Building the human rights religion: United Nations discourse on climate change

This article studies how the normative paradigm of human rights is being constructed based on the United Nations discourse on climate change, one of the most pressing global problems of today. This paradigm is conceptualized as religion and emphasis is placed on two constructive modes: the discursive mobilization of myths, aimed at sacralizing elements of the religion of rights; and how it competes symbolically with civil religion (Rousseau). To this end, a narrative analysis of a corpus of oral interventions by the secretary general in the first four months of 2023 was carried out. As a result, this discourse conveys the myth of the biblical Exodus, updated in a climatic Exodus, which sacralizes the UN; and that, despite an apparent critique of state-centric power structures, the religion of rights is subordinated to civil religion, which raises doubts about its construction.