Human Rights and Economic Globalisation (LAWS90044)

The relationship between human rights and economic globalisation has taken different forms since the establishment of the United Nations. The early period was animated by the codification of economic, social and cultural rights, and third generation solidarity rights, including peoples’ rights to permanent sovereignty over natural resources. From the 1980s onwards, economic globalisation and the normative, legal and institutional means by which it would be advanced became dominant globally, with the negative influences of international trade and investment shaping the development of human rights. In the recent period, human rights have been situated as a response to many of the concerns around economic globalisation. With a focus on social-economic rights, this course will engage with human rights under conditions of economic globalisation, from their normative and institutional beginnings to their recent application as bulwarks against current threats.

Principal topics include:

• The post-1945 United Nations Charter international order and its relationship to developments in economic globalisation
• International protection of economic, social and cultural rights (standards and mechanisms, including the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)
• Third generation solidarity rights: right to development, permanent sovereignty over natural resources and economic self-determination, and their political and economic context
• Global capitalism and the shaping of rights.