Progress from the Margins: Human Rights and Disability Internationalism Since the 1960s

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Paul van Trigt

Progress from the Margins

Human Rights and Disability Internationalism Since the 1960s

Paul van Trigt

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English

Columbia University Press
06 January 2026

History: specific events & topics; Disability: social aspects; Human rights; Civil rights & citizenship; Disability & the law

Series: Columbia Studies in International and Global History

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.

By: Paul van Trigt
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780231219938
ISBN 10: 0231219938
Series: Columbia Studies in International and Global History
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 06 January 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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).

Reviews for Progress from the Margins: Human Rights and Disability Internationalism Since the 1960s

A compelling, hugely original account of the multiple prehistories, each with their own zigzag trajectories, ironies, and subplots, that eventually converged to make the marvelous achievement of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006 possible. Deep research, sharp insights, and captivating portraits of self-advocates and allies across the globe. -- Dagmar Herzog, author of <i>The Question of Unworthy Life: Eugenics and Germany’s Twentieth Century</i> This excellent study goes far beyond merely placing the struggle for disability rights in the broader story of human rights. The two transformed each other, Progress from the Margins shows. As good at capturing individual characters as institutional and legal developments, Paul van Trigt writes in a nonteleological mode, establishing a persuasive account of moral and legal change across crucial decades in the last fifty years. -- Samuel Moyn, author of <i>The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History</i>