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This book fundamentally reinterprets the history of international human rights in the post-1945 era by documenting how pivotal the Global South was for their breakthrough. In stark contrast to other contemporary human rights historians who have focused almost exclusively on the 1940s and the 1970s - heavily privileging Western agency - Steven L. B. Jensen convincingly argues that it was in the 1960s that universal human rights had their breakthrough. This is a ground-breaking work that places race and religion at the center of these developments and focuses on a core group of states who led the human rights breakthrough, namely Jamaica, Liberia, Ghana, and the Philippines. They transformed the norms upon which the international community today is built. Their efforts in the 1960s post-colonial moment laid the foundation - in profound and surprising ways - for the so-called human rights revolution in the 1970s, when Western activists and states began to embrace human rights

This volume explores the long-neglected history of social rights from the Middle Ages to the present day. It situates this history within perennial struggles over obligation, while probing the relationship of social rights to questions of religion, race, gender, class, empire and globalisation.

Intro -- Contents -- Notes on Contributors -- List of Figures -- Histories of Global Inequality: Introduction -- Scraping By -- Why This Book? -- The Sudden Emergence of a New Concept? -- The Deeper History of Global Inequality -- Inequality Within and Beyond the Nation State -- Inequality Research Today -- New Approaches to Global Inequality Research -- Inequality in the History of Economic and Political Thought -- Historicizing Piketty: The Fall and Rise of Inequality Economics -- The Centrality of Distribution in Classical Economics -- Pillar I: The Theory of Marginal Productivity -- Pillar II: The Consumerist Turn of Utility Theory -- Pillar III: Pareto Optimality -- Conclusions -- The Demise of the Radical Critique of Economic Inequality in Western Political Thought -- Introduction -- The Radical Republican Critique of Economic Inequality -- The Ascendance of the Liberal Paradigm -- Radical Republicanism and the Concept of Inequality -- Products Before People: How Inequality Was Sidelined by Gross National Product -- Introduction -- Numbers in Politics -- Kuznets's Approach to National Income -- Keynes and the War -- A Permanent Fix? -- Post-War Challenges and the End of Inequality -- Conclusion -- Inequality by Numbers: The Making of a Global Political Issue? -- Inequality Knowledge -- Global Insecurities: The Western Middle Class and Global Inequality -- From the Global Justice Movement to Occupy Wall Street -- Problematising the 99% Vision of Inequality -- Inequality, Discrimination and Human Rights -- Inequality and Post-War International Organization: Discrimination, the World Social Situation and the United Nations, 1948-1957 -- Discrimination as a United Nations Policy Mandate, 1948-1957 -- Inequality and the United Nations World Social Situation Reports, 1948-1957 -- Conclusion.

Chapter 1 Histories of Global Inequality: Introduction, Christian Olaf Christiansen & Steven L. B. Jensen -- Inequality in the History of Economic and Political Thought -- Chapter 2 Historicizing Piketty: The Fall and Rise of Inequality Economics, Eli Cook -- Chapter 3 The Demise of the Radical Critique of Economic Inequality in Western Political Thought, Michael J. Thompson -- Chapter 4 Products before People - How Inequality was Sidelined by Gross National Product, Philipp Lepenies -- Chapter 5 Inequality by Numbers: The Making of a Global Political Issue, Pedro Ramos Pinto -- Inequality, Discrimination and Human Rights -- Chapter 6 Inequality and Post-war International Organisation: Discrimination, the World Social Situation and the United Nations, 1948-1957, Steven L. B. Jensen -- Chapter 7: "A pragmatic compromise between the ideal and the realistic": Debates over human rights, global distributive justice and minimum core obligations in the 1980s, Julia Dehm -- Chapter 8 Inequality in Global Disability Policies since the 1970s, Paul van Trigt -- Chapter 9 Protection and Abuse: The Conundrum of Global Gender Inequality, Sally L. Kitch -- Inequality in an Age of Global Capitalism -- Chapter 10 Brewing Inequalities: Kenya's Smallholder Tea Farmers and the Developmentalist State in the Late-Colonial and Early-Independence Era, Muey Saeteurn -- Chapter 11 Challenging Global Inequality in Streets and Supermarkets: Fair trade Activism since the 1960s, Peter van Dam -- Chapter 12 Partnerships Against Global Poverty: When 'Inclusive Capitalism' Entered the United Nations, Christian Olaf Christiansen -- Chapter 13 Third World Inc.: Notes from the Frontiers of Global Capital, Ravinder Kaur --