Empowerment before entitlement: Revisiting lived universalism

In this conclusive chapter, it is argued that the answer to whether property can genuinely enable social participation varies based on lived experiences in different locations. Regional case law analysis reveals how stories of lived property in various contexts influenced human rights adjudicators’ decisions, leading to different interpretations of property as subsistence, emancipation, rootedness, or cultural significance. It also reveals how ownership can be deemphasized to reorient discussions on the relationship with the material world in terms of access. From there, it is proposed that human rights ought to be approached as a bottom-up, dialogical process of finding shared values, emphasizing empowerment in the margins over entitlements of the privileged, lived experience over rigid rights, and location over abstract spaces. A procedural approach to human rights encourages dynamism and responsiveness in the understanding of universal truths, with the common objective of enabling meaningful social participation.