The UN Human Rights Office has called for human rights guardrails in the economic sphere, also known as a Human Rights Economy. In this system, businesses may pursue profit only after respecting the human rights of others. The Human Rights Economy marks a cruicial step by recognizing that profit must be contingent on the fulfillment of human rights; but for too long the economy has been a human rights-free zone and the cruelty imposed by an economy without human rights guardrails has become so normalized that we have come to accept what are best described as everyday atrocities.

Hunger, homelessness, cancer caused by factory fumes, lives erased by climate-supercharged storms: these fates rarely make the war crimes docket, yet are just as deadly—and avoidable. To confront these acts, we need to call them for what they are: everyday atrocities. Human rights law treats economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights as indivisible, yet international criminal law has largely cordoned off the word “atrocity” for armed conflicts. International criminal law has thus downgraded slow-burn disasters created by government and corporate choices that disregard the rights of others (see, for example, Shabas on atrocity crimes here). When armed conflict-related cruelty qualifies as shocking, lead-laden water and environmental losses are filed under unfortunate, but acceptable externalities. The result is a double standard that has normalized suffering inflicted by powerful actors and corporations.

Courts have so far pursued only the most overt, violent manifestations, leaving many long-term and structural everyday atrocities unaddressed. Too often, governments and businesses are not merely negligent but deliberately adopt policies that exploit regulatory loopholes, harm the public, and prioritize return to investors over the rights of other human beings.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau envisioned a social contract based on the common good, recognizing rights, duties, and mutual protections. This means an “equilibrium” where rights are not boundless, nor are they commodities that can be freely bought or expanded with economic power. Rousseau reminds us of checks and balances: your freedom ends where another’s begins.

Everyday atrocities breed combustible inequality; when abused communities finally reach their breaking point, unrest follows. Rousseau reminded us that the rights of the wealthy and powerful have limits within a social contract. Neither corporations nor governments can expand their rights to infringe on others’ well-being, and neither can place profit above the common good of others. Governments and businesses must treat the rule of law, including the respect for human rights, as part of their fiduciary duty. Directors of companies can maximize returns for shareholders only after they have respected the rule of law, including the human rights of others.

Human rights cannot be a fig leaf after dividends; it must be the precondition for doing business. We can keep pretending that profit and principle are separate ledgers, with the increase in death tolls from climate change and pollution a monthly occurrence. The global community must reconsider its economic approach.

The problem lies with the neoclassical fixation on “profit-maximization” that disregards damages inflicted on entire communities. Profit maximization itself need not be the problem; maximizing profit by off-loading costs onto others is. We shrug off harms and “unfreedoms” to others as collateral damage for a robust economy that works for some, but ordinary taxpayers ultimately foot the bill through soaring healthcare costs and environmental remediation, while corporations that caused the damage walk away with the profits.

If “atrocity” is only reserved for bullets and bombs, we excuse “profit maximization” that kills by slower means. To restore the balance between economic growth and collective well-being and build a Human Rights Economy, we must recognize human rights guardrails in our legal, political and economic systems. Our systems must treat any profit that depends on avoidable suffering as illegitimate — and finally put an end to everyday atrocities.