Deusto Journal of Human Rights

Human rights and social protest: a complex and necessary relationship. Introduction to the monograph

Mariano Aguirre — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Social protest has been present in the political life of more than a hundred countries in the last 20 years. This monographic issue of the Deusto Journal of Human Rights analyzes the relationship between human rights and protest, with special attention to second-generation rights, human rights and violence, and the mechanisms available to states and civil societies to manage demands for change Social. Taking the case of Latin America in particular, various forms of protest and the multiple dilemmas they generate are analyzed. Likewise, specific cases of protests by relatives of political prisoners in Egypt, the protest against the rise of the far-right in the United States and the transgenerational protest in Argentina against those disappeared by the 1976 military dictatorship are presented.

The right to social protest and the action of the United Nations

Guillermo Fernández Maldonado — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The article analyzes the entities, resources and actions of the United Nations international human rights protection system in favor of the right to social protest in Latin America. It addresses the normative-institutional evolution and possible interactions of Governments and rights-holders with treaty bodies, special procedures, the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. It seeks to address the need for greater knowledge of the United Nations’ mandate and capacities for action in this area. It also explains the unequal presence and response to alleged violations of this right, which contrasts with the high social expectations on international action.

Received: 07 July 2022
Accepted: 24 September2022

Demanding what is rightfully theirs. The link between social justice protests and economic, cultural, and social rights

Mohamed Berrada — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The right to peaceful assembly and association have been central to the notion of human rights since their very first iterations. A selection of key peaceful protest movements in the 21st century shows that the movements themselves are expressing demands that are in line with the human rights approach (Ortiz et al. 2022). Among the main findings is that over half of protest movements incorporate some economic or social justice demand (higher wages, jobs, housing, healthcare, pensions…). This article looks at protest movements that have demands that are linked to rights expressed by the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations 1966). Though protesters do not express their demands in the language of human rights, their demands for social justice are mostly already enshrined in the declaration. The author compares demands of economic justice to their counterpart in terms of rights, stressing the need for countries to reexamine their own policies considering these protests or potentially face escalating social unrest.

Received: 20 July 2022
Accepted: 30 November 2022

The role of protests on the journey to a politics without violence

Jenny Pearce, Iván Garzón Vallejo — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This article explores the relationship between protest, violence and the possibility of a politics without violence. It argues that protest is not only a valid but also a necessary vehicle for the journey towards a politics without violence. Nevertheless, violence can emerge within protests as well as in response to them. The article will propose a thinking tool for understanding violence as a phenomenon with multiple expressions. It discusses movements to de-sanction violence and the research that has highlighted the role of non-violent protest, constructive nonviolent action and civil resistance in the history of social change. It will reflect on recent data bases which record the rise in protests in recent years and the role of violence within them. Finally, it will take the social protests in Chile and Colombia in 2019 and 2021, where although violence erupted mainly as vandalism and looting, with severe violent police responses, both protests, we argue, contributed to delineating a politics without violence through generating intermediation channels between the demands of the street and the institutional mechanisms for processing social change.

Received: 07 August 2022
Accepted: 28 November 2022

We’ll miss it when it’s gone: The assault on –and the fight to save– democracy in the United States today

Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, Danny Postel — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This article examines the sweeping assault on democratic rights in the United States today, the far-reaching impact of Donald Trump’s presidency and development of «permanent Trumpism» on American political culture, and the activist mobilization against these forces. The authors discuss the growing alarm among scholars of democracy about the increasing «autocratization» of US politics and the «Orbanization» of the Republican Party. They examine how these dynamics are playing out at the local level, with a focus on the «swing» state of Michigan. They look at the growth of armed White Power groups and the turn to political violence in the US. They analyze the proliferation of conspiratorial claims (such as the assertion that the 2020 election was stolen) and the mainstreaming of far-right ideas (such as the «Great Replacement») via a right-wing media ecosystem that increasingly sustains a parallel epistemic universe. The authors map out the apparatus of election theft that is setting the stage for another coup attempt, and various measures designed to make it more difficult to vote. They review the scholarly debate about the nature of Trumpism. Finally, they discuss the growing resistance to Trumpism and various forms of organizing to defend democracy and defeat authoritarianism.

Received: 11 July 2022
Accepted: 23 November 2022

The «social explosion» in Colombia: some reflections on protest and human rights in weak democracies

Rodrigo Uprimny — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The article is a reflection on some relevant human right problems raised by massive protests in weak democracies, such as those occurred in the so called “social explosion” in Colombia in 2021. With that purpose, the article presents the essential features of those protests in Colombia and then discusses the most relevant human rights problems raised by these protests. In particular, the article analyses if the blockades of streets are a legitimate element of the right to protest and what are the appropriate responses by a democratic State to the violence occurred during a protest. Finally, the article discusses the challenge of democracies facing massive protests, which is to find a positive feedback between constitutional institutions and this sort of «street democracy» represented by this kind of protests.

Received: 29 July 2022
Accepted: 07 December 2022

The feminist agenda in the proposal for a new Chilean Constitution

Virginia Guzmán — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

This article analyzes the relationships between rebellious socio-cultural processes and the establishment of legal norms in the context of the elaboration of a new Constitution in Chile (2019-2022). The text interrogates the events that converged in the social outburst in Chile in October 2019 and that gave rise, in a context of great political instability, to an institutional solution demanded by the social movements: the elaboration of a new Constitution through democratic and participatory instances. The analysis highlights the role of feminist movements as a democratic transforming force as well as their incidence in the institutionalization of the Constitutional Convention and in the incorporation of feminist demands in the proposal for a new Constitution. The sources of this analysis are the participant observation of the constituent process, in-depth interviews, intervention in feminist organizations and digital platforms, and information produced by the Constitutional Convention and the monitoring observatories.

Received: 20 June 2022
Accepted: 07 November 2022

Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and the search for appropriated children: repertoires of contention and political strategies in dictatorship and democracy

Fabricio Laino Sanchis — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

In this paper we propose to address the origins and historical development of the activism of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo), an Argentine human rights organization that advocates for the location, identification and restitution to their biological families of children appropriated by the Armed and Security Forces during the last dictatorship in that country. We will look at the historical conformation of the organization, first as a group within Madres de Plaza de Mayo and then as an independent association. We will analyze the tactics and repertoire of action that its members deployed during the military regime to search for their grandsons and granddaughters and to denounce their disappearance, both nationally and internationally. Finally, we will address how the organization’s repertoire of action and discourse changed from the post-dictatorship period until the 2000s.

Received: 05 September 2022
Accepted: 12 November 2022

Stand by lives: depoliticizing families of political prisoners in post-revolution Egypt

Committee for Justice-Geneva — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

Since 2017, Committee for Justice has been working on monitoring and verifying human rights violations inside Egyptian prisons and places of detention under its project «Detention Watch». Based on findings of in-depth interviews with 10 relatives of political prisoners during March and September 2022, this article presents the cases of families who are active and inactive social and economic agents representing different groups of the Egyptian population. It focuses on the impact of human rights violations on depoliticizing relatives of political prisoners –wives, parents, and children– and how this affected their efforts to over the economic hardship, as well as their attitudes regarding migration, protesting, and political reconciliation with the regime. In doing so, the article mires to explore the personal, economic, social, and political results of repression and how these have led to increased depoliticization among individuals who are affected indirectly by human rights violations.

Received: 20 May 2022
Accepted: 16 November 2022

Hinton, Elizabeth. 2021. America on Fire. Police Violence, Black Rebellion and the Fracturing of a Nation. Londres: William Collins Books. 396 p.

Mabel González Bustelo — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

The current movement for racial justice in the United States is built on a long tradition and its practices of militant and nonviolent protest that incorporate elements of the direct action used by the civil rights movement and of the criticisms of systemic racism that are associated with Black Power movements. At the forefront of this new generation is Black Lives Matter, created in 2013. The movement against inequality and white supremacy is about resistance and not just about equal rights.

Ortiz, Isabel et al. 2022. World Protests. A Study of Key Protest. Issues in the 21st Century. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 185 p. Eyal, Nadav. Revolt. 2021. The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization. Londres: Picador. 515 p.

Mariano Aguirre — Fri, 30 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0100

During the last 20 years, social protest has played a relevant role in more than 100 countries. Most of these protests have been peaceful and have aimed to mobilize States to have more justice and access to issues that fall within the so-called second generation human rights (economic, social and cultural). Although there is a harsh response from authoritarian governments, the protest seems to have become a way of life for numerous social groups.