Teaching the Transformative Agenda of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Abstract

Neoliberal ideology now permeates our laws, policies and programming at the international, national and local levels. The International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the European Union and the United States government, for example, all support trade liberalization, privatization of public services and the primacy of markets over people. Neoliberalism has become so ingrained that we do not notice any more when new agendas conflict with international human rights laws and principles. The recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals provide just one example of economics trumping people, by downgrading the human right to decent work to a favorable outcome of economic growth. In this context, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) enshrines a transformative agenda. This article revisits the radical content of the UDHR, beginning with Article 28, which guarantees to everyone the right to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms in the Declaration can be fully realized. It then considers key provisions of the UDHR that conflict with the neoliberal agenda, including the fundamental rights to the benefits of science, to full employment and decent work, to progressive realization of free higher education and to solidarity. The article concludes that teaching the holistic vision of the UDHR is a radical human rights curriculum.

Keywords: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, transformation, neoliberalism