A Right to Solidarity. World Ordering from the Margins through International Law?

Abstract

Abstract In 2005, the United Nations (UN) created the Independent Expert on Human Rights and International Solidarity. The mandate holder works toward the establishment and promotion of the human right to solidarity. Usually, a right is regarded as something that people demand, and solidarity is something that people give regardless of legal obligations. Codifying solidarity in international law therefore seems paradoxical. Yet, as we show in this article, the initiative, driven by the G77, stands in a long tradition of attempts to transform the international order into a more just and equitable structure. We highlight its function as a possible means of world ordering from the margins. Through the voting power of a coalition of discontents—against the consistent resistance of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries—in the General Assembly/the Human Rights Council, the mandate holder can use their marginal position in the UN bureaucracy to update discourses about a just international order by altering legal discourses in pursuit of the right to solidarity.