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The right to freedom from slavery. The right to movement. The right to healthcare. These rights, as described in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are typically pitched as a universal good. But are they truly universal? Or do human rights discourses reflect a particular set of priorities and values, articulated in particular times and places? This course will address this question by exploring both current debates surrounding human rights, and the real-life challenges that activists face in putting them into practice. However powerful they may sound on paper, how binding are human rights treaties in the public sphere? How can human rights advocacy prompt governments to protect women, refugees, and sexual and gender minorities? Secondly, do understandings of justice in the Global South ever differ from those articulated in the 1948 Declaration? Finally, do human rights discourses embrace all kinds of rights equally? For example, why have human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch historically prioritized civil and political rights, like freedom of religion, over economic rights, like the right to healthcare? And more broadly, what can human rights advocacy do in the global fight against capitalist exploitation? The emancipatory rhetoric of human rights, critics worry, cannot itself undo the grim realities of global inequality. In an unequal world, could human rights organizations compel corporations to pay livable wages to their employees? Or obligate governments to provide healthcare to their citizens? Drawing on global case studies ranging from pro-refugee activists along the Greece-Turkey border to anti-FGC (female genital cutting) activism in the Gambia, this course aims to provide students with the tools to think critically about rights as a vehicle for social change.