Human Rights @ Lund

Human Rights Lunch Online: Human Rights in the Technological Age and in times of conflict

Human, DNA and molecules. Illustration by Julien Tromeur on Unsplash.

On April 11, 2025 at 12:15-13:00 Jessica Almqvist and Alberto Rinaldi, both from Lund University Faculty of Law, will focus on the normative foundations of human rights law in the light of modern technological developments that could have a detrimental impact on individuals, society, and humanity as a whole. Bring your lunch along and join us on Zoom: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/65437566996.

By Jessica Almqvist and Alberto Rinaldi, Faculty of Law

In an era of rapid technological transformation, the foundational principles of human rights are being called into question in unprecedented ways. To foster critical interdisciplinary dialogue on this pressing issue, Alberto Rinaldi from the Faculty of Law has received seed funding from Lund University’s Profile Area for a workshop titled “(Re)examining Human Rights Foundations in the Technological Age.”

The workshop brought together scholars from law, philosophy, technology studies, and the social sciences to engage in a deep rethinking of key human rights concepts that risk being sidelined in contemporary debates. While much attention in recent years has justifiably centered on non-discrimination, privacy, and data protection, the workshop sought to broaden the scope of inquiry and revive neglected yet essential rights and concepts. In particular, the focus was placed on:

The Right to Freedom of Thought – a right that gains new significance in the context of neurotechnologies, algorithmic profiling, and affective computing, all of which have the potential to interfere with the inner realm of individuals’ cognitive life.
The Right to Science – an often-overlooked right that includes both access to scientific progress and participation in it, but which also raises thorny questions about responsibility, equitable distribution, and dual-use technologies.
The Concept of Human Dignity – a cornerstone of human rights law whose meaning is increasingly contested in light of developments in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and human enhancement.

These discussions are not only timely but essential, as technological innovation increasingly challenges the boundaries of the human person, autonomy, and vulnerability. By revisiting these foundational elements, the workshop aimed to stimulate a renewed normative reflection on what human rights mean and should mean in the face of emerging scientific and technological paradigms.

In the same spirit of interdisciplinary inquiry, Jessica Almqvist, Deputy Dean at the Faculty of Law, will present the Pufendorf Institute’s research theme “Greyzone Genomics.” This initiative investigates the ethical, legal, and societal implications of large-scale genetic technologies, particularly focusing on the ambiguous spaces—the “grey zones”—where these innovations test the limits of existing regulatory frameworks.

The theme addresses how advanced genomics and synthetic biology, though often heralded for their medical and scientific promise, can also be weaponized or misused in the context of international conflict and hybrid warfare. The research team explores novel interdisciplinary methods to assess the risks associated with such dual-use biotechnologies, aiming to develop scenario-based analyses and policy-relevant recommendations. This approach opens up a new research frontier at the intersection of medicine, law, and national security, asking difficult but necessary questions about how societies can anticipate, prevent, and respond to emerging biosecurity threats.

Together, these initiatives reflect a broader commitment at Lund University to advance critical, interdisciplinary research that addresses the most pressing human rights challenges of our time. By combining legal expertise with insights from the natural and social sciences, both projects underscore the need for new frameworks and fresh thinking to uphold human rights in an age of complexity and change.

Greyzone Genomics: Navigating the Risks of Genetic Technologies in a Shifting World

Genetic technologies are reshaping human health on an unprecedented scale. But as these breakthroughs unfold, the world is also facing growing geopolitical instability — giving rise to concerns about how advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis could be put to use outside the clinical context and be weaponized in global power struggles. Until now, discussions around the misuse of genetic technology have mainly focused on fear-driven scenarios like the development of “ethnic bioweapons.” Yet, the potential for misuse is broader and more complex, touching on critical issues related to human rights and human security. The international laws and regulations meant to safeguard us from such misusage are often outdated, scarce, and riddled with ambiguity.

Running as a Theme at the Pufendorf Institute during 2024/2025, Greyzone Genomics explores the many ways genetic technologies could be exploited in global conflict — and, importantly, how we can act to prevent it. We examine emerging risks like disinformation campaigns fueled by genetic data, defamation using synthetic DNA, psychological profiling of political leaders based on DNA sequences, weaponizing individuals as carriers of synthetic pathogens, and also mass theft of DNA data to power AI systems.

The project further delves into the human rights implications of these tactics and investigates whether international law and international institutions have the tools to counter them. Spoiler: often, existing treaties and regulations seem insufficient — but that’s part of what we seek to address and respond to in this Theme.

To tackle these challenges, Greyzone Genomics brings together a team of researchers from medicine, data analytics, intelligence studies, strategic communication, war studies, and international law. Together, we’re developing new multidisciplinary approaches to assess and counter the risks of emerging biotechnologies. Through evidence-based scenario building and focused studies of legal frameworks, we are not only analyzing the these risks — we’re aiming to find measures to mitigate these risks.

Beyond the academic world, Greyzone Genomics seeks to raise broader awareness among key stakeholders about the darker sides of gene technology in modern conflict. The Theme is a collaborative initiative with researchers from Lund University, the Swedish Defence University, and the Swedish Defence Research Agency.

Alberto Rinaldi is Postdoctoral Researcher at Lund University Faculty of Law, member of the Profile Area Human Rights and part of the Pufendorf theme Greyzone Genomics. Alberto holds a Master in Human Rights Law from the American University in Cairo (2012) and a PhD in International Law from Sciences Po Paris (2019).

Jessica Almqvist is Professor of International Law and Human Rights and Deputy Dean for Research at the Faculty of Law of Lund University. She is also the Deputy Coordinator of the Human Rights Profile Area and Coordinator of the Pufendorf theme Greyzone Genomics.

10 April 2025

Human Rights Profile Area

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Work-related stress and ill health – on the relationship between special exposure to stress and ethnicity, skin color, and religion

Martin Wolgast, Lund University Department of Psychology

On the 28th of March, 2025 at 12:15-13:00 Martin Wolgast presented the report for the Swedish Agency for Work Environment Expertise on special exposure to work-related stress and ill health based on ethnicity, skin color, and religion. Martin shared insights from literature on this relationship in Sweden and internationally, discuss preventive measures, and highlight the knowledge and experience of relevant actors. Finally, he identified knowledge gaps and reflect on how systematic work environment efforts and preventive measures can minimize these risks.

Watch the recording on Youtube:

Sweden has long positioned itself as a champion of equality and social justice — a country with robust legal protections, progressive labor policies, and a self-image grounded in fairness. Yet beneath this image, a different reality persists for many individuals in the Swedish labor market. A new report from the Swedish Agency for Work Environment Expertise (Myndigheten för arbetsmiljökunskap) reveals the extent to which racialized and religious minorities in Sweden are exposed to unequal and often harmful working conditions. Drawing on an extensive review of international and Swedish research, a national survey, and interviews with stakeholders and civil society, the report exposes a pattern of systemic disadvantage that is both widespread and deeply normalized.

At the heart of the report is a concern that goes beyond individual acts of bias: the structures of the labor market themselves reproduce stress and ill-health among marginalized groups. Whether through insecure employment contracts, limited career mobility, or unequal access to workplace support, people who are racialized as non-white or who belong to minority religious communities face elevated levels of stress, anxiety, and exclusion. This is not merely a question of perceived inequality. The report documents clear correlations between perceived discrimination and actual health outcomes — including mental health issues, physical fatigue, burnout, and reduced recovery after work.

The Swedish data aligns with a growing body of international research showing that work-related stress is unequally distributed. In particular, the concept of minority stress — originally developed in the context of LGBTQ+ research — is used here to describe the chronic psychological burden that arises from being part of a stigmatized group. The report also discusses the notion of assimilation stress, highlighting the emotional toll of having to downplay or suppress cultural, religious, or ethnic identity in order to “fit in” at work. These stressors are compounded by workplace norms around emotional expression — what the report refers to as “racialized emotional norms” — where certain ways of being are considered more professional, more acceptable, or more ‘Swedish’ than others.

What emerges is a portrait of the workplace not simply as a site of economic activity, but as a microcosm of broader societal power relations. Access to secure employment, recognition, and psychological safety becomes a marker of inclusion, while others are pushed to the margins through more precarious contracts, overlooked qualifications, or heightened scrutiny. The report underscores that individuals with migrant backgrounds — particularly those from Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia — are disproportionately employed in positions below their education level, face slower career progression, and are more often subjected to bullying or harassment. The presence of discriminatory practices is not isolated to hiring, but permeates everyday interactions, evaluations, and power dynamics within organizations.

Importantly, the report also draws attention to invisibility as a form of harm. Many instances of racism or discrimination are not overt, but subtle and cumulative — expressed through microaggressions, exclusion from informal networks, or the silencing of diversity-related concerns. Individuals who attempt to address these issues may find themselves isolated or penalized, especially when support from management or trade unions is lacking. This dynamic — where raising issues of discrimination leads to further marginalization — points to a deeper cultural and structural resistance to confronting racism within Swedish institutions.

The human rights implications are clear. The right to work under fair, just, and safe conditions is enshrined in international human rights law, including instruments such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. These rights are not fulfilled simply by the absence of explicit discrimination; they require positive action to ensure that systemic barriers are dismantled. In this light, the report’s findings challenge us to think critically about how the Swedish labor market — and by extension, Swedish society — lives up to its human rights commitments.

The recommendations offered in the report are both practical and normatively grounded. They include fostering inclusive organizational cultures, implementing systematic and recurring training on anti-discrimination and unconscious bias, promoting leadership that is both active and relationally competent, and providing access to mentorship and support for employees from marginalized backgrounds. These are not only interventions for improved productivity or employee satisfaction, but essential measures to realize the right to dignity, equality, and health at work. Crucially, the report does not stop at identifying individual vulnerabilities, but calls for broader structural reforms to create a more equitable labor market — one grounded in strong protections for workers, regardless of background, and capable of addressing the systemic roots of discrimination and stress.

For scholars and practitioners in the field of human rights, the report offers a bridge between theory and practice. It invites us to reframe occupational health and workplace equity as core human rights concerns, and not merely as questions of policy or management. And it reminds us that rights are not only violated through explicit prohibitions, but also through silence, neglect, and systemic inertia.

Martin Wolgast is Senior lecturer and researcher at the Department of Psychology at Lund University and a member of the Human Rights Profile Area.

24 March 2025

Human Rights Profile Area

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China’s gender imbalance and its implications for human trafficking, social stability, and economic development

Photo: Brides dress by Jayden Seah on Unsplash.

By Ming Gao, Department of History, Lund University

China’s marriage rate has plummeted to its lowest level since records began in the 1980s. In 2024, marriage registrations across the country totalled 6.1 million, a decline from 7.7 million the year before. This decline has prompted a Chinese national political adviser to propose lowering the legal marriage age to 18. Currently, the legal marriage age in China is 22 for men and 20 for women, among the highest in the world.

Despite this historic decline, the number of foreign brides, mostly from Southeast Asia – including both trafficked women and those who enter China illegally for marriage – seems quietly rising. About two months ago, China’s top political advisory body, the CPPCC, held a meeting on strengthening the management of cross-border marriages, with a primary focus on the ‘illegal cross-border marriages.’

In addition, last March, China’s Ministry of Public Security launched a nationwide campaign against the transnational trafficking of women and children, calling for stronger international cooperation to eradicate such crimes.

Yet, addressing marriage solely through statistics and border enforcement overlooks deeper social issues. Behind these figures lie significant struggles for those who desire marriage but remain unable to achieve it, raising critical questions about the broader social and ethical consequences for China and the international community.

Understanding China’s marriage crash

This historic low in the marriage rate is driven by a combination of economic pressures, shifting gender expectations, evolving social attitudes toward marriage, and higher levels of education. In particular, urban women are increasingly pushing back against traditional gender roles, including expectations around reproduction, that prioritise domestic responsibilities over career aspirations. Meanwhile, rising living costs, especially soaring housing prices, have made marriage an unaffordable prospect for many young people.

This resistance is further exacerbated by China’s longstanding gender imbalance, a legacy of the sweeping one-child policy and a cultural preference for male children. This is particularly pronounced among those born in the 1980s – a generation I belong to – due to the widespread use of ultrasound technology from the mid-1980s onwards. The ability to determine a foetus’ sex as early as 14 to 16 weeks, combined with the drastic one-child policy and a deep-rooted preference for sons, offered parents the ability to terminate pregnancies if their child was female. This led to a sustained and severe gender imbalance. At its peak, China’s sex ratio at birth reached 121.2 boys for every 100 girls, with some provinces exceeding 130.

To put the number into context, China’s gender imbalance could persist until 2050, with projections suggesting that up to 50 million men may remain unmarried. Reluctantly, they have become part of the ‘Era of Leftover Men’ (shengnan shidai), an internet term loosely referring to the period from 2020 to 2050, when China is expected to have 30 to 50 million unmarried men, primarily from impoverished rural areas, who are unable to find wives. The conundrum is that most ‘leftover’ men want to marry but cannot find or afford a spouse. A widely used phrase in China, “difficulty in getting married” (jiehun nan), encapsulates this struggle.

The surge in ‘purchased’ foreign brides

With more men competing for a comparatively small pool of women, a phenomenon known as ‘marriage squeeze’ has emerged – where those with fewer resources are increasingly pushed out of this fierce competition driven by demographic imbalance.

So, who will these ‘leftover’ men marry? Probably no one knows the exact answer. As members of the generation born in the late 1980s, we came of age in a time when gender-based sex selection was largely unchecked. Personally, I know that some of my peers from primary and secondary school have been desperately searching for a wife but remain ‘leftover’ men.

Unable to find a domestic spouse, many turn to ‘purchasing’ (maihun) foreign brides. For many Chinese men, especially those in rural areas, transnational marriages seemingly offer a viable solution to the domestic spouse shortage. The growing demand for brides has led to a surge in illegal and trafficked marriages – including child brides – particularly involving women from Southeast Asia, such as Vietnam, Myanmar, and Laos.

Determining the extent of illegal cross-border marriages in China is challenging due to the clandestine nature of these activities. But the most recent data from the UK’s Home Office suggests that 75% of Vietnamese human-trafficking victims were smuggled to China, with women and children making up to 90% of cases.

For example, the award-winning documentary The Woman from Myanmar follows the story of a trafficked Myanmar woman who was sold into marriage in China. The film exposes the harsh realities faced by many trafficked brides. It captures not only the coercion and abuse these women endure but also their struggle for autonomy and survival in a system that treats them as commodities – valued primarily as reproductive tools rather than as individuals.

Often arranged through informal networks or commercial agencies—both illegal according to China’s State Council – these marriages raise ethical concerns about human trafficking, exploitation, and the commodification of women.

While years ago, China and other Southeast Asian countries rescued thousands of victims trafficked into China for marriage, such cases continue to surface today in news reports and police investigations. A few months ago, Chinese authorities prosecuted individuals involved in an illegal cross-border matchmaking scheme, in which men were lured into costly ‘marriage tours’ abroad with promises of affordable foreign wives.

In November 2024, for example, two people were prosecuted over their involvement in an illegal cross-border matchmaking scheme. This incident underscores the continued risks associated with the underground market for foreign brides, where fraudulent schemes and human trafficking remain rampant.

Indeed, illegal marriage networks are exploiting the eagerness of Chinese ‘leftover’ men, driving the rise of a black market. Police authorities constantly warn of scams involving undocumented foreign brides from Southeast Asia, who take advantage of the situation, sometimes disappearing with large sums of money before marriage arrangements are completed.

In one case, a Cambodian woman, Mao Sretpich, fled with a bride price of 180,000 yuan (approximately $25,000) just hours after the payment. She was arrested weeks later, sentenced to one year and eight months in prison, fined, and ordered deported by a Jiangxi court.

Shifting gender dynamics

Ironically, the practice of sex-selective abortion has led to a scarcity of women, increasing the relative value of those who unknowingly escaped this selection mechanism.

The marriage crisis and the rise of transnational marriages reflect deeper shifts in China’s gender dynamics. Traditional family expectations, which emphasize marriage and childbearing as essential life milestones, are increasingly at odds with the realities faced by young Chinese people. Women, in particular, are challenging these norms, seeking greater autonomy and equality in both personal and professional spheres.

At the same time, the growing demand for foreign brides highlights the persistence of patriarchal attitudes in some segments of Chinese society. Many men seeking transnational marriages still expect their wives to conform to traditional gender roles – just as Larry, the trafficked woman in the documentary, said: ‘Birthing babies [giving birth] was her true source of value’.

What China’s marriage crash means for the future
The marriage crisis and its associated trends have far-reaching implications for China’s demographic future. A shrinking and aging population, coupled with a growing number of unmarried men, poses significant challenges for the country’s economic growth and social stability.

Economically, a widely known saying is that China is ‘growing old before it gets rich’ due to its low birth rate and aging population. Even so, Beijing is resisting this characterisation, saying that constant technological innovations will continue to drive economic growth. The labour force is undoubtedly important when it comes to economic growth. But, according to Justin Lin Yifu, a member of the CPPCC, what matters more is effective labour, which is the product of both the quantity and quality of labour force. China has increased its investment in education significantly in anticipation of challenges surrounding its ageing population.

However, notwithstanding this, an even greater concern is the large number of ‘leftover’ men, which could pose a serious threat to social stability. Studies have shown a positive relationship between high male-to-female sex ratios and crime rates in both China and India – two of the countries with the highest numbers of ‘leftover’ men. Higher sex ratios are significantly linked to increased crimes, particularly against women.

For example, in China, distorted male sex ratios can account for up to 14% of the rise in crime, while in India, a 5.5% rise in the male sex ratio would increase the odds of unmarried women being harassed by more than 20%.

As the number of ‘leftover’ men continues to rise in China, Beijing faces a demographic time bomb with profound implications for social stability, economic development, and even geopolitical tensions. Ultimately, the question of who these soon-to-be – or already – 30 to 50 million ‘leftover’ men will marry has become a pressing issue for Beijing. The government’s response will likely shape the country’s future for decades to come.

Ming Gao is research scholar of East Asia at Lund University´s Department of History and member of the Profile Area Human Rights. Ming´s research intersects with cross-disciplinary studies of human rights by examining the historical dimensions of justice, accountability, and memory. Through this approach, he seeks to foster a broader dialogue that engages both academic and general audiences, bridging history with fields such as gender studies, international law, and human rights advocacy.

20 March 2025

Human Rights Profile Area

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Human Rights Lunch Online 21/02/2025: “The Sovereign Human Being: Carl Schmitt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Responsible Decision-Making”

Valentin Jeutner Faculty of Law, Lund University

On February 21st 2025, Valentin Jeutner talked during theHuman Rights Lunch Online seminar about the central themes in his book “The Sovereign Human Being: Carl Schmitt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Responsible Decision-Making”.

Watch the recording on Youtube:

The book “The Sovereign Human Being: Carl Schmitt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Responsible Decision-Making” argues that sovereign is anyone who makes decisions and that anyone who makes decisions is responsible for those decisions. The book develops these two arguments by comparing the theories of sovereignty of Carl Schmitt and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Carl Schmitt was an influential jurist of Nazi Germany. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran priest hanged for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. In many ways, the two men could not be more different. But they both struggled with the question of how to maintain order and how to prevent violence at times of crisis. And they both agreed that order is established not by appealing to existing norms or general principles but by an individual’s sovereign decision. Ascribing sovereignty to individuals communicates that they always have a choice and that they are always responsible for these choices. Thus, it is not just powerful individuals who have the choice to bring wars to an end or who can combat climate change.

By making sovereign decisions, ordinary individuals, too, can work towards the peaceful resolution of conflicts or reduce their carbon footprint. Making such sovereign decisions is not easy for individuals who are taught to follow orders and norms. For this reason, the book supplements the comparative analysis of Schmitt and Bonhoeffer with an action-guiding decision-making framework. While the proposed framework departs from Schmitt’s and Bonhoeffer’s theses by recognizing the agency, responsibility, and sovereignty of all individuals, Jeutner argues that the acknowledgement of the universal sovereignty of individuals is the only way to bring about the orderly and peaceful world of which Schmitt and Bonhoeffer dream.

Valentin Jeutner is a researcher at the Faculty of Law at Lund University. He engages mainly in foundational research related to the nature and fundamental principles of (international) law. This includes exploring the relations between law and related fields like the natural sciences, art, philosophy, or theology.

5 March 2025

Human Rights Profile Area

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Learning from Down Under: Advancing Human Rights Research at Lund University

At Lund University, we are embarking on an ambitious journey to create a strong, influential, and globally recognized profile area dedicated to human rights research, education, and outreach. As one of the coordinators of this initiative, I recently had the opportunity to visit the Australian Human Rights Institute (AHRI) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. Supported by an Erasmus+ grant, this visit provided valuable insights into how a well-established human rights institute achieves excellence and impact on a global scale.

Why Compare Lund and UNSW?

UNSW is both larger and higher-ranked than Lund University and AHRI has had more time to mature than the LU Human Rights profile area. These circumstances, together with the significant similarities that our two institutions—and their national contexts—share, make this into a meaningful benchmarking exercise. Both universities operate in countries with high living standards, robust academic traditions, and a commitment to human rights. By examining AHRI’s approach, we can explore how Lund University might further develop its human rights profile to become a leading force for impactful research and collaboration.

The AHRI Model

AHRI has evolved from a small centre into a fully-fledged interdisciplinary research institute, achieving remarkable success since its formal establishment in 2018. With a mission to address human rights challenges and propose actionable solutions, AHRI combines rigorous research with strategic engagement across sectors.

A few key elements stand out in AHRI’s success story:

Stable Funding and Autonomy: Base funding from UNSW provides financial stability, enabling AHRI to actively participate in and lead human rights discussions in Australia.
Robust Administration: A well-built and efficient administrative team oversees communications, project management, partnerships, and events, ensuring smooth and responsive operations.
Support for Research and Students: AHRI nurtures over 200 affiliated researchers across UNSW, provides seed funding promising projects and offering paid internships for students at human rights organizations across Australasia.
A Trusted Authority: AHRI has established itself as the go-to resource for journalists, policymakers, and funders seeking expert advice on human rights issues.

Lessons for Lund University

While Lund University’s organizational structure differs from UNSW’s, AHRI’s approach offers several lessons that can inspire and guide our efforts:

Impact-oriented Research: AHRI excels in translating research into real-world applications. Lund can strengthen its ability to bridge the gap between academic work and societal challenges.
Strategic Partnerships: AHRI’s strategic engagement with government, business, and civil society amplify its reach and influence. Lund should expand its partnerships to achieve similar outcomes.
Raising Visibility: AHRI has mastered the art of engaging with media and policymakers, significantly enhancing its public profile. Adopting similar strategies could elevate Lund’s presence and reputation.
Empowering Students: AHRI’s internship programs equip students with practical experience in human rights, cultivating future leaders and reinforcing the institute’s mission. Lund could create similar opportunities to benefit students and strengthen its impact.

Charting the Path Forward

Picture of Martin Andersson. — Fotograf: Johan Persson

With consistent university support, strategic partnerships, heightened visibility, and a steadfast commitment to real-world impact, AHRI has established itself as a pivotal force in advancing human rights discussion in Australia. With similar foundations in place, Lund University’s human rights profile area has the potential to achieve comparable success in the years ahead.

Martin Andersson is a senior lecturer and associate professor at the Department of Economic History at Lund University. He is also assistant coordinator in the Human Rights Profile Area.

13 December 2024

Human Rights Profile Area

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Kontanternas värde

Fattigdom och utanförskap i Sveriges digitala ekonomi

Lena Halldenius och Moa Petersén

Nu finns nummer två av Lund Human Rights Reports and Working Papers: Det är en rapport från forskningsprojektet Cash. Mänskliga rättigheter och social hållbarhet i övergången till ett kontantlöst samhälle. Projektet har genomförts av oss, Lena Halldenius och Moa Petersén, med finansiering av forskningsrådet Formas.

Användningen av kontanta pengar minskar och allt fler betalningar görs digitalt. Detta är en global förändring, men den är ovanligt tydlig just i Sverige. Det blir allt vanligare att kollektivtrafiken, affärer och andra serviceställen inte tar emot kontanter som betalningsmedel. Möjligheten att betala räkningar med kontanter över disk är högst begränsad; i stora delar av Sverige finns den inte alls.

Frågan som har undersökts i det här projektet är hur Sveriges digitaliserade ekonomi påverkar de personer som av olika skäl och i varierande grad är beroende av kontanter för att kunna sköta sina betalningar.

Med fokus på Sverige – som har en i hög grad digitaliserad ekonomi – har denna studie syftat till att utforska och lära av de erfarenheter som kontantberoende personer har. Vårt fokus har varit på personer i ekonomisk och social utsatthet, eftersom internationell forskning har identifierat fattigdom som den främsta anledningen till att personer i utvecklade länder som Sverige inte är en del av den digitala ekonomin. Även faktorer som ålder, funktionsnedsättning och osäker migrationsstatus ökar sannolikheten för att man är beroende av att kunna betala kontant.

Under 2022 och 2023 genomförde vi en intervjustudie i Malmö med personer som av socioekonomiska skäl har behov av att kunna betala med kontanter, samt med volontärer och personal vid organisationer som i sin verksamhet kommer i kontakt med personer som är kontantberoende. Deltagarna i studien har delat med sig av sina erfarenheter av hur deras vardag och upplevelser av samhället påverkas av att betalningsmarknaden digitaliseras. I studien betraktas ofrivilligt kontantberoende som en aspekt av digitalt utanförskap och som en rättighetsfråga. Att samhällets grundläggande funktioner – som betalningsmarknaden – digitaliseras på ett sätt som gör att redan utsatta grupper ställs utanför skapar en ny form av ekonomisk orättvisa.

Ur analysen av vårt intervjumaterial framträder tre teman.

Inlåsningseffekt: Personer i kontantberoende riskerar att bli utelåsta från den officiella digitala ekonomin. Men samtidigt blir de instängda i en krympande bubbla av lågprisbutiker och serviceställen som tar emot kontanter, men där många grundläggande ekonomiska transaktioner inte är möjliga att göra. I denna sfär fungerar kontanter närmast som en lokal valuta, separat från samhällets ekonomiska infrastruktur. Detta skapar beroende och integritetsförluster.
Tid och planering: Digitaliseringen påverkar upplevelsen av tid och normaliserar snabbhet och att göra flera saker samtidigt. Personer i kontantberoende och digitalt utanförskap upplever att de inte är synkroniserade i förhållande till samhällets takt och tempo och att deras behov uppfattas som ineffektiva utifrån sociala normer. Utanförskapet gör också att de kortsiktiga strategier som behövs för att klara sig från dag till dag, motverkar de mer långsiktiga strategier (och det risktagande) som krävs för att försöka ta sig ut ur sin situation och försöka bli en del av den officiella ekonomin.
Maktlöshet och konstruerad inkompetens: Ingen av våra kontantberoende deltagare visade någon förväntan om att saker och ting skulle bli lättare eller bättre för dem. De berättar om ångest och stress, om att känna sig dumma och generade. De uttrycker ilska och vanmakt inför banker, myndigheter och andra ansiktslösa krafter som inte verkar bry sig om dem. Deras erfarenhet är också att värdet av val som är viktiga för dem inte erkänns. De finns också en sorg över vad de ser som en förlust av gemenskap och mänsklig kontakt.

Svårigheterna med att betala digitalt är en del av ett större främlingskap inför det digitaliserade samhället i stort och upplevs som en skamlig och nedbrytande social exkludering. Ett viktigt resultat är att kontantberoende är en socialt påtvingad position och en konstruerad inkompetens, till följd av en politiskt och kommersiellt motiverad infrastrukturomvandling. Människor som är beroende av kontanta pengar hamnar i behov av särskilt stöd, inte för att de har förändrats utan för att samhället har förändrats runt omkring dem utan att deras omständigheter, kunskaper och erfarenheter har beaktats.

Den kontantlösa ekonomin är inte en tekniskt betingad företeelse, utan ett politiskt och kommersiellt val. För att politiken på ekonomin och digitaliseringens område inte ytterligare ska missgynna de som redan är utsatta är erfarenheterna av hur det är att leva i kontantberoende i en digitaliserad ekonomi en avgörande kunskapsbas.

Tack till projektets ovärderliga medhjälpare Nanna Malmborg Rasmussen, Elinn Leo Sandberg, Hedvig Halldenius och Amy Kerplunk Mughames.

Läs hela rapporten:

Lund Human Rights Reports and Working Papers

3 December 2024

ulrikekrantz

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Human Rights Lunch Online 06/12/2024: Human Rights and Socio-economic Inequality

Emelie Rohne Till, Department of Economic History, Lund University

On December 6th, 2024 Emelie Rohne Till presented during the Human Rights Lunch Online. Watch the recording of the seminar on Youtube:

The big question that all economic historians engage with at one level or another is “why are some countries rich and others still poor”? In search of this answer, the discipline has developed a lot of knowledge on, and methods for exploring, large-scale, long-term, societal-level change over time. Within the Human Rights Profile area, our research group at the Department of Economic History wishes to bring these research questions and methods to the field of human rights.

There is much fertile ground for research in the intersection of economic development, inequality and poverty, with issues of human rights – questions how to ensure that everyone can live in dignity, on food security, on how fruits of growth and transformation are distributed in a society, and on how to guarantee economic rights, etc. Specifically, we are interested in understanding the relationship between socio-economic inequality and human rights. Key questions that we are interested in are whether there are any trade-offs between equality and respect for human rights in certain cases and certain phases; and if so, what these trade-offs and links look like; and also, what can be learnt from this going forward.

The project is currently at an early stage. Through receiving a Seed money-grant from the Human Rights Profile Area (LU) in the fall of 2023, we have made some initial progress. With the seed money, we were able to hire two Master’s Students from the Department of Economic History to produce reviews on the existing knowledge in the intersection of the fields of socio-economic inequality and human rights: Lisa Lehane and Louis Louw. During the spring of 2024, Lisa and Louis produced two excellent reviews on the subject, one literature review of the field, and one review of existing databases on quantitative elements of human rights.

The literature review sets out to map the existing literature in the intersection of human rights and socio-economic inequality. The literature that applies an interdisciplinary approach is rather small, and generally human rights have been a peripheral concern in economic analysis. Some of the key concerns that are highlighted in the review are that part of the difficulty lies in that indicators of socio-economic inequality and human rights are imperfectly conceptualized; and that economists/economic historians and human rights scholars emphasize different aspects of socio-economic inequality.

The quantitative review maps ten existing databases on human rights and socio-economic inequality. Two of these are selected for more in-depth review of their methodologies: analysis into their respective methodologies: the Human Rights Measurement Initiative and the UNU WIDER World Income Inequality database. Some key points to emerge from the quantitative review are that human rights are measured in different ways depending on the rights being analyzed, that only five countries have ratified all 18 human rights treaties, and that individuals living in low socio-economic conditions often are found to be at greater risk of human rights violations. It also specifies many of the challenges of measuring and assessing human rights.

Together, the preparatory studies show that there is ample scope for more research that builds on and clarifies the existing knowledge on the relationship between human rights and inequality. The aim going forward will be to use these two high-quality reviews as a foundation for a grant application. Our hope is that this will lead to the building up of a large database of quantitative indicators for both inequality and human rights, that can contribute to our understanding of this relationship.

Emelie Rohne Till is a researcher at Lund University. Her main research areas concern development economics, approached from an economic history perspective. Within this she focuses on the role of structural transformations and of the agricultural sector in economic development, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.

2 December 2024

Human Rights Profile Area

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Human Rights Lunch Online 15/11/2024: Human Rights in Global and Colonial Contexts: Scandinavia and Beyond

Mads L. Jensen and Joachim Östlund, Department of History, Lund University

On November 15th, 2024 Mads L. Jensen and Joachim Östlund presented their seed money funded project during the Human Rights Lunch Online. They presented results from their workshop that revisited the discourses and uses of natural and human rights in the decades around 1800 from the perspective of Scandinavia and its global and colonial contexts. Workshop aim was to chart avenues for further research for global histories of Scandinavian legal and political thoughts and its interactions with non-European and indigenous legal and political systems.

Watch the recoding of the seminar:

The workshop “Human rights in global and colonial contexts: Scandinavia and beyond”, funded by the Profile Area Human Rights, took place on 11-12 June 2024. The workshop started from the observation that the last decades of the eighteenth century saw an increasing and explicit use of the concept of “human rights”, theoretically and practically, in Scandinavia. The aim was therefore to chart these still largely unknown waters of the political and theoretical uses of human rights discourses in Scandinavia in its global and colonial contexts. Accordingly, the contributions ranged widely chronologically, geographically and thematically. Together they made it clear that that the history of natural and human rights in Scandinavia has a significant potential for changing the historical narrative of human rights, and much more work needs to be done on this topic.

Recent years have seen significant revisionist work on the history of human rights with substantial implications for our understanding of the foundations (philosophical as well as historical) and the practical and political uses of human rights. Perhaps the most prominent revision has come from Samuel Moyn, who has argued for the distinctive political and legal nature of human rights in the, especially later, twentieth century.^[1] This has not only served to sever twentieth century human rights from earlier modern and pre-modern traditions, but like the best genealogical work in modern intellectual history also to bring to the fore alternative political and philosophical human rights conceptions revealing, the limits and weaknesses of current regimes and uses of human rights.^[2]

In response, Dan Edelstein has reinscribed the modern history of human rights, from the French Revolution to the UDHR, in the larger tradition of natural law and natural rights in early modern Europe. For Edelstein, the decisive development in the eighteenth century was the physiocrats’ establishment of the “preservationist regime” of natural rights. For Edelstein, this helps explain the enduring significance of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen as a formulation of the “preservationist regime” into the twentieth century.^[3] But also reveals that our conceptions of human rights carry with them “metaphysical foundations [that have] only been brushed over, and never fully dealt with”, not least the “theological vision of God as Creator.”^[4]

However, Edelstein and much of the recent scholarship on the intellectual history of rights in early modernity, is predominantly anglo- and francocentric focus. Moving beyond this by focusing on Scandinavia, the workshop “Human rights in global and colonial contexts: Scandinavia and beyond” brought out discourses and uses of human rights that developed outside of Britain (including America) and France and, significantly, before the French declaration. In so far as political and intellectual developments in the French revolution were received in Scandinavia, this was against this preexisting intellectual background. Neither Denmark nor Sweden was subject to revolutions, and the workshop contributions outlined some of the distinctive practical concerns and uses of human rights discourse in Scandinavia. This was not least in the context of the global and colonial connections of both Scandinavian monarchies.

One distinctive feature of Scandinavian human rights discourse was that it emerged not out of physiocratic discourse, but out of natural jurisprudence. So, the Copenhagen political propagandist and professor of law and economics, Christian Ulrich Ditlev von Eggers argued in 1796, that “the most recent times” (meaning the last 20 years) had seen the development of a “genuine doctrine” of natural jurisprudence. Moreover, this had informed the great changes and upheavals of his time, such as the American and French revolutions, the great legal reforms, and the abolitions of the slave trade. The intellectual and political changes were global, concerning “the entire race of humankind”.^[5]

As formulated in late eighteenth century global and colonial Scandinavia, the discourse of human rights thus entailed universal and global claims. In other words, human rights were seen as pertaining to all human beings, even if the formulation of the concrete contents of human rights, their retention, abrogation, or violation, differed across time and space. Considering the universal import of human rights also in the eighteenth century, it becomes a methodological and historiographical imperative to investigate whether also non-European individuals, groups, and societies laid claim to what amounted to human rights in the long eighteenth century.

To help address these imperatives, we had invited Saliha Belmessous, British Academy Global Professor at Oxford University and a leading expert the political and legal agency of indigenous people in the history of European colonialism, to give the opening lecture. Belmessous outlined a programme for what she termed “indigenous intellectual history”. In particular, she subjected to critique several conceptual and methodological preconceptions that prevent scholars from taking indigenous legalities serious as objects of study. These included eurocentrism and notions of cultural incommensurability, as well as the denigration of indigenous legal orders as mere “customs” on account of their orality.

Drawing on scholars such as Katherine A. Hermes and Tamar Herzog, Belmessous suggested the reconstruction of indigenous legal ideas, including rights, from their political and legal practice, not least in their contestation of European colonialism.^[6] Proceeding from the analysis of oral, written, and material forms of indigenous law within the colonial archive, this programme eschews essentialising preconceptions of indigenous legal cultures as incommensurable with European legal ideas, including those of human rights. For our purpose here, the focus must be empirical investigations of whether non-European actors made claims that corresponded to human rights as conceptualised at the time, and whether they were recognised as such.

Much of the workshop accordingly concerned the uses of natural and human rights discourse in the context of Scandinavian connections with the rest of the world. Sessions included papers dealing with both Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian discussions of rights. The first session focused on the issue of slavery and slave trade in the Atlantic. Johan Olsthoorn (Amsterdam) discussed the writings of the antislavery theorist Quobna Ottobah Cugoano (c.1757–c.1791), born in what is today’s Ghana. Olsthoorn argued that natural rights played a key role in Cugoano’s construal of slavery and the slave trade as robbing the enslaved of their “natural rights as men”. On a similar theme and geography, Mads L. Jensen (Lund) argued that notions of natural rights, and particularly human rights, informed the moral and political criticism of the slave trade that led to the 1792 decree abolishing the Danish slave trade. At the same time, however, a discourse of human rights came to justify increasing Danish colonialism in West Africa.

The second session turned to the uses of human rights in political and economic reforms in Denmark in the decades around 1800. Markus Hansen (Lund) discussed how early proponents of agrarian reform, notably the abolition of peasant servitude, saw the manorial system as depriving the peasants of their natural, human rights. The restitution of these rights required thoroughgoing reforms, as effected in the Danish agrarian laws of 1788. Simen Hegdalstrand (KCL/Oslo) discussed the “Literary Jewish Feud”, a debate that ushered in the decision to emancipate Danish Jews in March 1814. Hegdalstrand argued that Jewish authors invoked a discourse of rights, and that discourses of patriotism remained current in both sides of the debate.

Session three turned to Swedish connections to the Mediterranean and the far north. Joachim Östlund (Lund) discussed a proposal for the regulation of the Mediterranean slave trade, which the Moroccan Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah al-Khatib presented to the Scandinavian monarchies in 1777. Situating this against the background of earlier uses of natural rights to conceptualise Scandinavian-Moroccan relations and treaties, Östlund highlighted a North African perspective on contemporary discussions of slave trade. In a very different geographical context, Andreas Hellerstedt (Sundsvall) discussed how notions of natural law and natural rights informed Swedish thinking about the colonisation of Sápmi in Northern Scandinavia. This concerned not least the status of the natural rights of the Sámi under the Swedish Crown.

Session four turned to the Swedish and the French Caribbean. Romain Cuttat (Geneve) discussed how the Swiss natural jurist Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui influenced the Swedish King Gustav III, and particularly the purchase and annexation of Saint-Barthélemy in 1784 as a hub for slave trade and plantation slavery. Carl Wilén (Lund) presented the concept of “movement text” as central in the investigation of the uses of human rights discourse in the Haitian revolution. This reveals not just a hitherto largely disregarded group of actors as formulators and claimants of human rights in the revolution, but also the importance of social rights claims.

The workshop highlighted several directions for research on the history of human rights in global Scandinavia. One concerns the theoretical (philosophical and theological) foundations for thinking about human rights, which differed greatly within Scandinavia. This was also the case for thinkers drawing on natural jurisprudence. One key influence was Kantianism, but another equally influential was cameralism. In other words, there were different, rival philosophical and metaphysical foundations for human rights, tending either to secularisation or resacralisation. This had consequences not just for which natural rights were reconceptualised as human rights, but also for their political and legal significance.^[7]

Another direction concerns precisely what human rights were invoked, by whom, and for what purpose. This concerns the practical codification and contestation of human rights in treaties, proclamations and declarations. As both the Haitian movement texts and the Scandinavian discussions of slavery and agrarian reform illustrate, social, rather than constitutional, issues were often at the fore in claims to human rights, notably by less privileged actors, including women. Following Saliha Belmessous’ proposal, this should also investigate how rights claims were made by and for colonial subjects in the Scandinavian colonies in Greenland, India, Africa, West Indies, and by other actors contesting Scandinavian colonialism.

These directions will be pursued in a special issue planned for Global Intellectual History, and in workshops organised in 2025 with Nicolai von Eggers (Copenhagen) and funded by Einar Hansen’s Foundation.

^[1] Especially Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010); Samuel Moyn, Human Rights and the Uses of History: Expanded Second Edition (London: Verso, 2017); Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018).

^[2] For an influential formulation of the use of genealogy within modern intellectual history, see Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). This is revisited in Hannah Dawson and Annelien de Dijn, eds., Rethinking Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).

^[3] Dan Edelstein, On the Spirit of Rights (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019).

^[4] Dan Edelstein, ‘Spirit of Rights. Response to Comments’, Opera Historica 21, no. 1 (30 March 2020): 112, https://doi.org/10.32725/oph.2020.008.

^[5] Christian Ulrich Detlev von Eggers, Institutiones juris civitatis publici et gentium universalis (Copenhagen: Proft & Storch, 1796), 40–42.

^[6] See e.g. Katherine A. Hermes, ‘“‘Justice Will Be Done Us’: Alqonquian Demands for Reciprocity in the Courts of European Settlers”’, in The Many Legalities of Early America, ed. C. L. Tomlins and B. H. Mann (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 123–49; Tamar Herzog, Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1287grm.

^[7] For cameralist thinking on human rights in Germany before the French Revolution, see Diethelm Klippel, ‘Die Diskussion der Menschenrechte am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland’, Gießener Universitätsblätter 2 (1990): 29–40.

12 November 2024

Human Rights Profile Area

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Human Rights Lunch Online 25/10/2024: Human rights of older persons in long-term care

The Human Rights Lunch Online on the 25^th of October 2024 was a special collaboration between the two Lund University profile areas Human Rights and Proactive Ageing, together with The Swedish Institute for Human Rights.

Brittis Edman, project leader, presented the latest report of The Swedish Institute for Human Rights ”Home is somewhere else – a study on the human rights of older persons in long-term care”.

Watch the recording on Vimeo:

About the report:

Older persons living in residential care homes have shared their experiences with the Swedish Institute for Human Rights. They describe the move into long-term care in terms of a major change and as a loss of the life they led before. For many of them, it has taken time to adjust to their new situation.

In the report ‘Hemma är någon annanstans’ (Home is somewhere else), older persons living in residential care homes share their experiences and perceptions of how a selection of human rights are protected and respected in their everyday lives. Based on their observations, the Swedish Institute for Human Rights have analysed how these rights are realised in both law and practice. The human rights the report focuses on are the right to dignity, the right to participation and social inclusion, the right to privacy and family life, and the right to equality and non-discrimination. This report, which is the Institute for Human Rights’ first in-depth thematic study, reveals a disparate situation. The staff the Institute met within the residential care system were committed and knowledgeable, and many older persons in residential care homes were satisfied with the care and service they receive. Despite this, however, the Institute have been able to identify clear inadequacies from a human rights perspective:

Ageism normalises shortcomings in the care of older persons.
The human rights perspective within the care of older persons is weak.
Knowledge of human rights and what they mean in practice is low.
Opportunities for older persons’ participation, self-determination and empowerment are limited.

Based on the report´s conclusions, the Swedish Institute for Human Rights has drawn up a series of recommendations to the government and municipalities which would strengthen the safe-guarding of older persons’ human rights in care settings.

The report is based on information gathered through desk research, a legal analysis and field work within which the Swedish Institute for Human Rights interviewed around 50 people: older persons, managers and care staff in eight specialised care homes for older persons in Sweden. This included two municipalities in the north, two in central parts of the country and two in the south.

About the The Swedish Institute for Human Rights

The purpose of the Swedish Institute for Human Rights is to promote and protect human rights in Sweden. Included in this task is also the promotion, protection, and monitoring of the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Tasks and responsibilities

The Swedish Institute for Human Rights is a Swedish national agency which was formally established in January 2022 in accordance with the Swedish Act on the Institute for Human Rights (2021:642). The purpose of the Institute is, according to the legislative act, to promote the safeguarding of human rights in Sweden, based on

the Swedish Instrument of Government, the Freedom of the Press Act, and the Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression,
the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR),
the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and
other obligations in the field of human rights binding on Sweden under public international law.

The Institute’s tasks and responsibilities are to:

monitor, investigate, and report on how human rights are respected and implemented in Sweden,
present proposals to the Government on the measures needed to ensure human rights;
liaise with international organisations and otherwise engage in international cooperation; and
promote education, research, development of expertise, dissemination of information and consciousness raising in the field of human rights.

One of the responsibilities of the Institute is, as required of the States acceding to the Convention, to fulfil the role of an independent national mechanism as set out in Article 33 (2) of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to promote, protect and monitor the implementation of the Convention.

The Institute may propose to the Government of Sweden that Sweden’s obligations under international law within the field of human rights be expanded.

The Institute will not review complaints from individuals concerning violations of human rights.

URL: https://mrinstitutet.se/

About the Profile Area Proactive Ageing

By studying different stages of ageing and focusing on people in midlife, researchers at Lund University are developing proactive approaches for health care, social services and community planning. This will contribute to improved health and quality of life for future generations of older people.

Dementia and arthritis are examples of diseases that become more common as we get older, and to some extent depend on our lifestyle in younger years. Loneliness and problematic alcohol consumption are some of the factors that affect the risk of illness in old age. Moreover, attitudes to ageing, our standard of living and the environment have effects on activity and participation in later life.

Research targeting younger people

Preventive measures to promote healthy ageing from midlife – or even earlier – are therefore needed. Here, transdisciplinary research targeting younger people, such as today’s 50- and 60-year-olds, has a crucial role to play.

Researchers in this profile area:

study diseases associated with brain ageing

examine the relationship between the environment and older people’s activity, participation, mobility and health

consider the needs, wishes and abilities of older people in the development of new technologies for future generations

develop interdisciplinary and cross-boundary strategies and methodologies for proactive ageing research

place particular focus on cognitive and musculoskeletal health as prerequisites for activity and participation

include ethical, social, cultural, and societal perspectives

develop methods for identifying people at risk of disease or who are vulnerable in other ways, using economic, social, and biological markers.

This profile area brings together world-leading researchers in medicine, health sciences, social and behavioural sciences, economics, law, science and technology.

URL: Proactive ageing | Lund University

22 October 2024

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Human Rights Lunch Online 20/09/2024: The Filmmaker as Feminist: A journey of semi-autoethnography

On the 20^th of September we welcomed Jinyan Zeng to Human Rights Lunch online! Jinyan Zeng let us in on the concepts of Autoethnography and First-person filmmaking, followed by short film clips of documentary films made by women including Jinyan Zeng herself. The focus during the seminar was on women living under political violence, market exploitation, and gender pressure. Through reflecting on themes and processes of documentary filmmaking and distribution, Jinyan Zeng highlighted the unique way of women’s expression in social contestation, artistic representation, and intellectual debate.

One of the films Jinyan has contributed to and will be discussing during the seminar is A Poem to Liu Xia, a short film made on International Women’s Day 2015 in collaboration with Zeng Jinyan (writer, Hong Kong) and Liao Yiwu (Composer/Performer, Berlin). This short film is a tribute for the Chinese Artist Liu Xia, then wife, now widow, to the 2010 Nobel Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo. The film was done when Liu Xia was under house arrest in Beijing without charge to remind us all that Liu Xia’s art may be forbidden in China but she is not forgotten.

Jinyan Zeng is also a codirector for the documentary film Outcry and Whisper together with Wen Hai and Trish McAdam. The documentary film shows the oppression and resistance of women in mainland China and Hong Kong over a time period of 8 years. You can read a discussion on the documentary film in this transcribed conversation between Jinyan Zeng, Trish McAdam and Gina Marchetti. You can also read Gina Marchetti’s book chapter, The Alienated Gaze and the Activist Eye: Gender, Class, and Politics in Lotus (2012) and Outcry and Whisper (2020) of the subject in Women Filmmakers and the Visual Politics of Transnational China in the #MeToo Era. For further reading, Jinyan Zeng has recently published an article on Asian Ethnicity about Visualising the Post-2000s Inland Tibet Class Generation: Female Authorship and Renegotiation of Ethnicity.

Dr. Jinyan Zeng 曾金燕 works at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden. She is a scholar and documentary filmmaker. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality, culture and politics, intellectual identity and activism, and ethnicity, with a particular emphasis on the Chinese speaking world. Among various publications, she has authored Feminism and Genesis of Citizen Intelligentsia in China (in Chinese, 2016, City University of Hong Kong Press), co-edited Feminist Activism in the Post-2010s Sinosphere (with Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, Forthcoming 2024, Bloomsbury), and co-directed documentary film Outcry and Whisper (2020, with Wen Hai and Trish McAdam).

See more of Jinyan Zeng’s new publications below:

2024. ‘Queering Community: Affect of Visuality in the Sinosphere’. Journal of Chinese Cinemas.

2024. ‘From Women’s Space to Gendering the Public Sphere: Ai Xiaoming’s Practice of Everyday Life and Activism’. In Routledge Handbook of Chinese Gender & Sexuality, edited by Jamie J. Zhao and Hongwei Bao (Co-authored with Xibai Xu).

Forthcoming. Feminist Activism in the Post-2010s Sinosphere (Co-edited with Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, Bloomsbury).
Forthcoming. ‘Literary Making of a Uyghur Feminist: Identity and Ethics in Banu’s Redemption’. In Feminist Activism in the Post-2010s Sinosphere, edited by Jinyan Zeng and Elisabeth L Engebretsen (Co-authored with Anonymous).

Book review

2024. ‘Weibo Feminism: Expression, Activism, and Social Media in China Aviva Wei Xue and Kate Rose’. The China Quarterly.

18 September 2024

Human Rights Profile Area

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Social, Economic and Cultural Rights in Sweden: A Challenge to Scholars and Teachers

On February 21-22 of this year, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights conducted its seventh periodic review of Sweden.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), adopted in 1966 and ratified by Sweden in 1971, incorporates only a portion of the rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948. Nevertheless, the covenant is renowned for its scope and complexity. The rights we now classify as economic, social, and cultural encompass the right to self-determination, rights associated with employment and safe working conditions, trade union rights, the right to social protection, family support, the right to an adequate standard of living (including food, clothing and housing), the right to health, the right to education, as well as cultural rights (including academic freedom and the right to engage in one’s country’s cultural life).

The recommendations for Sweden issued by the UN Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in early March cover most of these areas. They include topics like climate policy, development assistance, the rights for gig workers, access to basic public services for asylum seekers and irregular migrants, decriminalization of drug use, discrimination and harassment in schools, the repatriation of Sami human remains and cultural artifacts, and much more.

The Committee particularly emphasizes three areas where it expects Sweden to submit additional information within two years. First, it calls for the complete implementation of the new consultation law for the Sami people in Sweden, ensuring compliance with international standards for free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). Second, it expects measures to address labor exploitation, including effective protection against violence and harassment for migrant workers and their families. Finally, it requests Sweden to ensure that social insurance programs, such as unemployment benefits and daily allowances for asylum seekers, are sufficient to safeguard the right to an adequate standard of living.

In my job at the Swedish Institute for Human Rights, I had the privilege of participating in drafting our alternative report to the Committee and attending the review in Geneva. Our report highlights, among other things, a survey we published in 2023, which showed that economic, social, and cultural rights are relatively unknown in Sweden. Few people know what these rights entail in practice and how they can be enforced. Just like the joint submission by civil society organizations, we also criticize Sweden’s reluctance to ratify the third optional protocol that provides an individual complaint mechanism to the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, a reluctance we believe stems from an outdated view of economic, social, and cultural rights as policy declarations and objectives rather than actual rights.

Working on the report served as a stark reminder of how rights, which have been central to the international human rights collaboration since the 1940s, remain relatively unknown and unfulfilled in a country that often prides itself on being a pioneer in realizing rights. It was a first-hand encounter with what some scholars refer to as “the Nordic human rights paradox.” Yet it was also an experience that prompted me to reflect critically on my own education and teaching, and to what extent I had given these rights the attention they deserve.

I took my first course in interdisciplinary human rights studies at Lund University in the fall of 2006. After completing my Master’s and PhD degrees in Lund and a postdoctoral fellowship based in Uppsala, I had the privilege of teaching at the bachelor’s and master’s programs in human rights and democracy at University College Stockholm, the institution that in the mid-1990s was the first to establish specialized human rights education at the university level in Sweden.

I have always cherished being in these interdisciplinary environments where legal, philosophical, political science, sociological, theological, and historical perspectives are combined and contrasted, with the aim of understanding the conditions necessary for human rights to be meaningful and actualized, as well as to comprehend the dynamics in situations where they are undermined, or as is more often the case, realized—but not fully and not for everyone.

During my undergraduate studies, we did engage with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), grappling with the difficulties of interpreting maximalist concepts like the right to the highest attainable standard of health, and the challenges of applying the idea of the progressive realization of rights. However, more complex and somewhat more mundane issues such as access to education, adequate health care, trade union rights, and the right to safe and adequate working conditions were generally pushed to the side in favor of more eye-catching cases of gross violations, including historic and contemporary examples of racial segregation, torture, crimes against humanity, and genocide. My education was essentially about violence.

Later, when teaching students at various levels about human rights, a select set of issues concerning economic, social, and cultural rights became important to me. I did my best to introduce students to the debate on the relationship between human rights and social and economic inequality that flourished in the late 2010s, much due to great books by Samuel Moyn and Jessica Whyte. While they didn’t agree among themselves, they all stressed the limits of rights-based politics during times of accelerated global warming, increasing inequalities, and the dismantling of universal welfare systems. Or as I put the question to my students: Why care about reforms to protect individual rights in a burning and unequal world?

The problem is that discussions about the general relationship between human rights and economic inequality tend to be abstract and disconnected from the concrete challenges related to specific rights, such as the right to health, education and housing. They are intriguing for scholars who like big ideas but offer little guidance to practitioners. It’s telling that the debates on human rights and inequality rarely take into account the resources available within international human rights law to address social stratification and discrimination within sectors like education, employment, and healthcare. The resources within the actual human rights systems are overlooked in order to point to the shortcomings of human rights discourse.

Following the CESCR Committee’s review also gave me an opportunity to critically reflect on some of the arguments developed within political philosophy to explain the basis for the existence of rights. A textbook I read as an undergraduate and later tortured my students with is James Nickel’s classic “Making Sense of Human Rights”. Nickel defends a limited understanding of economic, social, and cultural rights. The argument is that these rights are essential for people to enjoy basic needs for a minimally decent life but also to enjoy other—purportedly more central—rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.

This type of “linkage arguments” are somewhat in line with the thesis of the indivisibility and interdependence of rights. But it has struck me how attempts to give human rights moral and political grounding within political philosophy are often based on an implicit understanding of civil and political rights as more fundamental than other rights. Linkage arguments often depart from an idea that civil and political rights are inherently good, whereas social, economic and cultural rights can be justified because of the work they do, because they support the good.

This implicit division between different categories of rights is why the work initiated by scholars like Steven L. B. Jensen and Charles Walton to dissect the histories of economic, social, and cultural rights is so necessary. By pointing to the deep history of some of the rights contained in the ICESCR, and by exposing how the division between civil and political rights and social, economic, and cultural rights itself is a product of a very specific historical moment, they challenge us to reassess perceptions that are more or less established among both human rights scholars and practitioners.

For those of us teaching human rights from a philosophical, political, and legal perspective, it becomes an important challenge not to take division between broad categories of rights too seriously, especially when the division is associated with a corresponding notion of which rights are ‘real’ rights and which are a rendered as mere supporting structures or abstract goals.

Linde Lindkvist

Linde Lindkvist is a Senior Advisor at the Swedish Institute for Human Rights as well as Visiting Research Fellow and Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Human Rights Studies at Lund University. Lindkvist specializes in questions of human rights history, the right to religious freedom and children’s rights. His recent research and publications concern the political origins of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).

3 September 2024

Human Rights Profile Area

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Human Rights Lunch Online 19/04/2024: Launching Lund Human Rights Reports and Working Papers!

The profile area is launching Lund Human Rights Reports and Working Papers, a series of interdisciplinary human rights working papers and reports addressing current issues and phenomenon related to human rights produced by the Lund University Human Rights Profile Area. The first issue of Lund Human Rights Reports and Working Papers is “Human rights education at Lund University. What are the challenges and opportunities for collaboration?” written by Frida Nilsson. You can find the first issue below.

We will launch Lund Human Rights Reports and Working Papers on the 19^th of April at 12:15-13 during Human Rights Lunch Online. During the lunch webinar Frida Nilsson will shortly comment the report, and after that Matthew Scott and Vasna Ramasar are invited to discuss the report. Matthew Scott is a senior researcher and leader of the Human Rights and the Environment thematic area at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law as well as a n adjunct senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Lund University. Vasna Ramasar is a senior lecturer at the Department of Human Geography at Lund University. Both of them have also been interviewed for the report.

Welcome to join us on the 19^th of April at 12:15-13 here: https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/65437566996

Lund HR Reports 1 2024 Download

17 April 2024

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