-ized human rights in the reader’s policy reading. — connects to: Institutionalized legitimate power outweighs brutality in social significance — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 612; Human rights treaties succeed or fail over decades, not at ratification — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 7631; Preventing mass atrocities depends on societal institutions, not on producing heroic resisters — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4044 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Human rights treaties succeed or fail over decades, not at ratification #expands (0.75) — , The Rod and the Child, 7631
• Institutionalized legitimate power outweighs brutality in social significance #complicates (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 612
• Preventing mass atrocities depends on societal institutions, not on producing heroic resisters #exemplifies (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4044