Human rights language and its absence in UN development visions. A discursive examination of the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda and the character of human rights language

Abstract

In this article I argue that human rights language is closely connected to the practice of human rights. Within a contemporary UN context, I examine the discursive struggles present in the Sustainable Development Agenda of 2015. I find that human rights language is absent in this Agenda and discuss reasons for this absence. I conclude that the human rights language is a legitimizing, performative language that contributes to the construction of human rights as truths. Due to the vague nature of human rights language, it is applicable for different purposes by different agents. However, I argue that a use of human rights language in this context could have been not only relevant, but that the language would have brought more legitimacy and weight to the Agenda.