Exploring the Nexus Between Events and Human Rights: Building Agendas for Research, Theory, and Practice

As events have proliferated, so have concerns about their impacts, utility, and consequent value. From a utilitarian standpoint, there has been more than a little concern that event costs exceed event benefits, especially when both are rigorously identified (Salgado Barandela et al., 2023; Taks et al., 2011), and that even if economically positive in aggregate, they operate as income transfers from the many who subsize them to the few who can benefit (Mules, 1998; Ziakas, 2015). From the standpoint of social ethics, there have been concerns over human rights abuses associated with events (Horne, 2018; Louw, 2012). Although popular media may attribute the fact of abuse to particular types of governments or events, evidence suggests that abuses occur winter and summer, regardless of whether governments position themselves as liberal democracies or as authoritarian autocracies.