Progress from the Margins: Human Rights and Disability Internationalism Since the 1960s (Columbia Studies in International and Global History) - Hardcover

Van Trigt, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 023121992X ISBN 13: 9780231219921

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2026

Synopsis

The 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities differs markedly from other forms of international human rights law: it not only protects the rights of individuals but also addresses interpersonal relations and social structures. How did the convention attain this broad reach, and what does it tell us about the histories of human rights and disability law?

Progress from the Margins is an international history of the struggle for recognition of disability rights at the global level. Paul van Trigt chronicles how people with disabilities and their allies developed their own understanding of human rights, from the emergence of disability activism in the late 1960s through the negotiation of the convention. He traces the unexpected paths by which international recognition of disability human rights emerged, showing that it is not a story of linear progress but rather one of a decades-long series of discontinuous advances. Challenging accounts that criticize the limited scope of human rights in recent decades, van Trigt highlights how disabled people and their allies transformed human rights law by emphasizing social dimensions. He foregrounds the agency of disabled people from the Global South as well as the Global North, demonstrating how they shaped their own human rights. A groundbreaking account of disability internationalism, Progress from the Margins also reflects on the prospects for a world that embraces disability.

About this title

About the Author

Paul van Trigt is an assistant professor of social history at Leiden University. He is a coeditor of Marginalized Groups, Inequalities and the Post-War Welfare State: Whose Welfare? (2020).

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 023121992X
• ISBN 13: 9780231219921
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224