UN's Declaration of Human Rights is over 75 years old — time for a refresh
IDEAS examines the UN's Declaration of Human Rights and looks to the future in a five-part series
How do we articulate the kind of future in which we want to live?
In a five-part series, recorded at the Stratford Festival, IDEAS explores efforts to imagine new possibilities and make them real by focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Born out of the devastation of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration sought to set the world on a new course. The rights it sought to uphold have evolved over the decades since — at times widely upheld, at others eroded and denied.
Each panel charts the state of some of these human rights through the years since 1948.
What kind of new world were these rights supposed to create? What do they mean in the 21st century, and can their ideals be reimagined in the service of new utopias? What's the relationship between rights and realities, between calling for a more just world — and actually bringing it into being?
1.The Right to Security: Article 3
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person."
The right to "life, liberty, and security of person" is one of the most important — but most contested — rights we have.
In this panel, Nahlah Ayed and guests explore what the right to security could mean, and how it could transform our world.
Guests in this episode:
Azeezah Kanji is a legal academic and journalist based in Toronto. Her work focuses on anti-colonial and anti-racist approaches to international law, state violence, and the "war on terror."
Leilani Farha is the Global Director of The Shift, an international human rights organization focused on housing, finance, and climate. A former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, she has worked in communities and with governments around the world on housing issues. She also co-hosts the podcast PUSHBACK Talks.
Cindy Ewing is an assistant professor of history at the University of Toronto. Her work traces the history of the International Bill of Human Rights through the lens of decolonization and the Cold War. She has written on the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the drafting of constitutional rights in South Asia, the right to national self-determination, and the rights of minorities.
2. The Right to Privacy: Article 12
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation."
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation." It's a right with profound implications for our lives in the 21st century, from digital surveillance to sexuality and autonomy.
Guests in this episode:
Ron Deibert is Professor of Political Science and the founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory focusing on research, development, and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security.
Lex Gill is a lawyer practicing in the areas of human rights, state liability and corporate accountability, based in Montréal. She is a fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and teaches at McGill University's Faculty of Law.
Michael Lynk is professor emeritus of law at Western University, in London, Ontario, where he taught labour law, constitutional law and international and Canadian human rights law. In 2016, he was selected as the 7th UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory. During his six year term, he delivered regular human rights reports to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the UN General Assembly in New York.
3. The Rights to Leave, to Return, and to Seek Refuge: Articles 13 and 14
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State… Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country…Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." We also have a right to seek "asylum from persecution" in other countries. At a time when more people are forcibly displaced than at any other point in recorded history, Nahlah Ayed and her guests discuss where the rights to leave, return and seek refuge came from, and what they could mean today.
Guests in this episode:
Petra Molnar is a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in border technologies. She is the author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, published in May 2024.
Jamie Chai Yun Liew is a writer, lawyer and professor. Her debut novel Dandelion won the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award 2018 and was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2023. Her book, Ghost Citizens, examines the ways people are made foreign, stateless and not kin.
Rema Jamous Imseis is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Representative to Canada. She has been with the United Nations since 2003 and has held a variety of positions in political, legal and humanitarian affairs. Prior to joining the UN, Ms. Jamous practiced law in Toronto.
4. The Rights to Free Thought and Free Expression: Articles 18 and 19
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country…Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
The guarantee to freedom of thought, as well as the freedom to express those thoughts, is especially resonant in our own time. In his novel 1984, Orwell proposed a future of "thought-crime" and in many places that day has arrived; freedom of opinion is under even greater threat — social media everywhere exposes and places individuals under threat for what they say and do.
Guests in this episode:
James Turk is director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University. His work focuses on promoting expressive freedom and the public's right to know which underpin democracy and social justice.
Noura Al-Jizawi is a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Formerly she was a prominent figure in the Syrian uprising and a survivor of abduction, detention, and torture. She conducts research on the intersection of technology, human rights, and global security.
Kagiso Lesego Molope is an Indigenous South African novelist and playwright of the San people. She is the author of four novels that centre the history and perspectives of Indigenous South Africans.
5. Rights for the Future
If the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were rewritten today, what rights would we add to strive for a more just world?
In the final panel, Nahlah Ayed and guests look beyond our fractured present and try to imagine what new rights we need for our own millennium.
Guests in this episode:
Astra Taylor is a filmmaker and writer, and the 2023 CBC Massey lecturer. She is also the co-founder of The Debt Collective. Among other books she is the author of The Age of Insecurity, Democracy May Not Exist But We'll Miss It When It's Gone, and most recently, co-author of Solidarity.
Lindsay Borrows is a lawyer, author, and professor at Queen's University Faculty of Law. Her work supports Indigenous communities to revitalize and apply their own legal traditions to promote environmental stewardship. She is a member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation.
Ketty Nivyabandi is a global human rights activist and advocate, she holds in-depth and lived expertise on asylum and displacement, human rights in political transitions, freedom of expression and civic space and the intersections of gender, race, democracy, and human rights. Her work as Secretary General for Amnesty International Canada's English-Speaking section is rooted in peoplepower, public accountability, and a feminist, decolonial approach to human rights.
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