Welcome to the Post-Inclusion Era: Where Human Rights Are Optional
I always thought inclusion was the finish line. I celebrated representation. I helped write policies. I ran workshops and campaigns.
And for a while, I could see it working. Doors opened. Conversations changed. The word belonging became a business buzzword.
But somewhere between political backslides, rising extremism, and digital tribalism, something shifted. Now, inclusion feels less like progress and more like a memory.
I believe we are entering a post-inclusion era. And in this era, human rights are starting to look negotiable again.
The False Sense of Arrival
We’ve spent decades building laws and language around fairness. Equal pay. Anti-discrimination. Gender balance.
But progress made a lot of us comfortable, made us feel like it was inevitable, and this made us careless. While we celebrated milestones, the foundation was quietly cracking.
Across Europe, the rollback has begun and continues:
Hungary banned LGBTQ+ education in schools.
France and the Netherlands tightened restrictions on asylum and religious expression.
The UK debates deportation flights like it’s routine public policy.
AI systems discriminate in hiring, policing, and healthcare, bias now coded into our institutions.
Meanwhile, global conflicts and cultural divides have reignited fear, nationalism, and othering.
Inclusion Was Never the End Goal
Inclusion was supposed to be the means, not the end. A tool for recognizing humanity, not a trophy for those who say the right words.
Corporate culture turned inclusion into a PR exercise. Governments turned it into compliance. And activists, exhausted, turned it into survival.
But when your right to exist is questioned, because of who you love, where you’re from, or what you believe, inclusion becomes secondary. Recognition comes first.
Before we can talk about belonging, we need to make sure people are still allowed to be.
The New Fight: From Belonging to Being
This isn’t just about identity politics. It’s about existence politics.
We’re living through a moment when rights once considered untouchable, reproductive rights, asylum rights, freedom of expression, are back on the negotiating table. And that means the inclusion conversation needs to evolve.
It’s not enough to ask who’s missing from the table. We have to ask who’s being locked out of the building.
A Call to Arms (and Hearts)
If we want to reclaim the progress we’ve made, we can’t wait for policy to catch up. We have to act like inclusion still matters, especially when it feels risky to do so.
That means:
Calling out dehumanization: in the media, in politics, in boardrooms.
Refusing neutrality: silence is just compliance with whoever holds power.
Building cross-movement solidarity: because women’s rights, refugee rights, the rights of persons of color, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability rights are the same fight under different names.
The old fight was for fairness. The new fight is for survival.
The Hope That’s Left
I have hope. Because every time someone tells their story, every time an ally steps up, every time a community refuses to disappear, inclusion lives on.
P.S. This isn’t a eulogy for inclusion, it’s a rallying cry. If you’re feeling disillusioned or burnt out, remember: the progress we made wasn’t an accident. It was built by people who refused to give up. Now it’s our turn. Keep practicing inclusion, even and especially when the world makes it hard.
