I am a part of an international group of NGO leaders, activists, scholars, artists and former heads of minority rights divisions of major multilateral institutions. We represent different cultures and countries across the world, mostly from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia. Our goal is to articulate the necessary language to capture the nature of enduring sociocultural systems of oppression, marginalization and exclusion, and to conceptualize the human rights platforms that can end the practices informing those systems. In particular, we are seeking an international ban on what is known as Discrimination on the basis of Work and Descent or “DWD.” This unique type of discrimination does not fall under existing conventions, declarations and bans against racism and xenophobia, nor does DWD fit rights instruments that protect religious minorities and indigenous peoples.

DWD is linked to birth-based, hereditary systems of social exclusion that force certain groups to take on very specific occupations. For example, the Dalits in India — formerly known as “untouchables” — are forced to perform manual scavenging or burning of dead bodies. In principle, the Indian constitution bans such practices, but Dalits suffer from various modalities of exclusion and human rights violations, including retaliation for caste intermarriage. DWD creates solidarity among diverse groups around the world who also suffer from segregation in social spaces and in the use of public facilities. Such suffering recalls past racialized systems of slavery and Jim Crow segregation in the United States that targeted African Americans, who continue to face the legacies of these horrific systems of oppression.

A number of groups are currently working in solidarity to promote awareness of DWD and the need for a multilateral declaration banning it. They include, in addition to Dalits in India and in diaspora, the following groups: the Roma in Europe; the Haratin in Mauritania, who continue to face a birth-based hereditary system of intergenerational slavery; the Quilombolo, Afro-Brazilian descendants of slaves who today occupy settlements and are fighting for land rights; and the Burakumin, who descend from a feudal system in Japan, akin to caste in India, and struggle for basic rights in the face of ongoing discrimination. Those working on DWD are also attuned to the plight of women, in general, as well as nonheteronormative and nonbinary minority peoples of gender and sexual diversity.

In the West, premodern feudal systems that created hierarchical societies are contrasted with secular, constitutional and democratic societies whose citizens have individual rights based on “liberté, égalité, et fraternité,” to use the French formulation. But many countries where DWD occurs today — such as India, Japan, Brazil and many in Eastern Europe — consider themselves to be modern democratic societies.  Nonetheless, ancient discriminatory practices continue to persist and evolve in complex ways that cannot be linked to an isolated dimension of society, such as culture or religion. Furthermore, these practices cut across some of the world’s major religions.

Ideally, our group aims to create a global platform that can realize a set of universal human rights to end the practices of DWD in different parts of the world. At the heart of the effort is the search for the right language to express these sociocultural forms of injustices embedded in political economies, and also the “substance” (to use a term from the philosopher Henry Shue) of a set of positive and negative rights, such as the positive right to intermarry or the negative right to be free from discrimination. Our goal will be realized when, hopefully someday soon, the world’s multilateral institutions will formally announce a global declaration banning DWD.

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