AALS Annual Convention Plenary Panel: Impact of Globalization on Human Rights

Extract

There are various ways in which globalization can and does promote human rights. I want to focus on one of the ways in which globalization, because of the way it is managed by the most highly developed countries, has a very deleterious impact on human rights. Highly developed countries have managed globalization in a number of ways such that it has increased wealth disparities between the center and the periphery and the effect has been to heighten resentment for the center from the periphery. Unfortunately, that resentment sometimes manifests itself in the rejection of what are seen as Western values, including human rights. In fact, a number of leaders of countries on the periphery find it convenient to manipulate public opinion in order to foster hostility towards the West and in the process, hostility towards efforts to improve their human rights practices.