BY Pooja Badarinath
Reflections on Human Rights Advocacy in 2025
In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Genocide in Gaza was plausible and ordered provisional measures.1 The case, filed by South Africa under the Genocide Convention, was an important moment in human rights advocacy. Many of us read it as a sign of reclaiming human rights institutions for the majority world. It carried a sense of promise: that these institutions can be applied to everyone, and that solidarity, when mobilized, can yield results. The ICJ decision followed earlier recommendations by other human rights mechanisms2, which had already highlighted the violations against the Palestinian people.
Yet, today, the colonial apartheid regime continues its genocidal campaign, using every possible means. For those of us involved in advocacy, especially within the human rights systems, this has been a process of deep disillusionment. Activists from the Global South have long pointed out the double standards in multilateral spaces from the “Western states”, including Intellectual Property, economic justice, and the role of International Financial Institutions. But the impunity with which slaughter, starvation, and mass violence continue has laid bare not only the fallacy of the human rights systems but also the shortcomings of how we, as civil society and movements, have organized. Too often our work is narrowly focused, fragmented by competing interests, and shaped by the need to ensure the survival of the “industry” rather than the people and politics we claim to serve.
Part of this crisis comes from a deliberate amnesia of movement histories and cultures. Instead of learning from past experiences and mistakes, we forget how people organized for liberation, freedom, and other causes. While no movement has ever been perfect, there might be strategies — and mistakes — that we could learn from today. Sometimes it is as simple as not repeating past errors or adapting earlier ideas to present challenges. Many of us ask: Where do we go from here? We know solidarity must be central to our organizing, yet we still see a tendency towards “business as usual,” especially for those who avoid accurate, grounded news.
A part of advocacy and programming often means spending time and resources, unpacking systems and behaviours that rationalise racism and misogyny as “fear of the unknown” or “fear of change”. This scapegoating is context-specific, depending on race, class, caste, gender, and other factors, but it almost always targets marginalized groups. These same systems also enable impunity for the scorching of our planet, its people, and the destruction of the world. We are living in a time when states are stockpiling destructive weapons, weapons testing on people is no longer dystopian fiction, and the military industrial complex is a behemoth that keeps growing. These forces will impact everyone, the question is not if, but when. That makes it our responsibility to remind the comfortable, those who can look away, that collective political apathy is one of the reasons we are here.
The future feels uncertain and intangible. Without profound changes, it is not a world many of us would want to be part of. Nor is it one we would even be invited into. Transnational corporations and private actors will rule it, backed by corrupt governments that use fundamentalist ideologies to suppress any resistance. That is why it is imperative to bring politics back into our work, moving away from pragmatic compromises and towards real and meaningful political connections.
I ask myself: Should our goal be towards a collective? Do we still have the knowledge and intention to collectivise and collaborate regardless of donor priorities, and on the principles of solidarity and shared politics? Can we embody the understanding that escaping these systems is possible, and that distraction only delays the inevitable? We must confront these systems, however impossibly large they may feel. And we must also reflect on our own roles: where we are complicit and where we resist. Resistance is not optional, and it takes many forms. My question continues, caught between the contradictory lack of answers and the overwhelming number of them to sort through, but it remains: Where is resistance most effective, and what forms can it take? My hope and wish is that I will not be alone — that I can support and be supported by friends, comrades, colleagues, and many others I have yet to meet.
- Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), Provisional Measures, Order of 26 January 2024, I.C.J. Reports 2024, p. 3, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf
- The Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, Treaty Monitoring Bodies, UN Secretary General, UN Agencies among other have highlighted this