Ideas - Brave New Worlds: Rights for the Future, Part Five

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

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 episode of our five-part series, IDEAS looks beyond our fractured present and tries to imagine what new rights we need for our own millennium.

Hey there, I'm Kathleen Goltar and I have a confession to make. I am a true crime fanatic. I devour books and films and most of all true crime podcasts. But sometimes I just want to know more. I want to go deeper. And that's where my podcast Crime Story comes in. Every week I go behind the scenes with the creators of the best in true crime. I chat with the host of Scamanda, Teacher's Pet, Bone Valley, the list goes on. For the insider scoop, find Crime Story in your podcast app. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad, and welcome to a live taping of Ide ideas at the Stratford Festival. How do we create a better world?

How do we articulate the kind of future we want to live in? This year, a little more than 75 years after the passing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations, we're talking about that document and how well it stands up to the test of time. All this week, we've been asking, what kind of new world were these rights supposed to create? 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? Today's panel is the fifth and final in the series, and we're considering a set of rights that don't yet exist.

We're calling them rights for the future. I'm joined today by filmmaker and writer Astra Taylor, immediately to my right here, I'm joined today by filmmaker and writer Astra Taylor, immediately to my right here, the 2023 CBC Massey lecturer and 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. Astra Taylor. solidarity. Astrid Taylor. 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 Nahuas First Nation. Lindsay Borrows. At the very far right, not really, but to my extreme right, that still doesn't come out right,et and activist Keri Neviabandi, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada's English speaking section. Her work is rooted in people power, public accountability, and a feminist decolonial approach to human rights. Keri is over here. We've had a number of lawyers, activists, writers, and historians come onto the stage over the last few days talking about rights. And in a way, this conversation is meant to be a coda, but also

a way of looking forward from the conversations we've been having. But I do want to start first with some questions about the past. And I want you each to think about a moment that you've observed in your lifetime that signals to you most urgently that we need to reimagine the rights that each of us should have. I'll start with you, Keri. I'll start perhaps with a conversation that I had with one of my daughters watching the events that were

unfolding around the world. And the question she asked me was, Mom, isn't there a mom of the world? And I think that question is so important, because what it asks is, is there no rule? Are there no rules? Is there no accountability? Is there no responsibility? Is there no one in charge in the world to make the world right? And that moved me deeply because it says to me that children can see, that young people can see, that our world right now is in desperate need of some direction. I think it reaffirms again the question around who enforces human rights. And this is precisely, perhaps, where we need to think the most beyond rights. It's really who enforces them and who makes them happen.

And so who is that mom? A moment of wisdom that speaks of the wisdom of your child, but also speaks to the kind of mother you must be. Lindsay, same question. Thank you. For me, that question brings to mind my grandmother, Jean Borrows, who lives on our reserve a couple hours north of here on Georgian Bay. And she's someone who loves spiders. And her home and outside the home is just filled with spider webs. And something I noticed, because she loves them,

and something I noticed when I go there is depending on what way the light is striking those spider webs, you see them or you don't see them. And in my work over the past decade, I've similarly noticed that very few people see the Indigenous legal orders that are at play here in Canada that have an important way of approaching rights and how we be in good relationship with one another. And just nearby us here at the closest reserve to Stratford is Deshkan Zibing, or the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. And in 2018, they ratified their own constitution. And this is something First Nations governments are doing across the country is writing down their own constitutions that have been oral for so long. And within the Deshkan Zibing constitution, they have this lovely provision in it that says that they recognize

as equal citizens, the rocks, the plants, the winged ones, the crawling ones, the fish, and the waters. And so here we have this incredible example of who holds rights, but also who can we look to to understand how we enact rights, how we uphold rights. And in a way, it's Mother Earth is the message that is coming through here. So we have these beautiful human mothers. We have these Earth mothers. And I'm interested in how we can find the light to shine on these different webs that surround us. Thank you very much, Lindsay. Astra? Where I sit, so I live actually in North Carolina in the United States,

and we are being subjected to a constant sort of slow drip of the erosion of rights. And so when I think about the idea of rights for the future, I'm very worried. There's an attack on sort of liberal human rights that we should have been able to take for granted happening. And these attacks are quite patriarchal. You're both talking about mothers. We are seeing attacks on reproductive rights, discussions in the United States today, for example, about ending no-fault divorce, in other words, making it harder to exit a marriage, attacks on the ability to express your gender and sexuality. We're also seeing attacks on the right to protest, the criminalization of

dissent, attacks on basic civil liberties, also basic political rights like the right to vote. And it's becoming a kind of constant experience, right, of a sort of new shock that our rights cannot be taken for granted. So I think I'm so happy to be on this panel where we can both think in this expansive, imaginative way about what rights we want and what we want the future to become, but also be honest about the incredible serious threats we're facing right now. And we'll do all of that. I mean, in the little time that we have. But we do want to focus on the future.

But I want to linger just a few more moments in the past and look at the UDHR, just briefly, and ask each of you what you think is kind of its major weakness is, in terms of the aspirational promises that it contained. Kedi. Do we get to talk about the strength? Absolutely we do. There'll be a different question about that. Yes, I think, well, the UDHR was not legally binding.

That's one thing, right? Of course, it gave birth to many covenants which are binding, but the UDHR in itself was aspirational and not binding. And perhaps that is one of its greatest gaps, but also its opportunities. I say that looking back now, 75 years later. Otherwise, I think it was an extraordinary visionary document in itself. But it is that. It was aspirational. Lindsay?

Yeah, I think a challenge that I see as well is that, you know, these are words that are written down. And until we can find a way to actualize those words, either through ceremony or through our linguistic practices, maybe through song, through these layered tools of how it is that we actually carry obligations or responsibilities inside of us, it's not going to be as strong. And so when something comes out, is published, then we need to come up with as a collective and maybe as local collectives as well to figure out how we're going to actualize this. And this doesn't point us towards that, which is neither good nor bad. It leaves it open for us to figure that out. But it's a challenge with just the document on its face.

Astrid, I wonder how you would answer that, also keeping in mind, you know, the underlying assumptions of the time. You know, it was a very specific time. It was a product of its own time. Yeah. The Declaration was written at a time and composed by people who took things for granted that we don't take for granted today. For example, the idea that there should be a robust welfare state. That was part of the consensus of many of the drafters. And so I think there was a lack of attention. It's hard to fault them, I think, because people are not able to see the future. But it was actually composed at the end of a kind of consensus that there should be a sort of minimum material egalitarianism as that consensus frayed and the world became more economically unequal, at least in the United

States and in Canada and in those industrialized nations, then the promise of those universal human rights is harder to maintain. Keddie's point that these are not binding is really key because, you know, for example, in the United States, they ratified the political rights, For example, in the United States, they ratified the political rights but did not want to ratify the economic rights. And so that opening up the space for that fissure between so-called negative liberties or negative rights, so protections from a state versus positive liberties

or positive freedoms, which are entitlements to things like welfare, medicine, health care. I think we would add a clean environment today as part of the problem. But nobody's perfect. Nobody's perfect. You know, again, we want to focus on the future, but one last question about this.

There were victories in the writing of this document. In the very first article, Keri, can you talk about that a bit? Absolutely. All human beings are born free and equal. And the original first article, Kelly, can you talk about that a bit? Absolutely. All human beings are born free and equal. And the original draft said all men are born free and equal. And it took an Indian scholar and feminist who was part of the UDHR commission and persuaded her colleagues to change that first article to all human beings. And we all have to

thank her for that recognition. And there's an incredible amount of women, and particularly women from the Global South, who influenced the draft, the original draft, and included the right, for instance, to be free to engage in marriage. It was a Pakistani, again, woman who pushed for that. I was surprised myself going through the document and seeing things like the right to leisure, the right to enjoying cultural and artistic endeavors. I mean, it seems quite progressive for the time. Absolutely.

And also forgotten completely. But the world has changed dramatically since those days, since the day it was written. And I'd like just to kind of reflect on how the following three major tectonic shifts have changed the rights that we, at least in theory, enjoy currently. So first, you know, in the last 76 years, climate change has become an existential threat, or probably always was, but now it's in our consciousness. How does that change how we need to think about rights, Lindsay? Yeah. So as we know, we're in this moment in our history as humans where we're causing more of the change to this planet than at any other time. And I think that as we think about rights, it's important to recognize that not only are we entangled with our own health, with the health of the environment, but also we need to be kind of living as Canadians the longstanding treaties that Indigenous peoples had with their territories.

So this year marks the 10-year anniversary that the Buffalo Treaty was signed, formally signed in Western Canada as well as the United States and places like Montana and Idaho. And this is a contemporary articulation of a long-standing indigenous practice of treaty making where the bison are at the the center of this image that they are the ones who are the holders of rights so it's not just about the blackfoot people having the right to the bison it's about the bison having their own rights to those territories and it's in kind of thickening that relationship with the land that we can, I think, see a greater chance of responding to just the deep complexities and

challenges of climate change. And it's not just through treaty making that we see this. But again, we have these contemporary constitutions that indigenous peoples are passing in Canada in 2021. It was the first time that a river was recognized as a legal person in Quebec, and with nine associated rights, including the right to be free from pollution, to sue. And we might see more of this type of protection come forward because of the leadership across diverse communities. Teddy, what about the right of movement? It is shaped under a world that is under threat of climate change. Absolutely.

And before that, I just want to reinforce what Lindsay just said. So in 2021, the Human Rights Council recognized the right to a healthy environment. So that was not initially in the original rights. And a year before that, the Inter-American Commission, the Inter-American Court, also recognized the right of nature. also recognize the right of nature. And I suppose that those who drafted the rights back in 1948 didn't think that we would be so foolish as to completely destroy our environment. But now we do need to write it down and it's happening. On the right to freedom of movement, of course, the right is asserted,

but so much has been achieved, but also so little. And that right is under assault. And I think we need to expand it a little bit further. So in the declaration, we talk about the right to freedom of movement within border states. But what if we could expand it to freedom around the world? Can we imagine a world in which we are all free to move? Because the reality is that some of us are free to move today. Others aren't. But there are those who are free to move. There are those whose passports will open the way to visiting any country around the world, whereas others do not. And so how do we make those rights more equal?

Technology has changed profoundly, you know, since the time of the Declaration. And it permeates those changes. I mean, technology itself permeates and dictates every aspect of our lives, Astra. So I'm wondering if, you know, throughout this week, we've talked about how, you know, new surveillance technologies can hinder our rights.

But at the same time, there are calls for rights to having connectivity, you know, having access to the internet and rights to just even be on the internet. How do you square technology's risks and potentials when it comes to human rights? I don't know if I know how to square it. I mean, absolutely.

These technologies can be tools of oppression or can also be tools of organizing and power building and expression. And expression. I mean, I think your question makes me think about what is left out of the Declaration from today's perspective. So there is a strong right to privacy, and perhaps we could read our contemporary conditions into that right. I mean, so there's a discussion here about whether we need to add new rights

on the page or whether we need to reinterpret the rights as they exist. I think less than the technology itself, right? We want to think about what is it supposed to be a means to? You know, a means to connectivity, as you said, to community. You know, certainly technology plays a role in the right to organize. In the Declaration of Human Rights, you know, people have a right to join a labor union. That's one thing that's listed, the right to peaceably assemble. So you want to be able to use technology for that purpose.

But I think we'd, I would also like, if you want to have a functioning democracy, you also have to have access to news. You have to have access to information and truth that the process of finding truth and covering the news needs to be subsidized, ideally in the public interest and not in the interest of finding truth and covering the news needs to be subsidized, ideally in the public interest and not in the interest of advertisers or people who are just trying to get attention

for the sake of amassing revenue or political power. So that's something I would say. In my work on technology, one thing I've thought about actually is the fact that the ways that our emphasis actually on free speech is distorting. So I like to think about how a right to speech needs to be actually coupled with a right to listen. And a right to listen to voices that aren't paying to get in your ears and in front of your eyes. And that in our discussions of political rights, the intense emphasis on the right to speech has distorted our politics because we're not paying attention to this, the other side of the relationship. So I think a right to listen

would be a really interesting thing to work on together. What about the right to be heard? Is that different than those two things? I think it's, I think that that moves in this direction, right? Because who can speak, who, who is heard in this situation, you know, whose voice is audible in our political arrangement. Yeah. Yeah. Lindsay, what about you? What new rights do you think we could contemplate in this, you know, the age of the internet that we don't actually have at the moment? Yeah, what this is making me think about is, again, bringing up that right to leisure, and how I feel like that's so tied to this right to listen. Like if you don't have space to take the time to like sit back and really

be in a good frame of mind to listen and take something in, then you miss out. And so a lot of these rights really, again, are woven together and we need them layered on top of each other to give meaning to one another. And on this point of technology too, many of us recognize like with the young ones today and their cell phones are in front of their eyes and we're learning so much about the challenges of that, the privacy impacts of that, the addiction, the sleep deprivation, all of these different elements are taking away kind of childhoods or adolescence of these new generations. And we saw the city of Toronto school board recently launched a legal action against a number of the big tech companies,

suing them for taking away the city of Toronto's ability to actually teach children because of tech. So it is complicated because it opens doors. I have a great colleague who does prison law work, and she's trying to have prisoners have greater access to the internet so they can do education while serving time. But then we have this other edge of the sword where we see just how much harm it's doing. Keeping that in mind, Lindsay, maybe if you could answer this question, if we're thinking about trying to imagine new rights and bring in new rights,

is it better to operate on a more local level or national level than to think about this sort of global universal level, given everything we're talking about here? Yeah, I think the metaphor I find helpful in thinking about this is a braiding analogy, where if we think about a braid of different strands of rope, it makes each individual strand so much stronger. So if we can find ways to be bringing together, what are these international mechanisms for enforcement, these national mechanisms for enforcement, these municipal levels, the enforcement mechanisms within Indigenous legal orders, and whoa, that's suddenly like a lot of different possibilities for how to bring this together.

But I think that complexity is needed to figure this out. And one of the cautionary examples of it is, you know, in Canada, the right to education, for example, has been on the table and it was even negotiated in treaties with indigenous people. But how was the right to education put into force? It was through residential schools. Or if we think about the right to employment, well, indigenous peoples were forced to become farmers in many instances instead of their practices of hunting and fishing and just other ways of making a living or the right to land, well, they were put onto these reserves. So we can have these

interpretations of how to enforce the rights, but we need to have just radical participation from the people who are affected by those rights to ensure that the enforcement takes place in a way that is actually uplifting and protective and relevant to the parties who it affects. You make such an excellent point, because I think the underpinning concept that we haven't maybe talked about enough is the duty that comes with the right. So we have rights, but we also have a duty, right, to ensure that those rights are protected. Here, I think about in my own culture, from Burundi, I'm from Burundi, the concept of Uwunhu, which is, of course, very famous across Central and Southern Africa. And that traditional concept is that you are only

human to the level that you are able to demonstrate your humanity. In other words, you cannot call yourself human unless you demonstrate humanity. You're human towards others. You're compassionate. You have empathy. You care for others. And so your humanity involves a duty. And I think perhaps we've taken too much for granted the rights.

And we have not yet thought enough about what that means in terms of obligations. The state has obligations, but we have obligations to each other. We have obligations to ensure that those rights that you, I have an obligation to ensure that your rights, Lindsay, or yours, Astra, and yours, Nala, are respected, rather than just thinking about my individual rights. And that's an aspect that I think really needs to be enforced. Astrid, do you want to speak to rights and responsibilities?

Yeah, I mean, I'm 100% in agreement that we talk, you know, disproportionately about rights compared to the counterpoint, which is duties or obligations, right? What do we owe, not just what are we entitled to? I'm actually getting stuck a little bit on the word enforcement, which I know is a word that makes sense in this context. But what I like about the conversation about duties and obligations is it helps to reveal that we are the enforcers. Absolutely.

And that this idea that we are waiting for a government to grant us our rights is completely misleading. I mean, every single right on this page, if it's enacted at all, if it's enforced at all, is because people built power and fought against oppressive institutions or forces. And so I think the question of power really has to be part of this conversation. That's how we get rights off the page or get them onto the page and how we manifest rights that aren't written down. There's all sorts of things that we now take for granted that aren't enumerated in these declarations.

It was said this week that attaining rights is always a struggle. Oh, it's a huge struggle. Yeah, it's a life and death struggle. On Ideas, you've been listening to Brave New Worlds Yeah, even to life and death struggle. for the future. You can hear ideas wherever you get your podcasts. And on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America, on US Public Radio and Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas.

You can also hear us on the CBC News app. I'm Nala Ayed. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most

about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto wherever you get your podcasts. In today's panel discussion, we've been talking about rights for the future with writer and political thinker Astra Taylor, Anishinaabe scholar Lindsay Borrows, and Keri Nivyabandi, Secretary General for Amnesty International, Canada's English Language Section. I wanted to go back to the idea of the individual rights versus collective rights.

If all of us, each one of us, have the same rights, that places an obligation on our states to give us those rights. And so in many ways, I think you can think of them as collective rights as well, because they apply to all of us as a collectivity. So the right to health, my right to health, implies a duty for the state to provide the best and the most adequate health care for all of us, each one of us. I think that many times the way that it's been interpreted, particularly in the West, has been very individualized, whereas in reality, these rights are collective rights. They benefit each one of us. And it's interesting to see how in the Global South, for instance, the interpretation of the UDHR has been different.

And they've really focused on the articles from Article 20 onwards, which are really the social rights, the rights that apply to all. Today, especially in Canada, it's interesting. I still meet government officials for whom human rights are civil and political rights, those individual, my rights to freedom of expression, rights are civil and political rights, those individual, my rights to freedom of expression, versus the right to, you know, healthcare, to housing, to water. And so that's an interpretation. It's a wrong interpretation. But the UDHR itself is expansive enough to cover both our individual needs and our collective needs as well. And I think that's where we also need to go back to, and we need to reclaim it. It's great, you're kind of leading into the final stretch of this conversation. And that's the main

question that I have, which is, is there utility, I think you partly answered it, to having to codifying these rights, even in an aspirational way, on this universal level. Lindsay, I want to quote from your book. In your book, Otter's Journey Through Indigenous Language and Law, you write, when people accept the differences of others in balance and respect their stories, harmony is fostered. And when people feel connected to the law and the language through which it is expressed, they are more likely to follow the law. Could you expand on what that statement means in the context of what we're talking about, whether it's important to write this stuff down or not? Yeah, thanks for

that question. Something I've heard often in my work with people who are quite marginalized and have a lot of distrust for the law is this phrase, laws are for the lawless. That the moment you have to write something down, you aren't living by those principles anymore. They cease to be kind of in the most powerful place, which is when laws are written in your heart, when you're embodied in the world with those teachings. And I think that it's so important for us to kind of recognize that the reason for this distrust is so important so that we don't keep entrenching those actions that lead to that distrust, but then also to move forward in a way where we can recognize law isn't always positivistic. Like law is not always from a top

down hierarchical source. And we've become quite impoverished, I think, in a lot of Western countries thinking like, oh, there's a government or a parliament or a legislature or a court system, and they're the ones who are responsible. But as has been brought up by both Keti and Astrid, we're also so responsible for doing our part in this work and moving through these different scales of the local to the broad can help us to take something like a document and breathe life into it. So back to you, Kedi, if you don't mind kind of reflecting on all of this with the idea

in mind of what you know of what goes on in Burundi, for example, or other countries to bring other legal worldviews into the conversation of how we reimagine our rights. Yes, and the first thing I would say is that let's not assume that this document that we have, the 1948 document, was the first time we were codifying human rights. These rights have always been part of every society around the world. And I think back of the 13th century Mandan Charter, which articulated very much a number of the rights that are in the UDHR in the Mandang Empire. And this was following a war, a major war led by Sunaja Keita, who was a prince at the time, in what is today Mali and Guinea. And it's interesting how

it is always after great tragedies that we have a moment of, you know, we become sober and realize that we need to do better as human beings. And so they articulated those rights. Back to your point, the very fact that we have these rights written down already speaks to our failure as human beings, right? Because to have to write down that all human beings are born free and equal, it should be evident, right? So if we're not abiding by that, then already we have failed. But it is fundamental, I think, to have these articulated in a way that, you know, they come into our laws and they enable us to really continue to push, as you were saying, through people power, pushing for more and for that respect.

But I think I would want to say that we have less work to do in imagining new rights and more in remembering the rights that perhaps, the rights and the duties, right, that we have had in the past. I think there's a lot that we can learn, both from indigenous communities who have withstood the test of time and oppression, from the African continent, the oldest continent in the world

that has also witnessed so much as humanity and has created ways of being that ensure, that guarantee a quality of life for both us as humans and our environment. Because ultimately, that is what human rights are about. They're about us having a better quality of relationship between each other and with the world around us. Yeah, those are very wise words. Can we take the spirit of that and think about the conversation we've just had and do a quick round with each of you?

Or not so quick. If you had one, I know you say we should take what's in the past and build on it. But if you could add one article to the UDHR, again, as an aspirational right that we could all be inspired by, what would it be? Lindsay, can I start with you? Oh, sure. I think that I would feel very grateful to be surrounded by other people adding aspirational rights, because there's so many. But just thinking about our conversations today and a practical step moving forward, yeah, I would want to make sure that the rights for nature were put into this document, that that's something that is going to protect those around us as well as ourselves.

And through learning more about what does that actually mean, I think we could open up a reconciliation with one another as well as a reconciliation with the living earth. And those two things go so hand in hand. Astra. So that is my top choice. I think I would strike the word human from the first article just to really, yeah, all beings are born free and equal. And let's try that.

Just get rid of one word. There are so many I would add, but there are mentions of these social and economic rights, so social security, health care, free education, and the like. But there's not a mention of a ceiling. And I think that we actually need to limit the wealth and thus the power that certain individuals and entities can have if we want to be able to enjoy our human rights.

So I might put some kind of wealth cap in there. My big thing is I really do think this would make the billionaires more happy if they could just not be so rich and so weird. I love it. It begins here. Those are two very, very concrete suggestions. Teddy, what would you add?

There's so much to add. I mean, I love the idea of a ceiling and also an equal quality of life for all beings, right? So what if we all had, you know, the same right to a decent life and what, you know, what that would look like concretely, a right to a roof over our heads. I always hesitate to add, there's a lot to add, but I hesitate to add because I think the declaration in itself was so ambitious. but I hesitate to add because I think the declaration in itself was so ambitious. And perhaps less than adding, we need to start respecting what we've already gained. There is so much that is in that declaration,

and I think what we need to work more is how do we make that possible? But if you push me to pick one, I think I would perhaps add the one I spoke earlier about, you know, freedom of movement globally, just because of the barriers that are being put on people trying to seek a different life and a better life. So looking further into the future, it's hard not to contemplate this question, Astra, which is, is it possible to imagine that later in this century, we might actually enjoy fewer rights than we do today? Absolutely. I think that we are, you know, again, I'm speaking from someone sitting in the American South. I think there are fewer rights today than there were six months ago or years ago when we're seeing attacks on abortion. I mean, abortion is illegal now in many states. Attacks on gender affirming care. I mean, there's illegal now in many states. A tax on gender-affirming care.

I mean, there's literally bounties being offered, inciting the community to turn in doctors or health care workers who assist people as they seek these essential forms of health care, right? Yeah, I think that that's absolutely foreseeable, and it's incumbent on us. That is where we start really feeling those duties and obligations deeply, right? It's incumbent on us that we reverse course because there could be a time when we look back at this moment as one where we lost a lot of really important things that actually weren't rights. It turns out they were privileges. And it's really hard to have this conversation and not talk about the moment we're in, not just in terms of political polarization, but the economic hardship of so many people and the rising inequality and poverty.

And I wondered, Lindsay, how you see all that playing into how we might think about rights in this next couple of decades. What kind of influence is that going to have on this conversation, do you think? Yeah, well, something that comes to mind is this summer, I've been working really hard on tending a vegetable garden. And so throughout the year, I was diligently working on my compost bin, layering these different amounts of carbon and nitrogen, one on top of the other to create soil. So to turn these really disgusting, ugly, other to create soil. So to turn these really disgusting, ugly, rotten things into something that's actually going to nourish the plants to grow that are going to feed my family and my

neighbors. And when I think about all these gross things that are happening with rights and people's protections and seeing this erosion around the world, it does all feel so rotten. And it makes me think, well, what are the layers of carbon here that we can add on top of this and seeing this erosion around the world, it does all feel so rotten. And it makes me think, well, what are the layers of carbon here that we can add on top of this nitrogen and mix them together to produce something that can feed us in a good way? And I think it's just messy being human. I think it's messy being alive and that we're not going to get away entirely from these challenges. But the question

for me is more, how do we mix them together with the right things so that we can move forward and grow and have this be a nutrient-rich cycle? That's a great image. Yeah. A couple more questions before we go to audience questions, which reliably, I've got a big thick stack of them here. Kedi, back to your work as the Secretary General of Amnesty in Canada. The concept of amnesty itself is a really powerful force. It implies forgiveness, looking forward, healing. Can you talk about that, the idea of amnesty as a tool for thinking about the future of human rights? Well, the symbol of amnesty, if you've seen our logo, is a candle surrounded by barbed wire.

And the idea, what we say among ourselves often, is that we strive to be a candle in the dark, that one candle is sufficient to dispel the darkness. It's a very trying time for us. It's a trying time for human rights organizations because, again, the premise of our work is that if we indeed document the violations that are happening and we bring them forward and provide the evidence, then surely the institutions should follow suit and act. Now, we have a failure of institutions not following suit, and we are not the institution. So it is a crisis for many human rights organizations. How do we go beyond sort of reporting,

beyond being almost paparazzis of human rights violations, to being, you know, those who actually help enact and protect those rights. And I think that's where the education piece of human rights becomes really, really important, which is a fundamental aspect in our work, but also activism, people power. As Astra, you so wisely said, we are the custodians of these rights.

And so being a force, a catalyst that is able to connect this audience in Stratford to human rights violations going on right now in Kenya, where the president has been trying to suppress public protests, young people's protests, you know, protesting a finance bill that will make their lives impossible. We are then able to make, to connect those dots and make the local international, make the local global and the global local. But again, it will rely on people power. That has been the fundamental factor that has changed rights and all revolutions around the world.

It has always been those who were oppressed, who were too oppressed to despair, because I like to say that despair is a privilege of those who have not yet had their back against the wall. You're evoking to me what I think is one of the most interesting paradoxes of democracy, which is that it's the rightsless who have advanced the democratic project, right? It was, we look even at the trajectory of democracy in the United States, it was people who were enslaved, denied personhood, deemed property, fighting for their full humanity and for rights. Women who were outside of the political community

did not have equal rights, did not have the right to vote, fighting for inclusion. And so that is, I think that's quite interesting, right? There's something about being rightsless that actually gives people a certain perspective and has enabled a democratic agenda setting. I want to ask one more, one last question before we get to audience questions. Speculative fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson talks about trying to write the best possible future you could still believe in. So when each of you looks forward to the best possible future,

to the rest of the 21st century, what would it take to reclaim our rights and live them? Not just reclaim them, but live them, given where we stand today. Lindsay? I think about people who have been cycle breakers in their families, you know, who have grown up in this intergenerational link of people who have experienced particular traumas. And then that one generation person comes along, recognizes what that challenge was, comes along, recognizes what that challenge was, and then they engage in all the challenges of cycle-breaking work. And I feel like all of us have things, have challenges, have traumas

that we need to work through, both as individuals and as collectives. And I would really want to spend my time investigating like, what are the traumas of our society that I need to cycle break through? And how can I be supported by others in doing that? How can I support others in doing that? And it would just be ongoing and ongoing until I go to the grave. I like the idea of cycle breaking. Yeah. Astra and then Kedi, please. Oh, wow. Okay. How I've chosen to approach this in my own life and my organizing is a real focus on economic equality and material, the material conditions. And I think that's quite important. I mean, part of why there is a robust anti-rights movement is because rights are threatening.

What does extending rights to nature do? I mean, it does a lot of things, but one thing it does is it takes the wonderful natural world we're embedded in and takes it out of the category of thing or resource or product, commodity, property, and says, well, this is in the category of person, of agent, right, of something that we cannot just exploit. And therefore, it's a threat to profits.

It's a threat to the economic status quo. And so I think just always having that material analysis, you know, following the money, whose interests are being threatened. And because that's actually, I think, really key to building this people power is building economic counter power. So I think for us to build this better future, we're going to have to get in that economic fight. Keti, the last word for this moment to you? I think the young generation is not waiting to do this. I think they are already reimagining the rights and they are taking hold of them. I mentioned Kenya earlier. It is the young, the Gen Z generation that has not waited, that has gone to the streets, that has gone beyond

what their parents thought was possible and actually achieved change. Because change did happen. The president did go back. He did repeal the bill. And he has since sacked his entire cabinet. You know, you wanted a practical answer. That's a practical answer.

And I do think that, you know, again, the education, we need to go back to spaces where we talk about these things. What modern society has robbed us of is the ability to really think beyond my immediate little needs and to think collectively about what is right for us. Because once we do take the time to think about that, then we are able to step out of the apathy that, you know, is making it difficult for us to continue fighting for those rights. And I think that's exactly what we need to get at and push forward. Okay. Astra wants to say something. I mean, your mention of the younger generation, I mean, one thing younger climate activists especially have been raising through, for example, litigation against governments,

insisting on their right to a healthy green future is the rights of future generations. And I think that's another important thing to bring into this, that the rights we have on the page were written by generations that are no longer with us. They apply to people in the present. And I just love that these younger activists are saying, well, what about people who are not yet born?

Which is different than the right-wing emphasis on the unborn fetus. And I think more important, but how do we think trans-temporally? How do we think into the future and bring those people who we know will exist into our field of vision in a meaningful way? Which, as somebody pointed out on this panel this week,

is considering being good ancestors. Yeah. Thank you for the first part of this conversation. So because we have so many, I'd love to treat this as a lightning round, even though, again, these are such difficult concepts. We've touched on this, but I'd like to hear from a couple of you who didn't get to address this. It has always troubled me, this is the writer saying this,

that we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, not a Charter of Rights, rights, freedoms, and responsibilities. Are there example countries that have codified both sides of what citizenship entails? Who knows the answer to that? Well, it's an idea that comes to my mind is there's this lovely book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Pottawatomie botanist. long to the maple nation and that the when you when you look to the maple trees around us we can learn so much about how to give shelter how to provide oxygen how to give fuel how to provide shade or coolness there's they're just embodying fully this obligation to the world. And that if we were to involve ourselves or identify ourselves as part of the Maple Nation, interesting that Canada's flag is the maple leaf,

that we would be living kind of a bill of obligations, a charter of obligations, instead of just one of continually thinking about rights. Here's a future-minded question. Considering the advanced technology of weapons, war is obsolete in settling conflict. Why don't we declare the rights of all humans not to be exposed to war and propose an alternate binding mediation with no veto? Why don't we? The right to peace.

The right to peace. The right to peace. The right to peace. There's a great idea. Can add that to the list. I think we can all agree that's a good thing. Okay. How could we ever create a workable international order

that would maintain the rights in the UDHR? I think we have to think that it's possible, because the alternative is just unlivable. We've seen a few examples recently. We've seen when the UN Security Council was completely locked, the General Assembly taking steps. And I think that's an avenue to think about more. The UN General Assembly, which is where all states are represented and all have an equal voice, can be an avenue to counter sort of the locked state of the UN Security Council. But we have to be able to think about a system that functions. And as I've said earlier today, I think it's really the work that we need to do now. I think we have time for maybe two more. So Lindsay, this is to you.

You talked about the river in Quebec that has been granted rights. You said the river also had the right to sue. What are the implications of that? Yeah, so what we're seeing often coming forward, along with these declarations of personhood for natural entities, is like a guardianship body. So it's a collective of people who have a relationship with that river, either as kind of members of the local First Nation or as political leaders in the municipality or for the broader government.

And they come together and have to talk things out to try and make decisions on behalf of the natural entity. So the whole kind of goal or hope of granting personhood and rights to natural entities is to keep it out of the adversarial court system. So this right to sue, I see it as kind of this last addition where we don't want to have to go to court to talk about this. We want to keep it in this kind of conversational space within the guardianship body to be making

these decisions day to day and having kind of alternative dispute resolutions. But when that fails, then we have our court systems to go to. And who comes up to speak on behalf of the river? Well, we don't actually know yet what this is going to look like because of all the grantings or declarations of legal personhood globally. Very rarely is it going to court. We have an example in Minnesota recently where wild rice or manoman is recognized as a rights holder, as a living being. And the Anishinaabe tribal court, so their own court system,

first heard that the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline would be disrupting the rights of the wild rice, and then they lost their own tribal court, basically. And so it's an interesting question to see here. Who is stepping up to speak in these ways? But it's always going to be people. And how do we learn to listen? What is the right to listen when we think about listening to the river? What kind of training do you need?

Wow. Wow. A big future that we hardly recognize. That's a wonderful place to end on. Thank you so much for that. I'm at the risk of making you clap again. I am just in awe of all three of you and the things you brought to this conversation. I hope we can gather again

and talk about this in a few years. Thank you, Astra, Lindsay, and Keddie. Thank you so much. Thank you. On Ideas, you've been listening to Rights for the Future. It's the final part of our series, Brave New Worlds, recorded at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. My guests today were Lindsay Borrows, Keri Nivyabandi, and Astra Taylor. Ideas at Stratford is produced by Philip Coulter

and Pauline Holsworth. Special thanks to Julie Miles, Gregory McLaughlin, Renata Hansen, Mira Henderson, Harper Charlton, James Hyatt, Kendalyn Bishop, Madeline Gregar, and the entire Stratford Festival team. Applause For ideas, our technical producer is Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer, Nikola Lukšić. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of Ideas.

And I'm Nala Ayed. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here, everyone. Really appreciate it. Thank you.