Human Rights from Below and International Poverty Law: Comparative Aspects of the Arab Spring and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, and Their Lessons for Latin America and Mexico

Abstract

This chapter will explore the extent to which hegemonic versions of human rights discourse and practices undermine contemporary struggles for social transformation in the Global South, and the potential contributions counter-hegemonic paradigms can make in this context. My emphasis will be on comparative aspects of the Arab and Latin American “Springs,” and on the extent to which such processes—for example, the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and “equivalent” processes in Latin American contexts such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, where old regimes have been transformed, and Mexico, where they persist despite the achievements and efforts of movements such as the Zapatistas—have influenced and inspired each other in their critical approaches to dominant paradigms of human rights. This will include a more focused comparative exploration of convergences and divergences between the cases of Egypt and Mexico.

Camilo Perez-Bustillo is founding Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at the University of Dayton (Ohio) and Research Professor of Law and Human Rights; he is also a Fellow of the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty, a project of the International Social Sciences Council based at the University of Bergen in Norway, Research Associate of the program on migration and poverty at FLACSO-Guatemala, and coordinator of the secretariat of the International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement (ITCPM).