Human Rights+: Recognising Institutional Displacement and Harm Attribution Gaps

This paper introduces Human Rights+ (HR+), a conceptual framework designed to recognise and analyse forms of harm that remain unaddressed by existing human rights and institutional accountability systems. The framework focuses on three interrelated concepts: Institutional Displacement, Harm Attribution Gaps, and Invisible Harm. Institutional Displacement describes situations in which individuals are involuntarily pushed out of social, legal, or support systems due to institutional interpretation, procedural escalation, or rigid classification rather than intentional wrongdoing. Harm Attribution Gaps explain why such harms remain unrecognised when they cannot be mapped onto established legal or administrative categories, preventing responsibility attribution and protection mechanisms from activating. When these conditions intersect, harm becomes effectively invisible despite real consequences. Human Rights+ is proposed as an extension mechanism rather than a replacement of existing human rights frameworks. It treats rights systems as adaptive and expandable, capable of evolving in response to emerging forms of harm produced by modern institutional and sociotechnical systems. The paper provides a structured theoretical model intended to support future research, policy analysis, and institutional reform aimed at improving harm recognition and rights-based protection.