Patience Akumu is a human rights defender and award winning journalist

Once upon a time, human rights were the bare minimum that every human being would expect. Universality. Inalienability. Indivisibility. When, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights set down the basic standards for human dignity – and the world said never again to global strife and devastation – human rights tenets were not just values. They were lifelines for people who the world thought less deserving.

They were a promise to create a more open world, where there was relative consensus on what it means to be human. They were an acknowledgment that one’s humanity cannot be snuffed out under any circumstance, because inalienability meant that human rights lay deep in the crux of humanity and could not be yanked out to make someone less human at will. These tenets were a safeguard from futile classifications of humanity – reminding us that human rights must be accepted as a whole rather than cherry-picked and applied for convenience.

The United Nations, its agencies and organs were the vessel built to ensure that states respect, protect and promote human rights. The system was never perfect and continued to be a work in progress. From the onset of the human rights discourse, there were questions about the cost of implementing human rights commitments, especially the so-called second generation rights that related to economic and social growth. Rights were placed in hierarchies, with rights under western human rights instruments viewed as weightier than those under African and Asian human rights instruments.

In particular, the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights was criticized for advancing community rights and the right to development – which were then difficult for many who saw human rights through a western lens to appreciate. Even though the world had said never again, wars and devastation continued in different magnitudes. States such as Congo, South Sudan, Syria and Somalia descended into cycles of conflict that everyone seemed powerless to stop. Israel-Palestine conflict grew into an inescapable blight on the global humanitarian system and highlighted the powerlessness of the institutions that were built to stop conflict.

And in 2022, when the Russia-Ukrainian conflict started, and one young student asked her mother, who she knew worked with the United Nations, how a fresh war between countries could break out while the United Nations watched, it was a silent indictment on the whole of humanity for failing to maintain the basic standards of human dignity that were laid down 74 years ago.

Lost in the hate narrative

Still, we soldiered on. For while we, too, sought an answer to why strife and devastation thrive despite systems put in place to check them, and the humanitarian system continued to prove itself the proverbial toothless barking dog, we at least believed that the global conscience was in the right place – and just because violations happened did not make them acceptable.

This is why in 2025 we find ourselves somewhat lost in the glare of rising hate, the crackdown on multilateralism and the worrying shift of our global conscience. The public sphere, fueled by vile social media, has become a place where rhetoric that undermines human dignity thrive. Is your neighbor from a country struggling under the yoke of conflict? That neighbor ought to go back to their country – even if it means certain death – because they are the source of all your problems; sponging off of your more stable government. Are you someone unfortunate enough to be born non-white? Don’t you dare voice your challenges. For the world is uncomfortable with your woke demands to be recognized as a full human with the same dignity as the white, privileged and moneyed.

Are you a woman? Do you dare to cause discomfort by not fitting into the little heterosexuality box? Do you still believe that people and nations deserve a helping hand to enable them live a better life? Your ideas grew obsolete right about the time when the US elected the most exclusionary president of your time and other rich countries such as UK, France and German followed suit with policies to preserve and concentrate wealth amongst a few people in a few already rich countries.

Enter colonialism: lest we forget

Once upon a time, the western world discovered the deep dark global South, penetrated it with wanton abandon, plundered it maximally, proposed repair options that never quite brought healing to the people who were taken to faraway lands to toil under slavery and those who remained and were thrust upon foreign systems that they still struggle to understand and implement today. Hierarchical, racist and sexist ideology penetrated the very systems that were meant to deliver equality and justice to the downtrodden – serving them crumbs in the form of questionable aid on the good days, and yanking the aid from them at will as we have seen recently.

It is true that the injustice inflicting the world did not happen overnight. We know that the inequality gap is widening not just in terms of income but also in terms of the damage that the super wealthy are doing to the planet and who suffers the most consequences. A 2023 Oxfam report, for instance, indicates the super-rich one percent, whose wealth has increased steadfast, were responsible for more carbon emissions than 66% of humanity. A more recent Oxfam report explained the trail of inequality and neocolonialism thus:

“Tesla earns about $3,150 in profit per car, each containing roughly 3kg of cobalt. The Congolese government receives less than $10 in royalties for that cobalt, while a miner may see about $7.”

The year 2025 is when we arrived at the altar at which people’s human dignity and rights died. But the journey has been a long time coming. It is the year when narratives of inequality are celebrated – even admired and aspired to instead of frowned upon for being unacceptable injustices that are holding people from being happy, reaching their full potential and fully participating in shaping their future.

Redefining progress

But the real question is: Do we have what it takes to redefine progress for ourselves and for those who come after us? Do we have the determination to reassert and redistribute the world’s wealth so that everyone gets a fair share? Do we have the courage to stand up for a planet threatened by our own greed? It starts with a collective dedicated to asking the right questions and proposing answers rooted in the good old human rights tenets. Tenets that are not negotiated but demanded as a matter of justice for wrongs that have gone on too long.