Tourism as a right: a “frivolous claim” against degrowth?

Abstract

Social movements and academic sectors gather information on the negative consequences of tourism development. These consequences affect the rights of the local population, and favour global processes such as Climate Change. In light of this situation, numerous voices are calling for a slowdown in the growth of tourism. They are even calling for its degrowth. The strategy of the tourism sector has been to put forward discourses and actions aimed at preventing the application of limitations to its activity. This article focuses on an action promoted by the UNWTO: the aim to turn tourism into a human right. First, the text offers a critical analysis of what this idea is based on and the debate it has generated. It then investigates its motives. The work concludes that by legitimizing tourism as a supposed human right, it would allow the debate to centre on a conflict of rights (the right of the citizen as a tourist against the rights of the citizen as a resident of a territory or as a worker). Because a debate between rights always ends up in stalemate. This way, degrowth proposals in tourism would be neutralized.

Keywords:

• Degrowth
• right to tourism
• UNWTO
• human rights
• critical tourism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In the United Nations General Assembly 2018 sessions period, the UNWTO Framework Convention on Tourism Ethics was not approved. We speak of the Code, and not the Convention, as it has not yet been ratified by this agency at the time this article was written.

2 Human rights are those considered inherent to all human beings, with no distinction whatsoever by race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or any other type of opinion, national or social origin, economic position, birth or any other condition. These rights are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible and are made explicit in the United Nations General Assembly’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

3 “To the extent that tourism constitutes a human right, the universality of its enjoyment must be ensured, both from the economic point of view and in terms of its infrastructure” (República Oriental del Uruguay – Poder Legislativo, 2014, Art. 3).

4 Social rights aim to manage and correct social inequalities with the intention of protecting people. Labour or migration rights are forms of social rights.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jordi Gascón

Jordi Gascón is a Doctor in social anthropology from the University of Barcelona. Specialized in rural studies and critical tourism.