Right Against Rights

Understanding the Rise of Anti-Rights Movements in Latin America

RagR explores the growth of right-wing movements that challenge democratic norms and threaten human rights in the region. With an interdisciplinary lens, the project investigates the ideologies and dynamics behind these trends to inform strategies for protecting democratic resilience and civil liberties.
What Drives This Project

Our Approach to Understanding Disorder

The Right Against Rights project investigates the global backlash against hard-won rights for marginalized communities—including women, BIPOC groups, LGBT+ individuals, immigrants, and victims of historical injustices. As these groups have achieved legal recognition and protection, right-wing actors have mobilized to undermine these gains, threatening democratic institutions and social stability. Our project explores how these “right-against-rights” movements create disorder, deepen polarization, and escalate violence, especially across Latin America. We aim to generate knowledge and strategies to counteract these threats and help protect inclusive democratic progress.
Our Approach to Understanding Disorder

Crossing disciplines and borders to understand global disorder

We take an interdisciplinary, cross-regional approach to understand the rise and impact of right-against-rights movements. By combining history, law, sociology, gender, and area studies, we move beyond narrow, Global North views to uncover the complex roots of democratic erosion. Our collaborations generate insights and strategies to counter these threats.
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A Cross-Disciplinary Lens

We integrate history, law, sociology, gender, and area studies to understand how anti-rights movements emerge and take hold.
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Beyond Traditional Frameworks

Our approach challenges narrow, Global North political models by bridging the social sciences and humanities.
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Research for Action

We work with scholars, institutions, and communities to generate insights and tools that help protect democratic systems.

Publications

Key Publications and Research Outputs

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The Right Against Rights
ESRC Policy – Reducing Extremists’ Threats to Democracy in Latin America: Chile Pilot Project
Report sets foundation for research and policies against hate speech, using AI + expert coding for accurate, adaptable, and resilient democratic tools.
The Right Against Rights
Fifty Years of Human Rights in Chile
This chapter examines Chilean right-wing movements that undermine rights and democracy, using framejacking, violence, and social media, and stresses addressing their root causes.
The Right Against Rights
The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements
The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Social Movements surveys theories, dynamics, and key movements, offering a comprehensive reference on protest and politics in the region.
The Right Against Rights
Uncivil Movements: The Armed Right Wing and Democracy in Latin America
Leigh Payne shows how armed right-wing groups in Latin America use social movement tactics, threats, and myths to destabilize democracies and expand their political power.
The Right Against Rights
The Right against Rights in Latin America
Anti-rights movements in Latin America are rising, blocking gender, peace, and justice advances. A new wave, unlike past ones, demands urgent study for its power and global impact.
Where Accountability Takes Root

A Latin American lens on a global phenomenon

While the right-against-rights backlash is global, our core research focuses on Latin America—a region where recent rights gains have been both profound and precarious. Countries across the continent have seen sharp polarization and conflict linked to anti-rights mobilizations. By focusing on Latin America, we gain insights into how these movements evolve in fragile democracies and what strategies can help sustain inclusive political orders. These findings are applicable to other regions facing similar challenges, making our work both regionally grounded and globally relevant.

The People Behind the Project

A collaborative network of scholars across Latin America

The project is a partnership between leading researchers committed to defending democratic values and rights-based systems. It is conducted in collaboration with:
Universidad del rosario

Dr. Sandra Botero

Colombia
Pontificia universidad catolica de chile

Dr. Simón Escoffier

Chile
universidad nacional de tucuman

Dr. Gabriel Pereira

Argentina
Our team

Meet the Team Behind the Work for Justice

Different researchers, practitioners, and advocates from across the globe have contributed to the research projects, united by a shared commitment to human rights and accountability. With expertise spanning law, sociology, political science, and community engagement, we work collaboratively to support victims, produce impactful research, and drive systemic change.

Professor Leigh Payne

Professor of Sociology at the Latin American Centre and a member of St Antony’s College Governing Body. Her research focuses on building human rights cultures in the Americas by addressing past abuses and ongoing violations, with an emphasis on victims’ rights to truth, justice, and remedy. Her work explores transitional justice, justice from below, and contentious coexistence. She teaches Latin American sociology and human rights, and supervises graduate research in related areas, welcoming applications in these fields.

Gabriel Pereira

Professor of Human Rights and Law and Society at the Faculty of Law of the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, as well as a researcher at CONICET in Argentina. He is also affiliated to the Latin American Centre of the University of Oxford. His research focuses on topics related to human rights, transitional justice, and the judicialization of politics in Latin America. He holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Oxford and an MSc in Democracy and Democratisation from University College London. He is also the founder of the Human Rights Organisation Andhes.

Julia Zulver

Wallenberg Academy Fellow at the Swedish Defence University, where she researches feminist responses to patriarchal backlash in Colombia, Mexico, and El Salvador. She previously held a Marie Skłodowska‑Curie Fellowship at UNAM and Oxford. Julia holds a DPhil and MPhil from the University of Oxford and is the author of High-Risk Feminism in Colombia (2022), winner of the Conflict Research Society’s Book of the Year. She co-edited The Right Against Rights in Latin America (2023) and works with Ladysmith and as an expert in gender-based asylum cases.

Karina Ansolabehere

Researcher at the Institute for Legal Research (IIJ) at UNAM. My areas of interest include legal policy, human rights, sociology of law, and political theory. Concerned with the role of legal institutions in protecting and defending the population in contexts of violence, I am currently developing two lines of research that combine these areas of interest: justice systems in response to serious human rights violations, and the socio-legal dynamics of violence and serious human rights violations.

Kiran Stallone

Senior Researcher specializing in gendered violence, backlash, and civilian protection in conflict settings. She holds a PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley and an MSc in Latin American Studies from Oxford. Her work has appeared in top journals and in the 2025 book Brave Women, co-edited with Julia Zulver. Kiran also consults on gender issues for UN agencies and NGOs, and is currently a Senior Researcher at Ladysmith and a 2025–2026 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard.

Nancy Tapias Torrado

Assistant Professor of Human Rights at the University of Waterloo. She holds a PhD in Sociology (Oxford) and is a trained human rights lawyer. Her research centers on Indigenous women’s leadership, mobilization, and responses to violence, climate change, and justice. Nancy has worked with Amnesty International, taught law at PUJ, and held postdoctoral roles at Concordia and UQAM. She also consults for the UN and NGOs, and has supported Colombian women human rights defenders in exile.

Odilon Caldeira Neto

Brazilian historian interested in topics related to violent extremism, political history, right-wing extremism, neo-fascism, and debates on the relationship between past and present (and memory). He is associate professor of Contemporary History in the Department of History and a permanent professor in the Postgraduate Program in History at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. Coordinator and Leader of the Research Group Observatório da Extrema Direita. He holds a PhD in History from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, with an internship (junior fellow scholarship) at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.

Sandra Botero

Associate Professor of Political Science at Universidad del Rosario, Colombia. She is the author of Courts that Matter: Activists, Judges, and the Politics of Rights Enforcement (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and co-editor with Daniel Brinks and Ezequiel González-Ocantos of the book The Limits of Judicialization: From Progress to Backlash in Latin American Politics (Cambridge University Press 2022).

Simón Escoffier

Political sociologist focused on social movements, citizenship, and civil society in Latin America. He is Assistant Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a member of its Centre for Global Change. His recent books include Mobilizing at the Urban Margins and The Right against Rights in Latin America (2023). Simón holds a DPhil from Oxford and an MSc from LSE, and has advised the Chilean government and the IDB on inclusive policy.

© 2026 Leigh A. Payne. All rights reserved.

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