RIGHTS-BASED ECONOMIES: DISRUPTING NEOLIBERALISM

After the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic devastation it has wrought, it became evident to a far larger group of people that many prevailing economic systems and policies were largely disconnected from any productive social function and were, in fact, working in opposition to the needs of communities contending with extreme social and economic inequality, climate catastrophe, corporate abuses and a lack of justice. Fundamentally, Covid-19 laid bare the vulnerability of our institutions and exposed the underlying weakness of neoliberal economic policies, calling for a reckoning (Ahmed et al. 2022).

Neoliberalism has failed people and the planet. Neoliberalism is, as we understand it, a political project that represents the continuity of an exclusive way of policy-making and implementation, run by an elite (Harvey 2005). Neoliberalism is based on the myth that the economic market has the power and ability to regulate itself and correct related distortions without much, if any, state intervention. It pursues endless growth and profit and relies on tools such as programmatic targeting, austerity and retrenchment (Boesten 2007). Neoliberal economic models and neoclassical economics clash with a rights-based, feminist and sustainability vision (Winch, Forkert & Davison 2019). Under neoliberalism there is no space for human rights, whether civil and political – or, indeed, social, economic and cultural rights – as they are all secondary to the proposed virtues of a self-regulating market, which exists only by virtue of the fact that states use their legislative and regulatory powers on behalf of large corporations. This was evident in the context of the Covid-19 vaccine distribution2 between countries in the Global North and the Global South.

Governments in the Global North also protect the interests of the multinational companies that are headquartered there and are often owned and financed via tax havens (Leite & Kohonen 2019). This dynamic reinforces a neocolonial cycle of North– South exploitation and is reflected in the pattern of extractivism and exploitation that fuels the climate crisis (Cirefice & Sullivan 2019). Youth in these and other communities struggle to find meaningful livelihoods because of the lack of public investment, incomes or employment prospects (Sukarieh & Tannock 2008).