If this is the first you have heard of ‘social justice day,’ do not feel bad. Few people have heard of it, despite it having featured on the United Nations’ calendar for nearly two decades. 

The day exists to promote social justice at national, regional and international levels. It sounds splendid – until you try to work out what it actually means. 

The UN’s websites are not much help. This year’s theme is “Renewed Commitment to Social Development and Social Justice.” Renewed from what? Did an old commitment lapse? We are not told. 

UN Habitat, the UN’s agency for urban development, explains that the day “requires a holistic approach that weaves environmental sustainability with social justice.” If you can picture what that means in practice, you are doing better than we are. 

Elsewhere, you may find references to “multi-stakeholder collaboration” and “leveraging the Global Coalition for Social Justice.” There may be meaning in there, but, if so, seventeen years of searching have not revealed it. 

But it doesn’t matter. After all, who could possibly be against social justice? Nobody! (Except Friedrich Hayek, who devoted an entire book to calling it a ‘mirage.’ But economists have never been popular at parties.) 

The phrase has been stretched so wide that it covers everything from climate policy to labour rights to indigenous land disputes. When a term means everything, it means nothing. 

None of this has dampened the UN’s enthusiasm. Every year since 2009 has brought a new theme and fresh jargon, though nobody can point to a single practical outcome the day has achieved. 

Maybe results were never really their aim. 

The UN now maintains 218 international days spread across the year. The calendar is so crowded that 21 March alone hosts five separate observances. 

Last year, the General Assembly voted unanimously to create the International Day of the Markhor, a Central Asian mountain goat. The goat itself was apparently not consulted. 

The World Day of Social Justice fits right in. It is another occasion for panels, concept notes and communiques that nobody outside the UN will ever read. 

The world does get fairer, sometimes. But that tends to happen when specific people make specific decisions in specific places, not through holistic weaving. 

But give the UN its due. It has spent nearly two decades celebrating something nobody can define, in language nobody can decipher, for an audience that never really existed. 

And, next year, they will cheerfully do it all again.