Front Burner - A hinge point for human rights

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Over 75 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established and signed by the newly formed United Nations after the atrocities of the Second World War to create a roadmap that establishes that every single person, regardless of who they are or where they’re from, has inalienable, inherent rights that the world must protect. But if you’ve been paying attention to the news at all lately, reality couldn’t seem further from that idea. Alex Neve is an international human rights lawyer and the former secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. He’s delivering this year’s Massey Lecture, broken into five parts, titled Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World. In it he goes through the massive challenges we face today and the things he’s learned from talking to people and bearing witness to human rights abuses from around the world. He also explores why the rights of some seem to take precedence over others. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, everyone. I'm Jamie Poisson. Over 75 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established, a document signed by the newly formed United Nations after the atrocities of the Second World War to create a roadmap that establishes that establishes that every. Every single person, regardless of who they are or where they're from, has inalienable inherent rights that the world must protect. But if you've been paying attention to the news at all lately, reality couldn't seem further from that idea. We've covered almost all of it on our show, the crumbling world order, increasing authoritarianism, a worsening climate crisis, and the constant loss of innocent life in places like Gaza and Sudan.

Alex Neve is an international human rights lawyer and the former Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. He's delivering this year's Massey Lecture broken into five parts, titled Universal, Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World. In it, he goes through the massive challenges that we face today and the things that he's learned from talking to people and bearing witness to human rights abuses from around the world. And he explores why the rights of some seem to take precedence over others. They are coming out this week on the CBC Ideas feed where you can listen to them in full. And while he says that this isn't universality's finest hour, he lays out how it could be

and what Canada could do about it. Alex, hi, thank you so much for coming on to Frontburner. It's great to be with you, Jamie. It's really, really good to have you. So even though your lecture series is full of hope, you definitely don't mince words about the challenging times that we are in. I've heard people say that we are entering a time of might overwrite, meaning those with the strength to seize power and resources will simply do so. And just how would you define the main forces behind why things are the way that they are right now? Well, there's no question. As you pointed out in the introduction, these are deeply troubling times, not to suggest that we've necessarily had years or decades of a golden age when it comes to human rights in our world. There's obviously always been serious shortcomings. There have been moments of grievous human rights calamity. But there's no question that these last five plus years,

feel like on so many fronts, we've just been moving in exactly the wrong direction, that huge crises we face, like the climate crises, aren't being tackled in the meaningful way they should be as a human rights crisis. And then on so many basic levels, taking action to stop mass atrocities, guarding against the rise of hate, racism, and sexism in our world, etc, that everywhere we look, it feels like that we're losing ground and that's obviously not what we want. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine,

the scale and speed of civilian harm remain alarmingly high. When Melissa slammed into Jamaica, it was with incredibly violent winds gussing up to 320 kilometers an hour. A super typhoon has made landfall in the Philippines, meaning the sustained winds are in excess of 240 kilometers an hour. The Gaza of maps and memories is gone. The Gaza famine is the world's famine. It is a famine that asks, but what did you do? Millions of people in Sudan are grappling with starvation after a nearly two-year brutal civil war.

Now, the UN Human Rights Council has unanimously approved a formal investigation into last month's massacre in the Sudanese city of Elphi. Fasher, following the city's takeover by the paramilitary rapid support forces. So obviously one hopes that there's a clear answer to the question, why? How is it that we are seeing those fundamental principles crumble? And there isn't one answer to that. It obviously plays out in a whole variety of different ways. But certainly, there's, I think, a sense of indifference and powerlessness. that has taken hold and that the forces that are against us, whether they are geopolitical

forces, whether they are economic forces, have the upper hand. Their strategies have obviously taken precedence. They've become masterminds at using digital technology and the social media environment as a means of eroding human rights protections and advancing violence and injustice. And so I think the key message that I'm trying to convey, and I've been really hearing a strong response from audiences, is we have to seize back our power. We have to overcome that indifference and that silence and that powerlessness that we all feel, and recognize that we do have immense power, but we have to seize it and exercise that power and do so collectively and in solidarity.

We stand today at the threshold of a great event, both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind, this universal declaration of human rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written, it was right after the Second World War, another time of violence and upheaval. But in the six years following, we then see the establishment of also the UN, the idea of international. justice, the Geneva and genocide conventions, and the refugee convention. And I just, what parallels and differences do you see between that moment and today? I think looking back at those remarkable years

immediately after World War II, you know, the carnage of the Second World War, which had been beyond anything the world had ever seen, the horrors of understanding what the Holocaust had been all about, again, something unprecedented. And it could have been a moment in history, therefore, when, you know, as people, as governments picked up the pieces, that we moved in exactly the opposite direction of where things did move, that borders were erected higher than ever, that governments became very inward-looking, more defensive, more offensive in how they were treating each other. But instead, governments recognized that this was time for a sense of global community to be forged. And so the United Nations gets established. And then this incredible lawmaking exercise outlying, well, defining and outlawing genocide, establishing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this grand promise to people everywhere that all human beings are equal when it comes to human rights. and then all of these specific treaties dealing with the laws of war and refugee protection, all in just six years.

This Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote responsibility. for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures. No, obviously that's not exactly the same environment we are in now, but there's a lot of things that are very similar in the sense of the feeling of us facing immense global threats, of there being pervasive violence and division and suspicion and fear that crosses society and crosses the world, that we're

that we're really grappling with sort of understanding our propensity for cruelty and atrocities. So let's remind ourselves that, you know, when we previously were faced with those challenges, we knew that the answer had to be in doubling down and committing ourselves to our common humanity, to embracing the extent to which we all know that life is sacred and we yearn for fair. and freedom, and we did so by crafting and embarking on the universal human rights journey. We lost our way over the decades that followed. Some may say we never really got underway on that journey, but this is the time to renew that and commit to it like never before. You talk about geopolitics as one of the things that most often undermines inherent and

inalienable rights. I think about these conflicts from Gaza to Sudan. to Ukraine, they have political and economic superpowers or backers attached to them, right? Whether it's America's support of Israel, the United Arab Emirates funding of the RSF in Sudan or Russia and its allies in China and North Korea. And how do you think these institutions are doing when it comes to applying real pressure on the powers behind the wars that are killing thousands and displacing millions of people around the world right now? I think it's easy and very tempting to blame. the UN, blame the Security Council, blame the UN as a whole, blame specific bodies and agencies within the UN, as having failed to ensure that the action that's needed to stop genocide in Gaza, to end Russia's blatantly unlawful invasion of Ukraine, to do something about

this horrific civil war that no one's paying attention to in the Sudan, we blame the UN. But of course, the UN is only as good or as bad as the decisions, the policies, the input of the states who show up at the UN. And clearly, top of the list, the big problem we have is that the Security Council, the arguably the most significant body within the UN, the only one that has binding powers to make legally enforceable decisions, is hamstrung by the blatantly politicized double standard vetoes that are exercised, particularly by the United States, Russia and China. So we do. We do have a huge challenge there. Does that mean we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, there's nothing we can do, let's walk away. It will always be imperfect. And the UN,

because of the decisions being made by, for instance, states that exercise its vetoes will always fall short. Well, we can't afford to do that. And one of the things I stress in the final of the five lectures this year where I'm kind of starting to sketch out an agenda for Canada going forward is I would like to see Canada get much more seriously engaged on the question of UN reform and particularly Security Council reform. Yes, it's a very high mountain to climb. And we're not going to solve that in a month or two or even a year or two. But there's too much at stake for us just to sit back and say, well, it's important. It's woefully imperfect when it comes to Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, but so be it. That's not okay. You've got to be an underdog that always overdelivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough.

Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca. Are your pipes ready for a deep freeze? You can take action to help protect your home. home from extreme weather. Discover prevention tips that can help you be climate ready at keep it intact.c.a. Let's talk about Canada a little more now then and where Canada fits into all of this. So in your lectures, you talk about Canada's ambivalent role in those years following

the Second World War and how we initially abstained from the vote on the UN's Declaration of Human Rights. And just tell me a little bit more about Canada's stance at the time and how did it change over time? I think we have a tendency to immediately assume the very best of Canada when it comes to human rights. Certainly human rights on the world stage where the human rights good guys, we've always been leading the way. And so I think it is instructive to go back to those years at the very beginning when the international human rights system was coming together. And we don't have a proud beginning. With respect to the genocide convention, we were one of the states that worked, for instance, to have language about cultural genocide removed from the

treaty, succeeded in doing so. Those words don't appear in the treaty. Obviously, Canada was feeling vulnerable about our treatment of indigenous peoples. With respect to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which notably, a Canadian law professor was part of the drafting committee, but not doing so on behalf of the government, in the very first vote that came up, as you've noted in the question. And this isn't the final vote. We did get our act together by the time the final vote came around. But we didn't vote, yes. We abstained. We didn't vote, no, but we abstained. And there were a number of reasons for doing so. Part was Canada felt that federalism was a complicating factor here and the Universal Declaration dealt with issues that were

both the federal government's responsibility and the provincial and territorial governments and us, maybe we shouldn't really support it. It's too complicated. But then when you look more closely at some of the parliamentary records at the time and ministerial correspondence, it went much deeper than that. Canada was concerned, for instance, that the terms of the Universal Declaration might mean that status Indians would have to be given the right to vote, that the Universal Declaration would have limited our ability to intern Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, that the provisions dealing with education, for instance, might oblige the government to have to fund higher education for those who couldn't afford it. The list goes on.

There's seven or eight or nine serious substantive concerns being raised by the prime minister at the time, Louis Saint Laurent, by our Minister of External Relations, who was Lester Pearson at the time. So you really get this sense that Canada wasn't. overly convinced that going down this road of a universal declaration of a universal declaration of human rights was something we wanted to pursue. And I think that's something we need to keep in mind when we then come to think about, you know, who are we now? Are we this kind of reliable, consistently reliable human rights champion? No, we've, we've had a very wobbly record from the very beginning. So let's not be too smug and self-satisfied that we are the human

rights good guys. And let's face the fact that we have shortcomings and that we haven't always been leading the way. And that therefore is considerable work we need to do to get ourselves pointed in that direction. Well, earlier this year, you wrote or you co-wrote an op-ed for the Globe and Mail about the Carney government's silence on the U.S.'s attacks on the international criminal court for their warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Golan. Since then, Carney has said that he would arrest Netanyahu on war crimes if he came to Canada. But tell me more about what you make of our current government's approach to international justice and human rights. I have a number of areas of serious concern,

and that's a good one to begin with is our current position with regard to things happening at the International Criminal Court in particular in connection with that very high-profile case dealing with the situation in Israel and Palestine. The International Criminal Court, once again the target of the Trump administration. The U.S. State Department announced new sanctions on four ICC officials targeting two judges, including Nicola Agilou from France and two prosecutors.

So in addition to the kind of wobbly ambivalence, we've heard not just from Minister Carney's government, but it was the same under Justin Trudeau about, you know, how firmly we were on side and, you know, how enthusiastically we would enforce arrest warrants, for instance, against Benjamin Netanyahu. More recently, the very serious concern that has come up is that the U.S. government has been imposing sanctions on court personnel because, you know, I mean, the U.S. has never been a big fan of the International Criminal Court under Donald Trump. They are an implacable foe, and they're doing everything they can to undermine and weaken the court's work, in particular with respect to the

Israel-Palestine case, but not only. And other governments, dozens of other governments around the world have spoken out in concern about this imposition of sanctions against court personnel who are simply doing their job to uphold international justice. Canada has not joined any of those joint statements. There's a number of them over the last few months now. Even when the sanctions went so far as to include a Canadian, a Canadian judge who serves on the International Criminal Court, Kimberly Prost, is now one of those who is sanctioned. and even then Canada remains silent. And that's particularly troubling given that we were one of the leading champions of the creation and establishment of the court in the first place.

In the late 1990s, when Lloyd Axworthy was the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and to see us have retreated from a position of leading the charge in doing everything we could to ensure that this body would be created, then would be strong, to now remaining silent when powerful forces try to undermine and weaken the court's work, I think is something that should trouble all of us. Do you have some understanding or maybe even any time for the argument that. we're in a bit of a tricky relationship with the White House right now that could be impacting our government's willingness to speak up or take a more active rule in what's happening around the world? There's no question that many of the areas of concern right now, whether it be what I've just been talking about regarding the International Criminal Court or the fact that we continue to refuse to suspend the disgraceful safe third country agreement we have with the United States right now, which which makes it impossible. nearly impossible for refugees who have a lot to be fearful of in Donald Trump's America

to be able to cross the border and seek protection in Canada instead. And there are other examples, but these ways in which we are refraining from taking principled stands about international human rights issues arising in the context of our relationship with the United States. Obviously, you know, the top explanation for that is these difficult times. We've got a lot of concerns about what's happening on the economic front, the trade front, et cetera. Does that mean that we should give up on human rights? I would say exactly the opposite. And here we go. Once again, things are tense and difficult because of the contentious relationship with the United States. So what's the first thing we give up on? Human

rights. We'll just kind of relegate those to the back seat right now and worry about them at some later time. That's never been the recipe for success ever. And it's time to learn that lesson. Yes, there may be some difficult moments if we started to stand up a little bit more to Donald Trump around some of these human rights issues, but we would find common cause with other countries. We would find that there would be perhaps benefits that we don't even imagine that would start to flow from that. But when we give up on human rights, all we're doing, is allowing injustice and really ultimately insecurity and instability to deepen.

Despite everything that we've talked about just now, you actually do bring a lot of optimism to your lectures. And as you mentioned during this conversation a few times, you think that there is much that can and I think is currently being done. You mentioned, I think, changes at the UN level. But before we go today, I wonder if you, could take me through what other kinds of prescriptions and actions you're thinking about or advocating for that could help us come out of this time of conflict and uncertainty and into a

more just and humane world. So I'll begin by saying, absolutely, I do feel hope. And actually, I think even the experience of delivering the lectures has deepened and fortified that hope because the engagement that I've had this incredible opportunity to have with Canadians right across the country in audiences, you know, very large and sometimes very small and intimate, has consistently demonstrated the level of concern and engagement and willingness that is everywhere in this country to be agents of change, to be playing whatever role is. possible in bringing the universal promise to life and ensuring that it really soars. And I find that very encouraging.

In the lectures towards the end, I do lay out an agenda, very much focused on Canada, although I think many of much of the recommendations also resonate with things that need to happen globally. And the top line messages that I'm conveying, there are things such as, you know, what I've been saying repeatedly here, as truly needing to start to put human rights first, the need to embrace equality as central to our understanding of the universality of human rights, the importance of having meaningful policies and resources in place that protect and uphold the role of a front line on the ground, human rights defenders, upholding the importance of peaceful protest, taking steps to more meaningfully strengthen mechanisms of justice and accountability to ensure that when human rights are violated and abused, that there are consequences. But maybe most fundamentally, what I end with, the sixth high-level recommendation

is one that doesn't necessarily so much speak to governments and to corporations and the elites. It speaks to all of us. And that is the importance of doing whatever we can to believe in and champion human rights. The importance of coming out of silence, breaking through the silence, doesn't mean we all need to grab the megaphone and be leading the next rally on Parliament Hill. But all of us have ways. and it may sometimes be in places very close to home. You know, we in our neighborhoods, in our workplace, in our schools, but to be part of this global chorus that is going to put human rights first,

that is going to ensure that we are truly universal, consistently universal in how we understand human rights, and really seizing that power. That's where it's going to come from. human rights change throughout history has always come from the people. And this is a moment for the people to rise up and claim that power. Alex Neve, thank you very much for this. Thank you for your thoughtful and important lecture series. Thank you. Thank you for their conversation. All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Puso, and thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

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