This special issue illuminates the multifaceted and sometimes surprising relationships between social justice, human rights, and the sustainability of traditional arts. Through six case studies across four continents, it reveals how vibrant and viable traditional arts practices can be formidable instruments in the pursuit of social justice and human rights, but can also work against them. It shows how human rights violations and social injustices threaten the sustainability of traditional arts, but can also counterintuitively underpin them; and how cultural sustainability interventions may have beneficial, but also complex, ramifications for human rights and social justice. Contributing to critical scholarship on the role of vibrant cultural practices in equitable, inclusive, and thriving societies, this special issue offers new insights into the important ethical, methodological, and practical implications of its vast topic.