Progress from the Margins

Human Rights and Disability Internationalism Since the 1960s
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-231-21992-1
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Columbia Studies in International and Global History

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities differs markedly from other forms of international human rights law: it not only protects the rights of individuals but also addresses interpersonal relations and social structures. How did the convention attain this broad reach, and what does it tell us about the histories of human rights and disability law?

Progress from the Margins is an international history of the struggle for recognition of disability rights at the global level. Paul van Trigt chronicles how people with disabilities and their allies developed their own understanding of human rights, from the emergence of disability activism in the late 1960s through the negotiation of the convention. He traces the unexpected paths by which international recognition of disability human rights emerged, showing that it is not a story of linear progress but rather one of a decades-long series of discontinuous advances. Challenging accounts that criticize the limited scope of human rights in recent decades, van Trigt highlights how disabled people and their allies transformed human rights law by emphasizing social dimensions. He foregrounds the agency of disabled people from the Global South as well as the Global North, demonstrating how they shaped their own human rights. A groundbreaking account of disability internationalism, Progress from the Margins also reflects on the prospects for a world that embraces disability.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Trigt, Paul van

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Internationale Organisationen und Institutionen
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Menschenrechte, Bürgerrechte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Invalidität, Krankheit und Abhängigkeit: Soziale Aspekte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction
1. Jerusalem 1968: Blocking “Promiscuous Scandinavia”
2. Belgrade 1975: “Equality. Not Materialized in Full”
3. Singapore 1981: “Nothing About Us, Without All of Us”
4. New York 1987: A Neoliberal Utopia of Development
5. Vienna 1993: “Adopt or Adjust Legislation to Assure Access”
6. Mexico City 2002: Taken by Surprise
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Paul van Trigt is an assistant professor of social history at Leiden University. He is a coeditor of Marginalized Groups, Inequalities and the Post-War Welfare State: Whose Welfare? (2020).