Tag Archives: Human Rights

A surreal political illustration of a female government official standing stiffly like a marionette puppet, with visible strings attached to her limbs and head. The strings are controlled by a faceless figure in a suit, symbolizing hidden power or authoritarian control. The woman’s face appears calm, even smiling, with a speech bubble saying ‘empowerment’, but her shadow on the wall behind her shows her kneeling in chains, labeled ‘vessel’. The background features a muted map of the world, with certain countries glowing faintly and connected by dark, vein-like tendrils. The overall mood is unsettling and dystopian, in a clean, editorial illustration style. DALL.E generated

Parasitising Human Rights

A snail glides slowly from the shelter of the underbrush into the sunlight. One of its eye stalks (ommataphore) pulses with an unnatural rhythm, swollen, brightly coloured and weirdly attractive. A thrush spots the movement and swoops down, drawn to the flickering lure, pecks off the stalks and flies away.

The thrush was fooled. What it mistook for a juicy caterpillar was a parasite seeking a new host. The parasite, Leucochloridium paradoxum, is a trematode that infects a snail and turns it into a self-destructive zombie. The life cycle is simple: bird eats parasitised snail, parasite reproduces in bird’s gut, bird defecates, snail eats infected droppings. Once the parasite has been eaten by the snail, it hijacks the snail’s behaviour. It migrates to the snail’s eye stalks and drives it out of the safety of the underbrush and into the sunlight, where it will lure a bird to eat it. Rinse and repeat.

It was only very recently that I realised that the Christian far-right groups had adopted an analogous strategy to attack the international human rights framework and women’s rights in particular.

The Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD) and its companion, the Women’s Optimal Health Framework (WOHF), function with unnerving similarity to the apparently tasty snail. They are each packaged in the shiny and appealing language of “optimal health”, “human dignity”, and “family”. They infiltrate the human rights system—not to strengthen it, but to hijack it, disguising regressive aims as a legitimate rights discourse. Once absorbed by a State-host, the State is zombified to re-present the regressive framework in shiny, deceptively appealing language waiting to parasitise the next State.

The GCD was first presented to the United Nations as a letter under Donald Trump’s 45th Presidency of the United States. It was an initiative of the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a fundamentalist Christian. Borrowing the name of the City of Geneva, made famous by its association with refugees, human rights and the Geneva Conventions, the GCD is neither supported nor endorsed by Switzerland nor the the Republic and Canton of Geneva, nor is it adopted by the UN.

The GCD document opens with lofty and appealing commitments to universal human rights and gender equality—pulling deceptively and disingenuously on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It declares that “all are equal before the law” and that the “human rights of women are an inalienable, integral, and indivisible part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms”.

Once consumed, there is a parasitic turn. The GCD reverts to a framework that reduces women to vessels and vassals in service to cells and states. The foetus is elevated. It is endowed with rights that eclipse those of the woman herself. She becomes a fleshy bag—nutrients in, baby out—stripped of the autonomy to define her own purpose or direction. The role of the State shifts. It is no longer the guarantor of individual freedom but the authority that dictates what a woman may or may not be allowed to do. “The family”—a surprisingly labile cultural concept—is suddenly reified, declared “the fundamental group unit of society,” as if its meaning were fixed and universal. The document commits fully to a vision of a society where the population serves the State, and women serve the population—with the least autonomy.

Health is a human right as is the right to healthcare. The GCD and the WOHF want to parse this, playing a game of reductio ad absurdum. You might have a right to healthcare, they argue, but you do not have a right to an abortion. As if it makes sense to say you have a right to healthcare, but not if you have scabies, rabies, HIV, or malaria. Pregnancy is not a disease, but it does require healthcare and that care may include the termination of the pregnancy. A woman’s purpose is not reproduction—servitude to a foetus.

Men, too, are caught in the parasitic zombification. They should not mistake their apparent elevation in these structures for freedom. They lose something fundamental. Choice. Authoritarian gender orders assign roles to everyone. Power is not granted—it is rationed and always conditional. The State grants status for obedience and identity in exchange for submission. Those assigned dominance are especially bound by its terms. This constraint brooks no dissent. In a society of freedom, you can find your own place. In a society of roles, your place determines you.

These zombified States do not act alone. The US-backed Institute for Women’s Health promotes the destruction of women’s rights, replacing evidence with sleek visuals and rhetorically based policy tools. The materials are presented as neutral frameworks but embed deeply conservative ideologies—valorising motherhood, framing women’s worth through familial roles, and avoiding any substantive discussion of sexual rights.

States that adopt these frameworks serve as megaphones, amplifying anti-abortion and anti-diversity policies in UN negotiations and global fora. This is not a grassroots movement for gender justice. It is a top-down project of moral, political, and social control, disguised as health policy.

The GCD and WOHF are not neutral initiatives. They are a parasitic ideological vehicle that masquerades as progressive while advancing regressive policies. Their true function is to infiltrate human rights systems, hijack the language of empowerment, and turn States into agents of restriction.

We must name this strategy for what it is: a parasitic ideology—designed to deceive, manipulate, and replicate. Human rights advocates must remain alert, resist co-option, and expose these frameworks not just for their content, but for the insidious strategies they deploy.

The only antidote to such parasitism is clarity, resistance, and the refusal to surrender universal human rights to the State.

Scaffolding Human Rights

I walked through the Place des Nations in Geneva today where the iconic Broken Chair sculpture was completely covered in scaffolding. I couldn’t help but wonder: are we witnessing routine maintenance, or an unintended commentary on the state of global human rights?

Broken Chair covered by scaffolding

The Broken Chair has stood in the square since 1997. It was originally commissioned by Handicap International (now Humanity & Inclusion) to raise awareness about landmines and cluster munitions. At 12 meters tall, it’s a prominent feature of the landscape, and dwarfs passers-by.

Its location is significant. The sculpture faces the United Nations’ Palace of Nations and is surrounded by the headquarters of key UN agencies: the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). This area serves as a global center for human rights advocacy and international diplomacy.

Over time, the Broken Chair’s symbolism has expanded. While it still represents the impact of explosive remnants of war, it has come to embody the broader struggle for human rights and dignity. Its three-legged design, with the shattered fourth leg, is a metaphor for the delicate balance required to maintain peace and protect human rights. Civil society groups advocating for the end to a war, freedom from torture, the right to bodily autonomy, or some other right often use the Chair as a backdrop to their rallies.

Seeing the Broken Chair encased in scaffolding today made me reflect on the current state of human rights. We are in a world where rights are being progressively eroded by political appeals to national sovereignty and cultural superiority, or by military force—the global right of might. Challenges range from ongoing conflicts and displacement to the st

rategic disregard of international norms and values. The need for strong support systems for human rights has become increasingly evident.

As the Chair needs scaffolding, so too do human rights. While we wait for the Chair to emerge renewed, let’s not forget that human rights do not exist in a vacuum. They require nurturing and renewal, and when they are under threat, they need defending.