The chapters in this book discuss some of the causes, modalities, choices, and consequences of legal mobilization for human rights, including which groups claim rights, what rights they mobilize to protect, the goals they pursue, the forums they use, the obstacles they encounter, and to what degree and in what ways they are successful. The chapters include case studies of LGBTQ+ activism in authoritarian political systems, women’s engagement with the UN Security Council, the differing strategies of major NGOs as regards human rights approaches to climate change, the work of Indigenous communities resisting extractivism, and the legal empowerment of communities in a range of locations and contexts. Key themes emerging from the chapters include: the importance of the idea of human rights to communities that are dominated or marginalized; the ways in which political and societal authoritarianism shape and limit (but do not necessarily exclude) opportunities for effective mobilization; the importance of the choice of forum for seeking to bring about change; the role intermediary actors such as leading NGOs can play in innovating and reorienting strategies to address pressing challenges; the possibilities for subaltern mobilization to reshape human rights law and transform international legal understandings and concepts; and the importance of supporting genuinely community-led legal mobilization.
