1. Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic and states’ measures to contain the virus’ spread have led to a global socio-economic crisis with effects similar to a post-war scenario. In 2020, 115 million people fell into extreme poverty and 35 million more may follow the same path in 2021.1 Moreover, the pandemic has exposed how more than 30 years of neoliberal2 hegemony and a decade of austerity measures have significantly contributed to the dismantlement of social security and public health care systems to a point that various states cannot satisfy their minimum core human rights obligations, especially in relation to social and economic rights.3 Finally, the pandemic has revealed the prevalent neoliberal market-oriented agenda behind the mainstream models of human rights and its deliberated inefficacy to achieve social justice and ‘end poverty’, functioning instead as a maintainer of the status quo.4 This moment of social and economic crisis paved the way for radically re-conceptualising human rights as a tool to achieve material equality in an international economic and political order permeated by structures that produce and maintain systems of racial, class and gender oppression.5
However, this article argues that states’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic only reaffirmed the neoliberal logic of human rights throughout the world. Most of the COVID-19 social protection policies remained within a utilitarian concept of human rights and were insufficient to effectively fulfil individuals’ human rights to social security, health, food, and, essentially, life, or to overcome the systemic issues created by years of austerity measures.6 As the United Kingdom (UK) is no exception to the trend of conservative COVID-19 social protection measures, this piece will use the country as a case study to demonstrate how the neoliberal logic of human rights affects the realisation of the right to social protection in practice. For this purpose, this article will analyse the changes to Universal Credit (UC) benefit as a social security response to the pandemic, and these changes’ human rights impact and consequences.
The article will first briefly explain how neoliberalism has co-opted the current human rights international framework and how a comprehensive rights-based approach can reverse it, focusing on social protection floors and the right to social security as crucial for understanding the dynamics of this neoliberal logic. Next, using the UK as a case study, this piece will focus on how the pandemic only exposed structural socio-economic problems in the country, and analyse, through a critical human rights perspective, the UK’s social protection measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the changes in Universal Credit (UC), and their impact on human rights. The article will end by suggesting that the UK’s response to COVID-19 not only reaffirmed the neoliberal logic of human rights, but also failed to fully comply with the state’s human rights obligations concerning social protection.
2.The co-optation of International Human Rights by Neoliberalism: focusing on social protection
2.1 Minimalist and Exceptional Human Rights
In the aftermath of the Cold War, capitalism was, transnationally the hegemonic system and international human rights became its antithesis, possibly replacing the then failed socialist system. Nevertheless, human rights’ potential of being this strong opposition was mitigated by the model of accumulation through dispossession and the plutocratic governance that capitalism promotes.7 Moreover, the ascension of neoliberalism along the phenomenon of globalisation contributed to the proliferation of capitalist values and economic growth-based models of development across the globe, helping to maintain and even increase inequality in a transnational manner.8 State-centric and ‘neutral’ human rights were not capable of countering this almost omnipresent and strong neoliberal capitalism. It is argued that neoliberalism co-opted human rights.9
As it stands, there is an unequal global economic order where Western and Westernised elites significantly influence international organisations and the decisions taken in the name of the international community and ‘good governance’.10 Hence, the resulting international human rights law (IHRL) framework works in favour of this unequal global order, not against it.11 Instead of operating as an end in itself, human rights are transformed into a minimum standard of protection that functions as a means of furthering neoliberal policies. In this logic, human rights only become more interventionist in relation to palliative emergency measures that do not affect the structure of the unequal global economic order.12 Consequently, the egalitarian social justice scope of human rights is taken away; instead, it becomes a means of maintaining the status quo.
Thus, the aforementioned utilitarian conception localises human rights issues, spatially and temporally, using the term ‘exceptions’ to name the minimal socio-economic interventions adopted in times of humanitarian crisis.13 Socio-economic rights are seen as entailing a heavy financial burden on States and as an impairment to economic growth promoted by neoliberalism.14 Consequently, the value of socio-economic rights is diminished, and they are not seen as an obligation. Instead, they are regarded as limited and exceptional second-class rights that should not interfere with economic affairs, only becoming relevant when necessary for the promotion of neoliberal policies and interests.15 By this neoliberal logic, human rights are conservative rather than transformative,16 i.e. the limit to their realisation is found when they start to threaten the unequal global economic order.17 Hence, human rights operate within a utilitarian and market-oriented neoliberal rationale under which systemic inequality is not questioned and its effects are individualised. In the next section, the article will explore how this conservative logic is entrenched into the IHRL framework of social protection.
2.2 The International Framework of Social Protection: a utilitarian perspective
The right to social security18 is fundamental to human dignity and is thus robustly guaranteed in International Human Rights Law (IHRL). It is provided for in Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 9 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Article 26 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
According to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), in its General Comment No. 19: “The right to social security encompasses the right to access and maintain benefits, whether in cash or in kind, without discrimination in order to secure protection, inter alia, from (a) lack of work-related income caused by sickness, disability, maternity, employment injury, unemployment, old age, or death of a family member; (b) unaffordable access to health care; (c) insufficient family support, particularly for children and adult dependents.”19
Nevertheless, despite its status as a human right and the consequential responsibility of states and private actors to protect, respect and fulfil it, social protection has been neglected and seriously compromised, especially amid the neoliberal order and after the 2008 financial crisis.20 Considering this gap in the implementation of the right to social security, the international community has invested in promoting social protection floors as a means of achieving a global level of social protection that allows individuals to attain an adequate standard of life.21
In this vein, the ILO initially fostered the notion of social protection floors and, in 2009, the UN launched the Social Protection Floor Initiative (SPF-I), setting the establishment of social protection floors as a priority of the organisation.22 Later, in 2012, as part of its policy of social protection extension, the ILO adopted Recommendation 202,23 which states that social security is a human right for which states have the primary responsibility and a right whose fulfilment is essential to alleviate poverty, address social inclusion and, ultimately, development. The Recommendation sets four basic social security guarantees that must be adopted considering at least a nationally defined minimum level: access to an essential set of goods and services that meets the criteria of availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality; basic income security for children; basic income security for older people; and basic income for people in active working age that is sensitive to their vulnerable situations.24 This concept of social protection floors was incorporated into the UN 2015 Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular Goals 1.3, 3.8 and 8.b (which relate to the ending of poverty, the ensuring of healthy lives and the promotion of decent work, respectively).25
Despite their apparent social justice scope, social protection floors work within the utilitarian rationale of socio-economic rights set by the neoliberal human rights, according to which the realisation of those rights incurs financial expenses that should be kept minimal so as not to impair economic growth.26 Moreover, these initiatives contain an individualised focus that naturalises the unequal capitalist order: they take the attention away from pre-distribution, accumulation and dispossession, and they focus directly on individuals’ and families’ spheres of responsibility – thus, individualising systemic problems.27 Also, social protection floors work within the neoliberal minimalist conception of socio-economic rights. They seek to ensure the minimum social security guarantee and transform deprived people into consumers, rather than confront the structural factors that maintain the production of poverty.28 They do not question how people become poor; they only guarantee individuals’ right to social security to the extent necessary to foment economic growth.29 Thus, the right to social security, as a socio-economic right, is perceived as a concession; or worse still, a secondary-order duty. Likewise, individuals are not seen as right-holders per se but as occasional beneficiaries.
2.3 The Need for a Comprehensive Rights-based Approach to Social Protection
The COVID-19 crisis only exacerbated systemic socio-economic issues deeply rooted in the unjust global economic order.30 What are perceived by some governments and international institutions as immediate effects of the pandemic remediable by ‘exceptional’ socio-economic interventions are the amplified manifestation of chronic socio-economic systemic issues.31
After years of implementing ‘structural adjustment’ measures promoting the defunding of public services, healthcare, social security and deregulation of different sectors of the labour market, it is not surprising that poverty and inequality have increased throughout all countries, especially amongst the marginalised racial, class and gender groups of their populations.32 In this regard, while some may argue that world poverty has reduced since the 1990s, others draw attention to the fact that counting the unprecedented phenomenon of China in the statistics raises the overall number of people above the poverty line, hence, masking the fact that world poverty has actually not decreased.33 Moreover, it is important to consider that the World Bank’s international poverty line34 contains an economicist and consumption-based conception of a minimum standard of life which does not adequately reflect the phenomenon of qualitative and quantitative world poverty.35 Still, even if one understands that neoliberal policies have led to an alleviation of individual poverty, they do not address the structural issue that impairs the effective fulfilment of human rights and the achievement of social justice: inequality.36 Instead, it is possible to say that neoliberalism foments inequality with its model of economic growth based on dispossession and commodification of social and economic rights.37
In this way, the pandemic’s grave social and economic repercussions highlighted social security’s relevance and prompted a ‘rediscovery of social protection’,38 thus offering an opportunity to radically re-think human rights. Within a rights-based approach that faces structural issues, human rights could be re-conceived to protect the most vulnerable from inequality’s social ills. In this regard, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights report “Looking back to look ahead”,39 contends that there is an urgent need to adopt a comprehensive rights-based approach to social protection that breaks away from the dominant neoliberal logic of human rights.
Fundamentally, a rights-based approach to social protection understands the individual as a right-holder and states and private actors as duty-bearers.40 They have the obligation to respect and protect the right to social security by preventing third parties under their influence from interfering with it and refraining from taking any measure that might impair its equal enjoyment by all individuals. Moreover, the CESCR establishes that states are obliged to use all measures at their disposal while considering their available resources, to progressively realise the right to social security through facilitating, promoting and providing access to the enjoyment of this right.41 Therefore, this approach transforms social protection from a state concession dependent on national and international economic interests into a universal right to which individuals are always entitled as human beings.
Nevertheless, in order to achieve a concept of social protection that realises human rights’ potential as a social justice tool, it is necessary to go beyond this mainstream rights-based approach to social protection and adopt a comprehensive one. The sole focus on redistribution of the current social protection floor initiatives prevents challenging the main obstacle for the realisation of socio-economic and individual rights, which is structural inequality.42 Consequently, even though social protection floors might be beneficial to an economically vulnerable individual at first, the poverty in which this individual finds him or herself will only be reproduced in the long-term.43 There is a need to leave behind the conservative ‘minimum within a minimum standard’44 of human rights interventions and start addressing the root causes of poverty.
This is not to say that the idea of social protection floors should be discarded. Instead, this article argues that social protection policies should focus on protecting and promoting the right to social security centred on setting maximum goals instead of focusing on minimum core obligations. The paradigm of social protection should not be of mere subsistence if social protection floors are to be means of achieving equality and a dignified life for all. Moreover, while providing such robust assistance to extremely vulnerable individuals, human rights should also be used to challenge the unequal global order and combat structural issues that are generating or maintaining those vulnerabilities.45 In the case of COVID-19, besides the adoption of emergency social protection measures, attention should have been given to systemic factors that were already impairing the realisation of the right to social security long before the pandemic. Nevertheless, the former UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights pointed out, “[r]ather than resolving to address the inadequacy of their public health and social protection systems in response to the pandemic, many Governments have seen COVID-19 as a passing challenge to be endured, ignoring the indispensability of large-scale economic and social restructuring”.46
In this way, this article contends that a comprehensive rights-based approach to social protection that is aimed at social justice must tackle inequality and reverse the factors that produce and reproduce it. Therefore, this human rights approach should also oppose the neoliberal individualistic and market-oriented rationale that feeds inequality by promoting the commodification of socio-economic rights47 and the detachment of these rights from the idea of the welfare state.48
Finally, a truly comprehensive rights-based approach to social protection should conceive poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon that impacts different groups of people differently.49 The proposed approach must be intersectional, taking into consideration the systems of gender, class and racial oppression that mutually reinforce each other and aggravate the impacts of poverty on already marginalised groups, such as migrants and indigenous populations.50 Thus, the effective realisation of the right to social security must be done through a needs-sensitive manner that identifies and adequately responds to the specific needs of different types of individuals that require social protection.
3. The UK’s Social Protection Response to COVID-19: Remaining within the Neoliberal Paradigm
3.1 A Critical Assessment of the UK’s Universal Credit Changes in Response to the Pandemic
This article argues that, as in other countries under the neoliberal order, the pandemic was not the root cause of important social and economic problems in the UK; rather, it only exacerbated what was already a worrying scenario about the fulfilment of the right to social security. Since 2010, the UK’s social security system has been targeted by austerity measures supposedly established in response to the 2008 financial crisis.51 Nevertheless, a decade later and in spite of having a prosperous economy, poverty remains prevalent in the country.52 Despite being the 5th largest economy in the world and having low levels of unemployment, in 2017, one-fifth of the British population was living in poverty, four million of which were more than 50% below the poverty line.53 In addition, due to a defective social security system, social and economic vulnerability in the UK was aggravated by the pandemic. For instance, destitution was a problem even before the pandemic – it was already an increasing trend54 – but the pandemic has worsened it.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the UK government adopted temporary social protection measures.55 This section focuses on the measures adopted in relation to the UC – a means-tested benefit available for working-age individuals that was adopted in 2013 and that encompasses six former benefits.56
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, fearing a rise in destitution, in April 2020 the British government increased the basic rate of the UC benefit by £20 a week, hence bringing the total benefit rate to £94 a week. However, it only suspended the onerous requirements for claiming UC until July 2020.57 The importance of the UC in the pandemic crisis was quickly confirmed. Within the first two weeks of the 2020 Spring lockdown, UC claims had already reached a level 10 times higher than usual and, by July 2021, 5.9 million people were on UC, compared to 3 million in March 2020 prior to the pandemic.58 Even though the increase of £20 in UC’s basic rate and the Working Tax Credits were essential to protecting 700,000 individuals from destitution,59 the changes made in response to COVID-19 remained inadequate.
According to the Trade Union Congress (TUC),60 £94 a week – equivalent to one-sixth of the average weekly pay in the UK – is still insufficient. Moreover, as recently stated by the government, the UC increase is only temporary and will end in October 2021, which would be the biggest cut in social security since World War II.61 The end of UC’s increase will risk bringing 500,000 people into poverty.62 If the raise is taken away along with the termination of the CJRS programmed in September 2021, there is a risk of an increase in the level of unemployment among low-paid workers63 who will not have an adequate source of minimum basic income.
Furthermore, some of the UC’s main issues remain unresolved. There is still an unjustifiable five-week delay to receive the first benefit payment, which might lead to some people contracting debt to get an advanced payment if they cannot afford to live without the benefit for five weeks.64 Moreover, the UC’s cap limit, whose primary justification is to incentivise beneficiaries to work, was kept amid a pandemic that paralysed various sectors of the economy and led the government to adopt measures to protect employment;65 it seems contradictory, to say the least. The government also ignores the fact that 40% of the UC’s claimants are already employed.66 Thus, employment is not a solution to alleviate poverty alone.67
Furthermore, the UC continues to exclude vulnerable migrants based on the No Resource to Public Funds (NRPF) status, which has been imposed as a condition for granting migrants the legal right to live or work in the UK since 2012. These migrants pay their taxes, thus financing the social security system, but are still prevented from accessing social security benefits.68 Many of the destitute in the UK are migrants who work in poorly paid jobs, and their employers do not take part in the CJRS or are informal workers who do not have access to CJRS.69 Therefore, their only viable solution is to seek UC, but they are still denied access to it due to their NRPF status. Consequently, the choice between staying home to save lives and guaranteeing their own survival became a reality to these NRPF migrants, leading many to continue to work in essential or informal jobs.70
3.2 Human Rights Impacts: Maintaining the Bare Minimum
The UK’s changes to the UC as a social protection measure before the COVID-19 crisis remained within the neoliberal logic that permeates human rights, rather than a comprehensive rights-based approach as proposed by this piece. This is because the alterations to the UC, as the social protection floors, remained within the bare minimum standard necessary to keep individuals out of destitution (and with some purchasing power). It provided the increase necessary to ‘save the wretched of the earth from the worst suffering’71 while protecting the unequal economic order in the UK.
Although some might blame the minimal changes to the UC on a lack of economic resources to finance more ambitious measures, the social protection policies adopted in response to the pandemic make it clear that, if governments want or need to, they will allocate considerable resources to invest in social protection.72 Besides, the profit-led rationale characteristic of neoliberalism becomes more evident when instead of keeping the minimal measures that allowed 1% of its population to escape destitution and finally ending the 2016 freeze,73 the government plans to revoke the weekly £20 increase now that daily life appears to be going back to ‘normal’.
The £20 increase of the UC basic rate already made a significant difference compared to the even more inadequate previous rate, but it still did not promote substantial changes.74 Nevertheless, the social protection measure remains insufficient vis-à-vis human rights standards. Instead of promoting equality and a dignified life, the UC’s aim is to prevent destitution. This is in line with a trend the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights had already identified in his visit to the country in 2018. According to him, since 2010, there has been a reduction in social security benefits despite the economic recovery of the British economy post-2008, hence leading to a social safety net that is incapable of providing individuals with the means to evade poverty.75
Besides maintaining the minimalist and utilitarian conception of human rights, especially concerning socio-economic rights interventions, it is possible to argue that the way the UK dealt with its new social protection measures might have violated the right to social security. In this respect, this article contends that the termination of the £20 increase in UC’s basic rate can be considered a regressive measure that negatively impacts the right to social security, especially considering that, with the increase’s revoking, 500,000 people risk falling below the poverty line.76 Individuals have stated that the UC’s basic rate increase improved their quality of life by providing the means to avoid making hard choices – for instance, whether to use the money to buy food or to pay for heating.77 Even though the UC’s increase is insufficient to allow individuals to evade poverty (rather, it only prevents destitution), the social security situation in the UK was such that even this conservative measure made a significant change. Its removal will lead to an unjustified fall in people’s quality of life and impede people’s right to social security. Moreover, it is possible to say that the persistence of the exclusion of migrants from accessing the UC due to their NRPF status constitutes discrimination based on nationality, which violates states’ obligation to use their available resources to provide access to social security in a non-discriminatory manner.78
4. Conclusion
Despite the important window of opportunity created by the pandemic, states did not use the crisis to radically re-think human rights as a social justice tool. Instead, the measures adopted by most of them only reaffirmed the neoliberal logic of human rights. The UK is no exception to this trend. Dignified life was not the aim of the government measures. The pandemic did not change the rationale behind the UK’s human rights and social security framework. The UK’s social protection system is still restricted and inadequate, providing the ‘minimum within the minimum’. The changes in the UC were insufficient, and the government still plans to reverse the adopted measures in September 2021, potentially putting thousands of people into destitution and violating their right to social security. Once again, the focus is on the benefit to the economy, so the problems are borne by the individual. As long as the economy recovers, individuals and their rights are left behind. It does not matter that people will have to choose between heating and food. It is their job to search for employment now that the economy is recovering again.
[1] United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR), “OHCHR | Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty Calls for the Creation of a Global Fund for Social Protection during Interactive Dialogue with the Human Rights Council” (OHCHR.org, 30 June 2021) <https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=27241&LangID=E> accessed 12 August 2021.
[2] Wendy Brown describes neoliberalism ‘as a normative order of reason developed over three decades into a widely and deeply disseminated governing rationality, neoliberalism transmogrifies every human domain and endeavour, along with the humans themselves, according to a specific image of the economic. All conduct is economic conduct: all spheres of existence are framed and measured by economic terms and metrics, even when those spheres are not directly monetized. In neoliberal reason and in domains governed by it, we are only ever homo oeconomicus.’ Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Zone Books 2015) 9–10.
[3] UNHCR ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights’ (July 2021) A/HRC/47/36. See also Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), ‘Statement on the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ (17 April 2020) E/C.12/2020/1.
[4] John Linarelli, Margot E Salomon and Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah, “Human Rights: Between the Radical and the Subverted,” The Misery of International Law: Confrontations with Injustice in the Global Economy (Oxford University Press 2018) <https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198753957.001.0001/oso-9780198753957> accessed 27 May 2021, 270.
[5] Margot Salomon, “Long Read | Reconstituting the Unequal Global System after Pandemic – a Cautionary Tale of International Law” (LSE Thinks_,_ 11 June 2020) <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/covid19/2020/06/11/long-read-the-pandemic-is-an-opportunity-to-reconstitute-the-unequal-global-system/> accessed 27 May 2021. See also Francisco-José Quintana and Justina Uriburu, ‘Modest International Law: COVID-19, International Legal Responses, and Depoliticization’ (2020) 114 (4) American Journal of International Law, 687.
[6] UNHRC, Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: Looking Back to Look Ahead (September 2020), 4-5.
[7] Linarelli, Salomon & Sornarajah (n 4) 230-232.
[8] ibid 228-229.
[9] Samuel Moyn, “Human Rights in the Neoliberal Maelstrom”, Not Enough Human Rights in an Unequal World (Harvard University Press 2018) <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/londonschoolecons/detail.action?docID=5317537> accessed 27 May 2021. See also n 3.
[10] Antony Anghie, “The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Postcolonial Realities” (2006) 27 (5) Third World Quarterly 739 https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590600780011 accessed 29 January 2021, 12.
[11] Moyn (n 9).
[12] ibid 194.
[13] Salomon (n 5).
[14] Diane Desierto, “The Myth and Mayhem of ‘Build Back Better’: Human Rights Decision-Making and Human Dignity Imperatives in COVID-19” (EJIL: Talk!__, 25 May 2020) <https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-myth-and-mayhem-of-build-back-better-human-rights-decision-making-as-the-human-dignity-imperative-in-covid-19/> accessed May 27, 2021.
[15] Linarelli, Salomon & Sornarajah (n 4) 249-250.
[16] The term conservative is used in this article as opposed to subversive, in the sense that human rights, within the neoliberal logic, function to conserve the status quo.
[17] Moyn (n 9).
[18] This article uses a broad definition of social security, or, social protection, in accordance with the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth: “(…) social protection would be composed of a set of actions financed by the State that would: i) support individuals and families in dealing with vulnerabilities along their lifecycle; ii) help especially the poor and vulnerable groups to have resilience to respond to crisis and shocks, including social-environmental risks; iii) favor social inclusion and support families, particularly the most vulnerable to poverty, in building up (and keeping) their human and social capital through smoothing of income and consumption and ensuring their access to basic goods and services; and iv) stimulate productive inclusion through the development of capabilities, skills, rights and opportunities for the poor, marginalized and excluded groups, as well as low income workers from the formal sector in order to guarantee that everyone benefits from the economic growth process and gets engaged in it.” Rhadika Lal and others, “’Global South’ innovations in social protection” (2012) 4 The Pespective of the World Review 37 https://www.socialprotection.org/discover/publications/global-south-innovations-social-protection. Accessed October 23, 2021. See: “International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG)” (socialprotection.org) https://socialprotection.org/learn/glossary/what-is-social-protection/international-policy-centre-inclusive-growth-ipc-ig accessed 23 October 2021.
[19] CESCR ‘General Comment No. 19: The right to social security (Art. 9 of the Covenant)’ (4 February 2008) E/C.12/GC/19 <https://www.refworld.org/docid/47b17b5b39c.html> accessed 16 August 2021.
[20] UNHRC (n 6).
[21] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), “OHCHR | Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70: 30 Articles on 30 Articles – Article 22” (Ohchr.org_,_ 2019) <https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23962&LangID=E> accessed 12 July 2021.
[22] United Nations Development Group (UNDG), “ILO | Social Protection Platform” (http://www.social-protection.org) <https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/ShowProject.action?id=2767> accessed 15 August 2021.
[23] ILO Recommendation R202: Social Protection Floors Recommendation (101st Conference Session Geneva 14 June 2012).
[24] ibid, para. 5.
[25] ILO, “Relevant SDG Targets Related to Social Protection Floor” (www.ilo.org__, 6 June 2017) <https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/dw4sd/themes/sp-floor/WCMS_558585/lang–en/index.htm#T1.3> accessed 1 August 2021.
[26] Diane Desierto, “The Myth and Mayhem of ‘Build Back Better’: Human Rights Decision-Making and Human Dignity Imperatives in COVID-19” (EJIL: Talk!, 25 May 2020) <https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-myth-and-mayhem-of-build-back-better-human-rights-decision-making-as-the-human-dignity-imperative-in-covid-19/> accessed 27 May 2021.
[27] Stephen Devereux and J Allister McGregor, “Transforming Social Protection: Human Wellbeing and Social Justice” (2014) 26 The European Journal of Development Research 296, 298. See also David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press 2005), 76.
[28] Lena Lavinas as cited in Linarelli, Salomon & Sornarajah (n 4) 253.
[29] ibid, 251-254. See also Devereux & McGregor (n 27) 298.
[30] Salomon (n 5).
[31] ibid.
[32] UNHRC (n 6).
[33] Robert Hunter Wade (2008, p. 382, 387) as cited in Margot E Salomon, “Why Should It Matter That Others Have More? Poverty, Inequality, and the Potential of International Human Rights Law” (2011) 37 Review of International Studies 2137 <http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/39547/1/Why_should_it_matter_that_others_have_more_Poverty,_inequality,_and_the_potential_of_international_human_rights_law(LSERO).pdf> accessed 10 September 2021, 2.
[34] The current parameter of the World Bank’s international poverty line is US$ 1,90-per-day. World Bank, “COVID-19 to Add as Many as 150 Million Extreme Poor by 2021” (World Bank, 7 October 2020) <https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-million-extreme-poor-by-2021> accessed 15 September 2021.
[35] UNHRC ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights: The parlous state of poverty eradication’ (19 November 2020) A/HRC/44/40 <https://undocs.org/A/HRC/44/40> accessed 27 May 2021, 4-6.
[36] Samuel Moyn, ‘A Powerless Companion: Human Rights in the Age of Neoliberalism’ (2014) 77 Law & Contemp Probs 147, 168.
[37] Linarelli, Salomon & Sornarajah (n 4) 234-235. See also UNHRC ‘The Parlous State of Poverty Eradication’ (n 35) 15-16.
[38] UNHRC (n 6) 5.
[39] ibid.
[40] ibid 2.
[41] CESCR (n 18).
[42] Linarelli, Salomon & Sornarajah (n 4) 254.
[43] ibid 269.
[44] Moyn, “Human Rights in the Neoliberal Maelstrom” (n 9) 200.
[45] Linarelli, Salomon & Sornarajah (n 4) 269-270.
[46] UNHRC, ‘The Parlous State of Poverty Eradication’ (n 34) 9.
[47] Obiora C Okafor, “Solidarity Key to Post COVID-19 Response” (OpenGlobalRights, 28 April 2020) <https://www.openglobalrights.org/solidarity-key-to-post-covid-19-response/> accessed 27 May 2021.
[48] Moyn (n 9) 193-194.
[49] UNHRC (n 6).
[50] ibid.
[51] UNHRC, ‘Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’ (23 April 2019) A/HRC/41/39/Add.1, 8-9.
[52] ibid.
[53] ibid 3.
[54] Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “Destitution in the UK 2020 – Summary” (2020) <https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/destitution-uk-2020> accessed 15 August 2021.
[55] Richard Machin, “COVID-19 and the Temporary Transformation of the UK Social Security System” [2021] Critical Social Policy <https://10.1177/0261018320986793> accessed 11 August 2021, 5.
[56] ibid 2.
[57] Anjum Klair, “Our Social Security Net Is Failing during the Covid-19 Crisis” (_www.tuc.org._uk, 3 August 2020) <https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/our-social-security-net-failing-during-covid-19-crisis> accessed 15 August 2021.
[58] UK Department for Work and Pensions, “Universal Credit Statistics, 29 April 2013 to 8 July 2021” (_GOV._UK, 17 August 2021) <https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-8-july-2021/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-8-july-2021> accessed 20 August 2021.
[59] Legatum Institute, “Briefing: Poverty during the Covid-19 Crisis” (2020) <https://li.com/reports/poverty-during-the-covid-19-crisis/> accessed 12 August 2021, 2.
[60] Anjum Klair (n 46).
[61] Adam Forrest, “UK Heading for Biggest Cut to Social Security since WWII, Think Tank Warns” (The Independent, 23 July 2021) <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/universal-credit-benefits-cut-b1888940.html> accessed 20 August 2021.
[62] Lucy Bannister, “#KeepTheLifeline: Urging the Government Not to Cut Universal Credit” (JRF, 18 January 2021) <https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/keepthelifeline-urging-government-not-cut-universal-credit> accessed 15 August 2021.
[63]Alex Chapman, “Not out of the Woods Yet” (New Economics Foundation, 2 August 2021) <https://neweconomics.org/2021/08/still-too-soon-for-the-furlough-end-game> accessed 15 August 2021.
[64] Trussel Trust, “Lockdown, Lifelines and the Long Haul Ahead: The Impact of Covid-19 on Food Banks in the Trussell Trust Network” (2021) <https://www.trusselltrust.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-food-banks-report.pdf> accessed 16 August 2021, 14.
[65] Anjum Klair, “Universal Credit Cut Will Hit Millions of Working Families and Key Workers” (_www.tuc.org._uk, 23 July 2021) <https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/universal-credit-cut-will-hit-millions-working-families-and-key-workers> accessed 20 August 2021.
[66] ibid.
[67] UNHRC (n 50) 8.
[68] Rosie Sourbut, “State of Hunger: It’s Not Right That Growing Numbers of Migrants without Access to Benefits Are Being Forced to Turn to Food Banks” (The Trussell Trust, 19 July 2021) <https://www.trusselltrust.org/2021/07/19/state-of-hunger-its-not-right-that-growing-numbers-of-migrants-without-access-to-benefits-are-being-forced-to-turn-to-food-banks/> accessed 15 August 2021
[69] ibid.
[70] Klair (n 56).
[71] Samuel Moyn, ‘A Powerless Companion: Human Rights in the Age of Neoliberalism’ (2014) 77 Law & Contemp Probs 147, 162.
[72] UNHRC (n 6) 7.
[73] Anjum Klair, “Fixing the Safety Net: Next Steps in the Economic Response to Coronavirus” (_www.tuc.org._uk, 6 April 2020) <https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/fixing-safety-net-next-steps-economic-response-coronavirus> accessed 20 August 2021.
[74] ibid.
[75] UNHRC (n 50) 8-9.
[76] Bannister (n 61).
[77] Emily Spoor, “The Real Impact of Removing the Universal Credit Uplift” (The Trussell Trust, 8 February 2021) <https://www.trusselltrust.org/2021/02/08/the-real-impact-of-removing-the-universal-credit-uplift/> accessed 16 August 2021.
[78] CESCR (n 18). See also Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, “Our Joint Letter to the Prime Minister – It’s Time to Scrap NRPF” (Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, 28 May 2020) <https://www.jcwi.org.uk/our-joint-letter-to-the-prime-minister-its-time-to-scrap-nrpf> accessed 20 August 2021.
Heloísa Pinheiro de Castro Simão
LLB (University of São Paulo) ’19, LLM Human Rights (LSE) ’21 and Human Rights Law Notes Editor of the LSE Law Review Summer Board 2021