The Uncertain Future of Human Rights | Figure for Article 8
Depletions: The Future of Population Decline and Human Rights
https://ourworldindata.org/
The Uncertain Future of Human Rights
https://ourworldindata.org/
A pandemic is not just a medical emergency – it is also a political, economic, and social crisis. It implies new challenges for democratic institutions and practices, for citizenship rights and human rights as some of the restrictions on civil liberties put in place by liberal and illiberal democracies may well outlive the coronavirus. This special issue explores some tensions and dilemmas of democracies faced with the current crisis. “Politics of the Coronavirus Pandemics” addresses questions like: Can we speak of a decline in politics during the pandemic? While states have been using the full gamut of their sovereign prerogatives, has the political (temporarily) faded in the face of, for example, “expertise”? What will be the lasting impact of the rule by administrative fiat, and of emergency powers put in place in many countries? What kinds of agenda and instruments of civic activism are likely to emerge given that courts are rarely in session and public protest not permitted due to distancing rules? What are the likely consequences of these reconfigurations for democracy, governance, and welfare systems in the global South and North?
We currently face a baffling paradox. While since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 a seemingly inexorable process of globalisation has been foreshadowing a peaceful and frontierless world, the number of walls across the world has been rising at a steady pace. Liberal and open societies buttressed by trade, international law and technological progress were supposed to implacably contribute to the erosion of frontiers and walls between nations. However, in a context of surging populist discourses, securitarian anxieties and identitarian politics as well as concomitant flows of migration alimented by climate change, conflict and poverty, nations have recently started to barricade themselves behind new walls.
Neoliberal globalisation has not only transformed the role of the state; it has also shaken up the internal “DNA” of education policies, from schools to universities. New technologies have paved the way for new forms of transmitting knowledge; calls to decolonise curricula are growing louder; in the South, many countries face the challenge of financing public education policies in an era of new public management, while the model and transfer of these policies have become a key problem, compounded by the exclusion of historically marginalised populations and the advance of private and religious players. Against this backdrop of criticism of the public education model, the present Dossier seeks to better apprehend what could be done to restore the purpose and meaning of education and universities.
