A Common Charter for Collective Struggle

The Common Charter for Collective Struggle was affirmed by ESCR-Net Members during their Global Strategy Meeting (15-19 November 2016) as a shared analysis of common conditions deepening inequalities and leading to the impoverishment and dispossession of communities around the world. The Charter provides an overview of the global forces affecting people living in both rural and urban areas in the Global South as well as North. It also contains an emerging vision for forging unity across struggles and concludes with initial points of consensus relating to shared demands for justice that might inform a global campaign or coordinated actions in line with ESCR-Net’s mission “to build a global movement to make human rights and social justice a reality for all.”

The Charter outlines some of the key characteristics of the dominant economic, social, and political models that undermine the realization of human rights. These include impoverishment and dispossession amid abundance, corporate capture of government institutions and decision-making, deepening inequality, the degradation of ecosystems and climate change, and growing repression against human rights defenders.  The movements agreed that we must globalize the struggle for the rights of the poor, marginalized, and dispossessed.