Rights for Some, Not for Others: On the Move and Margins of Human Rights

Rights are meant to make meanings and to have positive impacts on people’s lives. By having space ordained by the interests of dominant powers and people confined within a space that is delineated, controlled, and divided into class, racial, and gender hierarchies, the right to space and freedom of movement, mostly for those in the Global South, is rendered meaningless. Drawing on my lived experience, I explore the connection between space and power on two different levels: national institutions, and across international borders over six-years period between 2011 and 2016. Reflecting on the policies and politics of space, I examine the implications of control over space on people’s lives and identities. I argue that the dominant discourse of human rights, as it appears, not only violates the basic right to free choice but also serves as instrumental to the maintenance of the current world order and hierarchies. The fact that rights, today, very much rest on spatial, capital, gender, and racial divisions suggests that the UN human rights political project is insufficient and requires us to seriously consider its devastating effects, even when these are unintentional. Thus, we must rethink rights beyond nation-state and its ideological institutions and open up its scope for constructive alternative mechanisms and strategies that center the marginalized rather than maintain a hierarchal system in which some people are unfairly privileged over others. Until we rethink and rewrite international human rights discourse in a way that stands for justice for all and that fosters creative alternatives, it will continue to be hollow, dysfunctional, and even instrumental to existing racial, class, and gender hierarchies.