Martin Luther King’s famous quote needs amending in 2022

A wholesale reframe of how we fight for human rights is required. It is an illusion that there are separate departments of injustice, writes Bel Trew

You cannot raise awareness about the climate crisis in a place where protests are banned and rights activists are locked up (AP)

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Cop27 may not have been the breakthrough agreements hammered out at the end, or the pledges to finance vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters. Aside from these achievements, it was the first time where human rights and climate rights were really spoken about on a global stage as being inextricably intertwined.

We can no longer pretend that they are separate. Or, in fact, that any sort of justice can be discussed in a vacuum. It is part of a growing movement towards forming a truly integrated approach to the neverending struggle for true human rights. As in one of Martin Luther King’s most over-quoted sayings, uttered nearly six decades ago: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

This should not just be applicable to groups of people, but to types of injustice, too. You cannot claim to be working on, say, children’s rights in countries where general freedoms of expression are curtailed, you cannot claim to be working on climate rights in states where activists are in prison and being tortured. Everything is so deeply integrated. And so we should amend the quote: “Injustice in any form anywhere is a threat to justice in any form everywhere.”