The World Today and Human Rights in the Future

The pandemic of 2020–2022 and the Ukraine crisis of 2022 have highlighted the clear shortfalls of a unipolar world when it comes to ensuring global peace and sustainable development for all. It is evident that in the new geopolitical and legal reality, a unilateral reading of the rights and freedoms of the individual (both in terms of specifics and how they are generally characterized) cannot work. Indeed, attempts by the collective West to impose its interpretations on the entire world lead to socioeconomic crises with global implications. Current international institutions (such as the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council, the G7, etc.) do not full reflect the diversity of cultural and spiritual values around the world. What’s more, they bear little relation to population distribution and the spread of economic resources. It has therefore become pertinent to consider a new model of individual rights and freedoms based on a plurality of approaches to subject matter and interpretation. Such an approach should still take into account the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, it should also encompass regional documents, such as the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, and the 2012 ASEAN Human Rights Declaration. This roundtable will focus on the main aspects of this new model.