Social Human Rights

Human rights are about the brute moral minimum. They identify the minimum level of decent treatment we owe to each other as human beings. Over the past two decades, philosophers, political theorists, and legal theorists have turned their collective attention to the analysis of human rights. But, they have focused their attention largely on a subset of our civil and political rights, such as our rights to participate politically, to have free expression, to practice a religion, to assemble together for political purposes, and to be safe from torture, as well as on a small set of our socio-economic welfare rights, such as our rights to be free from poverty, to health, and to education.

International agreements enumerate a range of other rights, however, which have received considerably less analytic attention from human rights theorists. Among these enumerated rights are, notably, our interpersonal, social rights, such as the rights to marry, to be protected in parent-child relationships, and to share in the benefits of our society's scientific and cultural advancements. The elucidation of these rights makes little mention of either the goods of friendship or more general rights to have ongoing, close human contact beyond the family unit.

There are signs that policymakers are beginning to take our interpersonal needs seriously. The UK government, for one, has made a material commitment to combating loneliness and social isolation, through a £20 million investment and the appointment of a Minister (Tracey Crouch) tasked with implementing the government's cross-party work on these issues. This background environment provides an ideal setting for this network to produce timely and impactful research on social human rights.

Some key questions to ask at the outset are whether the social rights enumerated in international agreements hold up to analytic scrutiny, and whether human rights offer a good conceptual apparatus with which to frame our social needs and ensure they are met. Other important questions are whether any key social rights have been missed in legalistic debates about human rights, and whether social rights would require society to rethink radically its policies within sectors such as criminal justice, health, and immigration, which are often sites of forced segregation and social malnourishment.

Through a programme of activities including an open conference, research retreat, and stakeholder meetings, this network of internationally renowned philosophers, political theorists, legal theorists, and rising stars will investigate these and other questions. Network members represent a range of conflicting views on the status of social human rights. Some hold that the centrality of social needs to our wellbeing means that the language of duties and obligations attendant to rights-discourse is indeed the correct framework to adopt. Others are unconvinced that such an approach is feasible, and argue that discussions of social rights overstep the boundaries of what rights-discourse can hope to achieve. The contest of these perspectives will inform and underpin the project's edited collection and the other outputs that will emerge from the network's activities.

By foregrounding our social natures in discussions of our needs, obligations and duties, either within or beyond a rights-centred framework, we can develop our understanding of the political and legal structures that shape our relations with other people. If, for example, a person is systematically excluded from associations with other people as a result of others' free choices, what support, if any, does society owe her? In addition, what other processes within our social world generate situations where our social needs go unmet? It is in opening up these questions, and shedding light on what emerges as a consequence of taking our constitutively social nature seriously, that this network intends to make its mark.

In response to the final report of the Jo Cox Commission in December 2017, the UK government has made a material commitment to combating loneliness and social isolation, through a £20 million investment and the appointment of a Minister (Tracey Crouch) tasked with implementing the government's cross-party work on these issues. Many charities, including the Campaign to End Loneliness, a collaborating organisation in this AHRC Network application, are working at the heart of the government-led process to tackle the loneliness epidemic in Britain. Several other countries, particularly in Europe and North America, are looking to the UK as a model to tackle their own growing numbers of lonely or isolated people.

This background environment provides an ideal setting for this network to produce highly impactful research on social needs and social rights. This is particularly true given that the empirical facts around loneliness and social isolation are becoming increasingly well known, but their normative force is not. Loneliness and unwanted social isolation can result in poor bodily and mental health, including increased risk of heart disease, depression, arthritis, alcoholism, type 2 diabetes, and dementia. Loneliness is also expensive for governments: treatment costs the NHS £6,000 (approx.) per person for a decade of an older person's life. Once we understand how acute loneliness and persistent unwanted isolation can implicate key human rights, we can better combat their social, political, health, and economic effects. The network, which includes leading figures in human rights debates, will provide a normative framework to understand our basic interpersonal social needs, which will help to tackle dimensions of the 'loneliness epidemic' currently taking its toll on millions of people in the UK and throughout the world.

The network's research ultimately aims to influence public debate and key stakeholders' activities and, thereby, benefit the providers and users of services that support people who are especially vulnerable to loneliness and unwanted isolation, such as elderly people, children, people with disabilities, migrants, and people convicted for criminal offences. Impact on campaign groups, NGOs, and policymakers will be key to the achievement of this fundamental aim. Such stakeholders will be directly engaged in the network from the outset to ensure that its outputs will specifically address the challenges faced by these groups in confronting issues of loneliness and unwanted social isolation.