Holding governments to account for leisure rights: a collaborative research agenda

Leisure is recognized as a human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the World Leisure Organisation’s recently revised Charter for Leisure. However, it has been neglected in the UN’s mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation nation states’ compliance with human rights obligations under the terms of the relevant international treaties. Until very recently, leisure rights have also been neglected by the leisure research community. This paper documents the extent of this neglect and seeks to make a contribution to remedying it. This takes the form of an outline of a conceptual framework for assessing nation states’ performance in upholding leisure rights.