Human Rights and Root Causes

TLDR

The human rights movement has historically focused on documenting abuses rather than explaining them, but recent attention has turned to identifying root causes of violations. The article critiques the root‑cause discourse and proposes “planned misery” as an alternative explanatory framework. It contrasts the root‑cause framework with a model that frames violations as outcomes of deliberate, systemic planning—“planned misery.” The analysis demonstrates that the root‑cause discourse is limited, as it truncates causal inquiry, conflates effects with causes, and merely labels causes without addressing them.

Abstract

The human rights movement has traditionally focused on documenting abuses, rather than attempting to explain them. In recent years, however, the question of the 'root causes' of violations has emerged as a key issue in human rights work. The present article examines this new (or newly insistent) discourse of root causes. While valuable, it is shown to have significant limitations. It foreshortens the investigation of causes; it treats effects as though they were causes; and it identifies causes only to put them aside. With these points in mind, the article counterposes an alternative approach in which the orienting concept is not root causes, but 'planned misery'.