2025 Theses Master's

Rethinking Equality in Human Rights: Conceptualizing and Measuring Economic Inequality

Putri, Triya Venisya R.

Economic inequality has emerged as one of the defining challenges of the twenty-first century, yet human rights frameworks remain inadequately equipped to address it. While international human rights law strongly prohibits discrimination and addresses horizontal inequality, it has paid limited attention to vertical inequality, which shapes access to resources, opportunities, and power.

This thesis examines whether economic inequality should be recognized as a distinct human rights concern and how it can be integrated into human rights measurement. The analysis finds that current frameworks—including the Universal Human Rights Index, UN Human Rights Indicators, the Socio-Economic Rights Fulfillment Index, and the Human Rights Measurement Initiative—focus primarily on sufficiency and non-discrimination, thereby overlooking structural disparities.

The study argues that equality must be understood both as a principle and as a substantive right, and that inequality should be treated as a standalone, cross-cutting issue within the human rights system. This requires reconceptualizing equality to encompass both horizontal and vertical dimensions, strengthening state obligations to reduce disparities, and reforming measurement tools to reflect not only sufficiency but also distributive justice and lived experiences. In doing so, the thesis contributes to bridging conceptual debates with methodological practice, advancing a more responsive human rights framework for addressing inequality.