Ideas - Massey Lecture 1: Renewing the promise of human rights

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Universality is the core promise of human rights: these rights extend to everyone, everywhere. But above all else, this is where we have failed. In his first CBC Massey Lecture, Alex Neve explores how to ensure the “lifeboat” of human rights is seaworthy for everyone. Visit cbc.ca/masseys for more details about this lecture series.

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Book at specksavers.cavers.caps are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit specksavers.cavers.ca to learn more. This is a CBC podcast. Please welcome for the very first time the 2025 CBC Massey lecturer, Alex Neve. This is the exact moment when Alex Neve walked out on stage to find. Toronto's Kerner Hall packed to the rafters. I'm Nala Ayyed and I'm the host of ideas on CBC Radio One and I'm emotional seeing you all here tonight.

Each year, the CBC Massey lectures delve into some of the most urgent questions of our day. And I think you'll hear just how timely this year's lectures are right in the title. Universal, renewing human rights in a fractured world. Let me tell you a little bit about our Massey lecture. Alex Neve. He is a human rights lawyer who served as Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada from 2000 to 2020. He took part in more than 40 human rights research and advocacy delegations throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, Guantanamo Bay, and closer to home, First Nations communities around Canada. He teaches international human rights law at the University of

Ottawa and Alhousie University. Alex is also an officer of the Order of Canada. Like every Massey lecturer, Alex Neve crisscrossed the country, from large cities like Vancouver to small communities like Labrador City.

At every stop, people were deeply engaged with the questions that Alex raises. What does the idea of human rights promise to every single one of us? And why have we failed to make human rights real for everyone. This is not universality's finest hour, but Alex believes it still could be.

This year, we begin the Massey Lecture Tour in Toronto. So now, Lecture 1, a promise for our broken world, the beacon of universal human rights. The lecture begins with one all-important word. Universal, from the Latin, universus, altogether, whole, entire. It is a word, an idea that is all-encompassing for everyone, everywhere. At times, it shouts with passion and confidence, for when universal is on full display, it is magnificent. In other moments, it speaks tentatively with anxious hesitation.

for while we embrace it as the tie that binds us, we reluctantly admit that its full extent eludes us. And when we are honest, we acknowledge that universality is far too often deliberately betrayed. Yolanda O'Kelly is a courageous Guatemalan human rights defender who has actively campaigned to expose the impact of mining projects in her community. She has been shot, attacked, and threatened for doing so. A decade ago, I sat with her in Guatemala City the evening before she spoke at the launch of an Amnesty International report

about human rights abuses associated with mining in the country. She told us that just when she was ready to give up, because she felt so alone, letters started arriving with drawings of mountains and water, the very things she was fighting. to protect. It gave her strength to carry on. We shared more examples of thousands of messages of support from people all around the world. They felt like family, she said. And knowing that she had family all over the world who believed in human rights gave her a force she could not describe. For Yolanda, the universality of human rights flowed from everyone, and it served as protection.

Muhammad Timon Ahman, 76 years old and a carpenter all his life, walked with the aid of a cane. We met in the wind-swept, isolated Maltaam refugee camp in northern Cameroon. He had fled there to escape fighting that had destroyed his home and left several neighbors dead across the border in Enjima, the Chadian capital. He told me that he felt like he would never go home, given the instability. and given his age. And after all, he said with a sense of resignation, everyone knows that once you leave your country,

you have no more rights. For Muhammad, the universality of human rights was selective, and it did not include him. We live in a time of what feels to be unprecedented global turmoil, hate, and division. Truth is under siege and disinformation is on the rise. Legal and democratic norms and institutions are under attack. On a rapidly warming planet, we face the gravest ever threat to our well-being and even survival.

The inherent sacredness of human life is aggressively contested from countless directions. This is not universality's finest hour, but it can be. We turn to universal to describe some of our deepest aspirations, universal love, universal peace, universal truth. It speaks of equality. Think of universal suffrage, universal health care, and universal basic income. It conveys broad acceptance

as in universal acclaim, desire, or appeal. There is a transcendent dimension to universal. It prevails over all else. In the raw aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust, As governments elaborated the world's first global human rights promises, this is the word they chose. In 1948, they proclaimed the universal declaration of human rights. Universal was an unconventional title for an international legal instrument.

It was an evocative choice, sending a message that was equal parts, politics, philosophy, law, and even poetry. The drafters of the declaration and the governments that voted for it were saying, this is for all of us. In 2025, the word still packs a powerful punch, but it also screams to us of our profound failure to keep the promise, for we are far from a world in which the human rights of all are equally acknowledged, let alone respected.

What we confidently placed at the core of the promise its universality is above all else where we have fallen short. But even as a maelstrom of violence, hate, and lies, phrase the fabric of universal human rights, billions of people continue to hold the promise close. They resist and organize precisely because the promise is universal. They do so even though the promise has been withheld from them. Here, universality is linked to courage and imagination.

It is fueled by conviction and hard work. It is nourished by solidarity, and it speaks truth that ultimately cannot be denied. This universality rises above divisive lies and manufactured hate. This universality yearns to unite us in something hopeful and good. In early 2019, while interiors, reviewing Rohingya refugees who had fled genocidal attacks in Myanmar and were now living in overcrowded and dangerous refugee camps in Bangladesh. I spent time with Mohammed Salim. He spoke to me of drowning. We drowned in waves of violence and hate spread by Facebook in Myanmar, he said. We nearly drowned

as we made our way across the Nath River. Our boat had holes in it and water was pouring in. We have nearly drowned many times here in the camp when the monsoons have brought rain and mud. Our desperate friends and family drown when they go out into the Bay of Bengal hoping to make it somewhere safe but their unsafe ships sink or are lost. Now they want to drown us by sending us to live in a prison camp for refugees on a flooded sandbar island far out in the ocean. and we drown every day in the camp because we are locked up late criminals don't have enough food

and our children are not allowed to go to school. We Rohingya are forgotten and left to drown. But when I learned about the Universal Declaration, he said, I knew that it holds promise as a lifeboat. The last thing I expected to to see as I took off my shoes and stooped to enter, Mohammed's tiny, immaculate shelter in Jamtoli refugee camp,

was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But there it was, faded and curled at the edges, pinned to the central post supporting the blue plastic sheeting that was home to Mohammed, his wife, their four young children, and his wife's elderly parents. As they fled Myanmar in 2017, Mohammed had watched as his beloved uncle was shot and killed in front of him.

The family was now among one million refugees crammed into camps with no prospect of returning home. Drowning is an apt metaphor for all that the Rohingya have been through. Drowning literally while crossing rivers or taking to the high seas to reach safety or when faced with the wrath of monsoon rains and flooding. Drowning figuratively under waves of violence and racist hate in-person and online, and a punitive existence in the refugee camps, drowning with no end in sight. The Rohingya have been excluded from citizenship and subjected to systematic violence and racism

amounting to apartheid in Myanmar for decades, leading to the genocidal explosion in 2017. At the time, the world was moved by the ferocious attacks and indescribable suffering inflicted upon the Rohingya, but with a global shrug of indifference, their plight seems forgotten now. What was most compelling about my conversation with Muhammad is that it ended not in hopelessness, but in hope. For he saw hope promised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a lifeboat for humanity.

Yet the world has yet to ensure that the lifeboat will be. seaworthy. Mohamed's experience speaks to so many of our world's ongoing ruptures. Mass atrocities and repression, the climate crisis, hate and polarization, economic deprivation, the reach of social media, and the immense scale of forced displacement. These crises are not only urgent, they are existential. They go deep into the heart of how we live our lives, how we view each other and how we relate to the natural world on which our very existence depends. All the more daunting, given that the rules-based legal frameworks we have counted on to bring some degree of order to our world are to put it mildly in disarray. Many would justifiably say

they are collapsing. The United Nations, particularly the Security Council, is more deadlocked than ever. Disavowal of international law abounds. Authoritarian leaders are winning elections, and there is frequent dinner table and street corner talk of rising fascism. A morass of disinformation and the demise of truth leaves us with an increasingly wobbly tiller in our lifeboat, held together with rubber bands and duct tape with which to navigate these turbulent waters. Which brings me back to Mohammed. Our conversation was among the first I had over many days spent in the refugee camps. I heard vivid accounts of Rohingya villages in Myanmar being shelled and burned,

and the chaos as people fled. A young woman quietly described her father being shot while she was raped by soldiers. A man whose livelihood for decades had been fishing showed us his disfigured hands mangled by gunfire. he would never fish again. A woman shared the heartache of leaving behind her elderly mother for whom crossing the Knaf River into Bangladesh was impossible.

Parents worried about feeding their families as meager food rations were further reduced. Young people's dreams were crushed when they were banned from attending local schools. Bangladeshi officials said allowing them to study meant they would never go home. One teenage girl,

therefore asked me what kind of life do we have if they don't want us to stay, but we can't go back. I assured Mohammed that we would collectively steer that lifeboat towards safe harbor, a promise I meant. But I was riddled with doubt. What would it take to stop the drowning Mohammed had so compellingly laid out? I had been an ardent champion of universal human rights for 35 years. There had been exhilarating moments of human rights triumph in countless human rights struggles. But those moments were easily overshadowed by despicable failures and the egregious impunity enjoyed by human rights violators everywhere. Nevertheless, my faith in the Universal Declaration, like Mohammed's faith, was bedrock. I saw no other vision for our

world that was just and sustainable. It would prevail. It had to prevail. But what about today? Six years later, the horrors Mohammed and I spoke about are exponentially more severe. Since we spoke, there have been Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine and Israel's genocide in Gaza. There have been the latest grim chapters in crises that have devastated Sudan and Afghanistan stand for decades. There has been the COVID-19 pandemic, a public health and economic justice crisis, and there is a full-out assault on human rights unleashed by the second Trump presidency. We seem to be losing ground far more rapidly than we are gaining it. And so I ask myself, at precisely the time we need the lifeboat as never before, has it taken on to me?

much water. We have long been promised a better world. A world at peace and without violence, a world without fear and want, a world in which opportunities are open equally to us all. We have been promised that our world will not warm, burn, and flood into oblivion. The promises have been made by governments, but also by all of us to one another. In some respects, those promises begin with the establishment of the United Nations 80 years ago. The UN's founding charter lays out a vision of saving generations from the scourge of war, reaffirming faith in fundamental human rights and living together in peace.

The promise certainly includes the lifeboat, Mohammed pointed to, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It unequivocally recognizes that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. There are many dimensions to the word promise, both noun and verb, something we do and something we hold on to. There is something optimistic about promise, looking to the future. There is also something immediate about promise, something we expect to be respected today.

And there is often something wistful and regretful about promise as we look back to broken promises of the past. And when human rights promises are shattered, there are few consequences. That impunity encourages more false promises. Human rights promises flow from governments to the people, but the Universal Declaration proclaims that every individual must secure the universal observance of human rights. We owe the promise to one another. One of the most evocative human rights promises of all is never again.

It is the anguished promise to end genocide, first made in the aftermath of the Holocaust, stirring words that have yet to rise to what is promised. In 2025, legal cases alleging genocide in Myanmar, Ukraine, and Gaza are pending at the International Court of Justice. Human rights groups have documented concerns about genocide elsewhere, including against the mass elite people in Sudan's Darfur region, Uyghurs in China, and Tigrayans in Ethiopia. and we are belatedly acknowledging that the treatment of indigenous peoples in Canada amounts to genocide for which there has yet to be meaningful redress, accountability, or reform. Our world is tormented by this question. How is it that human rights promises can be so brazenly broken?

The hard truth is that this litany of unreasony, realized promises lay bare a world with ever-deepening ruptures and ever-widening cleavages that are evidence of rising hate. Hate corrods everything. The climate crisis is denied with hate. Hate permeates conflict zones the world over. Politicians weave hate into their election platforms and legislate hate once they are in office. The foundational human rights promise is equality.

Everyone is entitled to human rights protection without distinction of any kind. That promise has been expanded in numerous treaties and other documents that have followed the Universal Declaration. But hate eviscerates equality. It attacks individuals and vilifies entire communities because of their rights. sex, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, nationality, or political views. Hates political disciples multiply, including in Canada, where hatefulness towards vulnerable groups, including Muslim women, trans youth, and people residing in homeless encampments,

lies behind the growing appetite of governments to resort to the Charter of Rights is notwithstanding clause to shield repression from judicial scrutiny. I served as a commissioner with the Ottawa People's Commission on the convoy occupation, at which downtown residents shared the impact of the trucker's convoy that took over their neighborhoods in 2022. We received dozens of accounts of hate emanating from convoy supporters, who often tormented and attacked people simply for wearing masks. We grasp to understand why hate is surging. Hate is human nature. Some would assert ready to be tapped. Forging new paths grounded in renewed faith in the promise of universal human rights

means addressing hate at every turn. Otherwise, it will sink the lifeboat. Hate is particularly deadly on the battlefield. Civilian protection is a core human rights promise, yet civilians are deliberately sacrificed in wars everywhere. Does the promise to civilians that they will be protected even mean anything anymore? Even when the attacks against civilians attract global headlines and preoccupy powerful governments,

as with Gaza and Ukraine, action to end the atrocities is paralyzed by geopolitics and increasing contempt for international law. In other corners of the world, the plight of civilians seems to have become normalized, be it for political reasons or even fatigue and indifference. Ten years ago, deep in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan's South Kordafon state, I met al-Fadil Khalifa Mohammed, a school school. teacher, who was against all odds providing schooling for hundreds of children at an internally displaced person's site in Tunguli. The area had been sealed off by the Sudanese military,

which regularly rolled barrel bombs out of high-flying aircraft. Villagers had fled to the relative safety of the mountains to escape those bombs, which exploded wherever they landed, be it homes, fields, hospitals, markets, or schools. School was often disrupted when the droning of the planes was detected and children ran to mountain caves. Al-Fadil had a damning question for me, for all of us. We have been telling the world for years about what is happening here, but nothing changes.

Is it because we do not matter to the world? Years later, Al-Fa-Dil's question continues to be a searing indictment of international failure to address mass atrocities. The conflict in Sudan has entered a different phase from when we met. Fighting broke out between the Sudanese armed forces and the rapid support forces in April 2023, and has unleashed a human rights and humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions. Earlier this year, marking the second anniversary of this brutal civil war, the UN's fact-finding mission for Sudan offered a stark assessment. The world has witnessed two years of ruthless conflict, which has trapped millions of civilians in harrowing situations, subjecting them to violations and suffering with no end in sight.

Amid the rising tide of hate speech and ethnically driven violence and reprisals, we feel. fear the darkest chapters of this conflict have yet to unfold. And what of the world's response to the shattered promise of civilian protection in Sudan? The International Criminal Court has four outstanding arrest warrants related to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan's Darfur region, issued over 15 years ago. One trial on charges from 2003 and 2004 has recently wrapped up and is under deliberation. There is no case at the International Court of Justice. No international force has been deployed to safeguard civilians.

Security Council action has been almost non-existent. A resolution in June 2024 called on parties to the conflict to protect civilians, but said nothing about a ceasefire or sanctions. A November 2024 resolution, much watered down during negotiations, simply asking the UN Secretary General to develop a proposal for a compliance mechanism for civilian protection was vetoed by Russia. Meanwhile, Sudan is now the world's largest displacement crisis. Over 10 million Sudanese are displaced within the country,

and 4 million have fled to neighboring countries. That is 30% of the population. But there is no lifeboat on offer for such an immense crisis. Geopolitical gridlock and indifference prevail over human rights promises. Shabnam Salehi knows the bitter taste of crushed human rights promises. She told me that when the Taliban first seized power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, For women and girls, it was like suddenly being thrown ten steps back for every hard-earned step that had been taken forward.

Being barred from school was unbearable agony. Try as the Taliban might, however, she refused to let them make her believe that she was no one. Shabnam seized every opportunity of freedom that came with the Taliban's defeat in 2001. She studied law at Kabul University and became a professor. By the time the Taliban were on the brink of seizing power again, 20 years later, she was a women's rights commissioner with the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

As a prominent women's rights advocate, Shabnam was in peril. Fortunately, amid the frenzied chaos of the Taliban's advance and the international community's withdrawal in 2021, She was evacuated and resettled to Canada. We met soon after she arrived. She relished her safety but felt the daily pain and hardship of the women and girls, young cousins, former students, friends and colleagues who remained behind.

I felt that the women and girls of Afghanistan had lost our country for a second time, she said. Overnight, the cruel policies for which the Taliban had become infamous, were quickly reinstated. Political opponents and various ethnic groups, notably the long persecuted Hazaras, were again dangerously vulnerable. Above all, the Taliban's misogynistic assault on women and girls was back with a vengeance. Girls are barred from secondary education, meaning no school after grade six. Women are banned from many forms of employment and from taking part in public life.

They are prohibited from leaving home without a male relative as a chaperone. Women are required to completely cover their faces in public and are barred from singing, reciting poetry or reading aloud in public, essentially banning their voices. They are not allowed to look directly at any man to whom they are not related by blood or marriage. Courageous women human rights defenders who speak out have been threatened, imprisoned, and assaulted.

There have been some international efforts to address this crisis. In July, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Taliban leader Habutala Akunzada and the country's chief justice, Abdul Hakim Hakani, charged with the crime against humanity of gender persecution. And Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands have initiated proceedings against Afghanistan under the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women,

which could end up before the International Court of Justice. But more widely, the world has seen powerless, watching and expressing regret as women have been stripped of their rights. A Security Council authorized assistance mission facilitates humanitarian aid and make statements criticizing human rights violations, which the Taliban ignores without consequence. There had been a lifeboat for the women and girls of Afghanistan overflowing with promise.

That lifeboat has been cast adrift. Seven-year-old Danil Avdienko and his parents were running to a bomb shelter in the Ukrainian city of Chernyiv when he was struck in the back with Shrapnel. He survived, but was badly injured. He has had two feet of his intestines removed and faces many more surgeries for his wounds. Worse, though, are the fear and trauma that remain with him. When the sirens go off, he says, I am afraid because the tanks may be coming.

There has been conflict in Ukraine since 2014 when Russian troops occupied Crimea and other parts of eastern Ukraine. That, of course, became all-out war following Russia's full-scale illegal invasion in 2022. In 2024, marking the 1,000th day since Russia's invasion, the United Nations estimated that more than 39,000 civilians had been killed or injured, that figure is now over 50,000. And over 3,400 schools and hospitals have been damaged or destroyed, while 10 million people, people have fled their homes. Russian drone and artillery attacks relentlessly kill civilians and destroy and damage homes, apartments, hospitals, schools, stores, and the country's power grid. The UN's Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has documented extensive war crimes and crimes

against humanity by Russian forces, including relentless use of explosive weapons in populated areas, indiscriminate attacks with cluster musicians, unguided rockets and airstrikes, summary executions, torture, sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and the unlawful transfer of Ukrainian children into areas under Russian control. Ukraine is now the world's largest minefield, with two million mines scattered across the country. And none of this has been taken up by the UN Security Council. of Ukraine face the bitter irony that global action to enforce the promise of civilian protection has been thwarted because the nation that is the source of their torment, Russia, holds a Security Council veto.

Several General Assembly resolutions with overwhelming support have called on Russia to cease its use of force against Ukraine and to immediately, completely, and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces, Russia has disregarded those resolutions. Ukraine has brought two cases against Russia at the International Court of Justice. In a preliminary ruling, the court ordered Russia to immediately suspend the military operations that it commenced on February 24, 2022 in the territory of Ukraine. Needless to say, that was disregarded by Russia and the only means of enforcing the court's order

by taking it to the Security Council, a non-starter given Russia's veto. Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court has issued six arrest warrants for Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges. That has not constrained Putin from foreign travel including to states that are party to the court's Rome statute

and thereby legally obliged to execute the arrest warrant. And earlier this year, Ukrainians watched in horror and the rest of the world in disbelief as Donald Trump seemed to align the United States with Russia, leaving Ukraine vulnerable to being forced to accept a peace deal without security guarantees. More recently, it is often impossible to ascertain. whose side Trump has taken. Either way, the war has not abated. The notion that the first into a

lifeboat are always supposed to be the children has meant little for Danil and all the children of Ukraine, an average of 16 of whom are killed or injured every week. On Ideas, you're listening to the first of the 2025 CBC Massey Lectures. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. This program is brought to you in part by Specsavers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot. Squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun, reading in dim light, even late-night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important.

At Specsavers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at Specsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at Spexsavers.cavers.cairists. Prices may vary by location. Visit specksavers.cavers. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. 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.ca.a. Universality is the core promise of the human rights order born in the aftermath of the Second World War. These rights were meant to extend to everyone, everywhere. But in his Massey lectures, Alex Neve argues we've failed to uphold that principle. From Kerner Hall in Toronto, here again is Alex Neve with his first lecture, a promise for our broken world. Five-year-old, Hind Rajab, had been trapped in her family's car in Gaza City for three hours. She was on the phone with a Palestine Red Crescent Society worker who had dispatched an ambulance to reach her. Hinn's haunting words said so much.

I'm so scared. Please come. She was surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives, killed when their car came under Israeli fire. Help was so close, but never reached Hind. Days later, her body was recovered. There were 355 bullet holes in that car. The bodies of people,

two paramedics who had been trying to rescue her along with their bombed out ambulance were only meters away. The Israel-Palestine conflict has been a never-ending circle of repression and violence, subjugation and reprisal for decades. Two peoples reaching out for promises to be made and kept. Palestinians crying out for their humanity to be respected in their existence as a people and a state to be acknowledged, Israelis seeking safety and an assurance that the borders of their nation will be secure. But instead of humanity or security, it has been decades of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, which the International Court of Justice has recently found violates the fundamental principles of international law and is unlawful.

Every aspect of the lives of Palestinians have been ruled by dehumanizing apartheid. Long before October the 7th, 2023, a punishing blockade crushed freedom for the people of Gaza. For years, there has been relentless theft of land in the West Bank as illegal Israeli settlements expanded. Suicide bombings in Israel and indiscriminate rocket attacks out of Gaza have maimed and killed Israeli civilians, which in turn has meant massive Israeli military reprisals killing thousands of Palestinians. And then, October the 7th and everything since. The brutal Hamas-led attacks that day resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people in southern Israel and the abduction of 250 others. It was the deadliest attack on

Jews since the Holocaust. Eight Canadians were killed, including peace activists, Vivian Silver, and Judith Weinstein-Haghi. The attack and the taking of hostages are without question war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel's response has been ferocious. Today, the number of Palestinians killed has surpassed 65,000. Over 164,000 more have been injured and 1.9 million displaced out of a population of 2.14 million. The number of women and children killed during the first 12 months alone was higher than in any other conflict over the past 20 years. The descriptions from UN officials and humanitarian groups say it all. absolute hellscape, death trap, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic, killing field, endless death

loop, manufactured famine. A staggering measure of the nature of the unrelenting Israeli assault on Gaza is the impact on health care. No hospital remains fully functional. Many have been bombarded many times. Doctors, nurses, medics, and other health care workers have been killed, unlawfully detained, disappeared and tortured by the Israeli military. At the same time, there has been a dramatic surge in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, by the military and by armed settlers living in illegal settlements that are war crimes. What has the world done to bring promises to bear and end the carnage? Israel has ignored an international court of justice order to take measures to prevent genocide,

including by ensuring humanitarian aid. Security Council action has been blocked by the veto power of the United States. The few watered-down resolutions that have been adopted carry no sanctions. Various UN General Assembly resolutions have been passed demanding a ceasefire and immediate access to humanitarian assistance, but they carry no binding legal force. And now we have the UN Special Rapporteur on Humanitarian Assistance. Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the UN Special Committee on Palestine, the Commission of Inquiry of the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International,

Human Rights Watch, and Israeli human rights groups and scholars who have all concluded that what is happening in Gaza constitutes genocide. Meanwhile, in an advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice has admonished third countries, such as Canada, not to render aid or assistance to Israel's unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory. Yet Canada continues to provide arms to Israel and do business under a trade deal that even extends to those illegal settlements. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Minister of defense, Joav Gallant, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

ICC warrant applications against three Hamas leaders were withdrawn when all three were killed. The warrants represent an unprecedented step in piercing seemingly impenetrable impunity. And yet, the United States has imposed sanctions against five court personnel and an independent UN human rights expert who has supported that ICC investigation. Where does this leave us? The Palestinian people are live-streaming their own genocide. But how can they have faith in promises

that have blatantly been disregarded for decades? The human rights lifeboat has never made space for Palestinians. But something else, unfolding at the same time, offers room for faith. A growing number of governments, experts, groups, and individuals have shown that they are willing to call out genocide for what it is. They are turning to courts and the United Nations with insistence that international law be enforced even while those laws are breached. They are determined to rest away control of the tiller.

and steer the lifeboat in a different direction with the promise of universality as a beacon. The human rights promise hangs by a thread in many other corners across China, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and Falun Gong practitioners. The people of Iran, Haiti, Yemen, Venezuela, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and North Korea have sought lifeboats for years in vain. Ethiopia's Prime Minister was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 and then unleashed genocide against the Tigrayan people. Powerful nations like India and Turkey, get off scot-free.

No lifeboats in sight or at best they remain lashed to the deck. But then we come to Syria, a reminder of how quickly history can change and in an instance people can seize control of a lifeboat that's been locked away. As recently as late 2024, the UN's Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria noted, Syrian civilians who have persevered despite the almost complete impunity for the crimes and violations perpetrated against them for more than a decade are losing hope. One month later, lost hope was found, albeit fragile and complicated hope. Seemingly overnight, Bashar al-Assad, who forced millions of Syrians to flee as refugees,

was now himself a refugee in Moscow. More than 50 years of tyrannical rule by him and his father before him were over. And the world was transfixed as the doors of Syrian prisons, such as Sednaia, a place described as the end of life, the end of humanity. All of them, abysses of torture, disappearance, and death were flung open to freedom. Over the years, I had heard detailed accounts of Sednaia and the equally notorious Far Palestine prison, where several Canadians, including Meheur Arar and Abdullah al-Malke, were unlawfully detained and tortured, swept up in Canada's complicity in George Bush's,

so-called global war on terror. As we campaigned over many years to push the Canadian government to provide an apology and compensation to Meher and Abdullah and two other Canadians, Ahmed al-Mat-Nuridin, for what happened to them in Syria between, 2001 and 2004, we constructed a replica of a Far-Falistine prison cell, which we brought to Parliament Hill. Abdullah, with his exacting engineer's mind, remembered every inch of the cell that he chillingly described as the grave. Most of us couldn't bring ourselves to go inside and close the door. now said naya and far fallistine were in my news feeds glued to youtube videos i watched frantic efforts

to go deep underground in search of hidden prison cells and i teared up as prisoners walked out to the waiting arms of loved ones my faith in the human rights promise blazed bright the unexpected turn of events reminded me that faith lies with people. The Syrian people had claimed the lifeboat and they were steering it towards the promise of human rights. What if here at home?

There is no promise more central to Canada's very identity as a country than the promise and accompanying responsibility of reconciliation. Amnesty International's 2004 reports stolen sisters addressed the staggering levels of violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada. I was Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada at the time. The lead researcher for

the report was the brilliant and tenacious Mohawk lawyer, Beverly Jacobs, who had been working to expose this racist and misogynistic violence for years. Over two decades later, I remain haunted by the stark reality, Bev, put in front of me at one of our first meetings. She said, there is no indigenous person anywhere in Canada without a story of a woman or girl they cherish in their life who has gone missing, been killed, or experienced violence because she is indigenous. I heard the stories and met the friends and families of women who had gone missing or been murdered. I heard about their lives and loves, dreams, and challenges.

I heard how they had been abandoned and discarded because they were women and because they were indigenous. What was Helen Betty Osborne promised before she was murdered in the Paw, Manitoba, in 1971? Manitoba's Aboriginal Justice Inquiry was blunt about her death. Quote, there is one fundamental fact. Betty Osborne would be alive today had she not been an Aboriginal woman. What were the promises to Shirley Lone Thunder, missing since 1991?

Pamela Jean-George murdered in 1995, Janet Henry, missing since 1997. Sarah DeVries murdered in 1998, her DNA later discovered at Robert Picton's farm, were the remains of 33 women, most of them indigenous, were found. Cynthia Louise Sanderson killed in 2002, Maxine Wapas, missing in 2002 and confirmed dead in 2003. Felicia Velvet Solomon and Moira Louise Erb murdered in 2003. What of the promises to Morgan Harris, Mercedes Myron and Ashley Shingus,

whose remains were discarded in Winnipe. peg landfills. Bev Jacobs challenged me to imagine how different our response would be if the violence had been directed at white women and girls. And that is an inescapable truth. A mountain of promises lay out the path forward, beginning with treaties between First Nations and the Crown dating back over 100 years. Justin Trudeau promised to implement the calls to action from the truth and reconciliation.

Commission and the calls for justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, there is the promise that comes from incorporating the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples into Canadian law. All of that, yet, as Tanya Talaga notes with anguish in her 2018 Massey lectures, we know this history of injustice to be true, yet. She goes on to ask how many more times she will hear from First Nations mothers who have lost a child. How many more non-Indigenous accused will walk free after shooting unarmed indigenous men? Or how many more times she will stand over a spot where the remains of murdered indigenous women or girls have been found in the middle of a road or at a river's edge? how many more times will we promise to live up to promises so devastatingly broken?

Perhaps the most fundamental promise of all is that there will be a tomorrow. The promise of a future used to be that each succeeding generation would be better off than the previous one. Be wealthier, have more leisure, inhabit a more peaceful world, live longer lives, Now, the very promise of a future is in question. And when only the present is certain, what truly is there to promise? After decades of scientists, advocates, and frontline communities' warning of a mounting global climate emergency, our understanding has finally caught up to reality. Consider just 2024.

it was the year of cataclysmic fires that incinerated jasper southeastern turkey siberia and countless other regions of cyclone chito which flattened myaught and hurricanes barrel helene and milton which ripped through the caribbean mexico and several u.s states of typhoons and super typhoons that pummeled the philippines and taiwan of flash flooding that left hundreds dead in nepal's catmandu valley and in Valencia, Spain, and a devastating drought across southern Africa. Hottest day, hottest month, hottest summer. By any measure, 2024 was the hottest year yet on record. Temperature increases were particularly alarming in Canada,

where the rate of warming is twice and in the Canadian Arctic three times the global average. We are perilously off track, keeping the vital. vital Paris Agreement promise of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Imagine standing on the last patch of land you can call home only to watch it disappear beneath your feet, says Tuvaluan politician Simon Kofi. As our planet heats up and the seas rise, it has become ominously likely that Tuvalu, a tiny South Pacific nation of three coral islands, six atolls, and a population of just under 12,000 people will be uninhabitable

by the year 2100. Lily Tejaffa, who heads a youth-led climate organization in Tuvalu, describes the resulting despair. It's the worst feeling ever. Worse than being afraid of heights, worse than being afraid of the dark. Now we're afraid of the future. For many Tuvaluans, this is within their lifetime. And even as intense efforts are underway to mitigate these environmental impacts, a project has been launched to create a version of Tuvalu in the digital world, to preserve the nation, its culture, its institutions, and its people after its anticipated physical extinction.

Just sit with that for a moment. a people's existence becomes virtual. What does that promise? The Inuit warned about climate change long before anyone else was talking about it. They have watched sea ice disappear, a melting sentinel to a rapidly warming planet. William Taguna, a 72-year-old Inuk community leader and musician,

lives in Kudjouac, in Nunavik, northern Quebec. He recalls trips throughout traditional hunting territory, including sea ice, with his father's dog team when he was young and the teachings that were passed on to him. Unpredictable sea ice and dramatic weather patterns in recent years have changed everything. William tells me that those teachings were all about our survival, but we are losing that knowledge because we are losing the ice

and the land is changing. people are dying as a result. We need to turn to the human rights lifeboat. A grim metaphor, admittedly, given the rising waters of Tuvalu, melting Arctic ice and flooded refugee camps in Bangladesh, but we need clear human rights accountability for that ultimate promise,

the promise of a future. I hesitate to state the obvious, but the list goes well beyond the climate crisis, mass atrocities, hate, and our failure to live up to the responsibility of reconciliation. There are 12,000 nuclear weapons in our world, leading the bulleted of the atomic scientists to set their infamous doomsday clock closer than ever to humanity's extinction, just 89 seconds before midnight. The lingering legacy of COVID-19 leaves fear that another global pandemic awaits. The disparity between extreme wealth and extreme poverty is beyond obscene.

We face greater levels of force displacement than ever, 123 million. Yet governments invest billions of dollars into closing down routes to safety, and we seem powerless now to rein in the capacity of digital technology to rule our lives. Forboding times, let us not overlook, however, that these daunting concerns are at their core all about human rights. Each challenge, no matter how overwhelming, reminds us of the innate characteristics, shared identity, and common yearnings that make us human. dignity, integrity, equality, freedom, compassion, justice, fairness, decency, health, home, well-being, community, connectedness, solidarity. Perhaps the lifeboat is taking on water or is lost in the fog. But that is not inevitable. When we collectively make and keep human rights promises, we create a better world. I have seen far Too many human rights promises made and betrayed, but also so many times when promises have been made and kept.

Abakar Yusuf was the chief of the village of Kloi in eastern Chad near the border with Sudan's Darfur region, which had been ravaged by genocidal violence. Darfur's murderous Janjuid militia had crossed into Chad. When they came for Kalloy, Abakar did what he could to mount a defense, but villagers had only spears against the Janjaweed's guns, and many could not outrun invaders on horseback. I sat with Abakar as he recounted the wrenching details, including the worst of all. His wife was shot and her lifeless body thrown into their burning home. Racked with grief, Abakar guided survivors to Adé, the largest village in the area, where we meant.

At the time, I promised Abakar that Amnesty International members around the world would press for action to uphold human rights in Eastern Chad. His story was prominently included in the public report we issued, which was then the basis for meetings I had with members of the UN Security Council,

urging them to deploy peacekeepers. I began every meeting by sharing Abacar's account. And the Security Council did indeed act, agreeing in September 2007 to establish a peacekeeping mission. I returned to Chad for years. In 2010, our team visited an internally displaced persons camp in Kubigoo. We first met with a group of elders and community leaders, and a magisterial man took to his feet. he looked intently at me as he spoke

and the aid worker who was whispering translation from Zagwa to French for me said this is incredible he knows you I have never thought I would meet Abakar Yusuf again it was a rare moment in frontline human rights work an opportunity to report back on a promise

On my laptop, I showed Abacar the report in which his story featured centrally. I told him of the Security Council meetings in which he had played a key role, leading to the peacekeeping deployment that had brought much-needed security to the region. Things were much improved from when we had last met. There were no more Janjua attacks, and while conditions in the camp were difficult, Abakar assured me that people felt much safer. His parting words were that we had obviously accomplished a great deal together, but that there was still much more to do.

I promised to continue, as did he. When doubt creeps in, and my faith in the human rights promise waivers, I think back to that humbling reunion with Abakar. I feel lifted up by our common humanity and how closely we remain connected to one another. And I have renewed confidence that even in the face of enormous suffering and injustice, people's stories will be heard, those in power will listen, and change is possible.

All of that is surely something to hold tight. I have not seen Abakar again, but the promise holds, the promise that binds us together. To the critics who dismissed the human rights project as wishful thinking by arguing that 80 years on it has not delivered the promise, I say we have never truly embraced what a genuinely universal commitment to that promise requires of all of us. My faith is buoyed by Yolanda O'Kelly, Mohammed Salim, Shabnam Salehi, Syrians bursting open prison cells, Bev Jacobs, Sheila Wat Clucche, Abakar Yusuf, and billions of others who do not and cannot give up.

Now, more than ever, it is that lifeboat that will take us through our world's stormy waters, but only if we grab hold of the tiller and we steer together. Thank you very much. Human rights lawyer Alex Neve on stage taking in a standing ovation for his lecture, a promise for our broken world, the beacon of universal human rights. It's the first of his 2025 CBC Massey lectures. Special thanks to the team at Perner Hall in Toronto, Ontario. Thank you very much.

Alex, for an extraordinary first lecture. I think the standing ovation speaks for everyone here. In the next lecture, Alex will be going back in time, searching for the ideals that have shaped human rights over the millennia. You can get the entire 2025 CBC Massey lecture series at cbc.ca slash massies after November 21st. You can also stream episodes through the CBC News app or download the lectures from your favorite podcast app.

Visit your local bookseller for the book version of the lectures titled Universal, Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World. Our partners in the Massey Lecture series are Massey College at the University of Toronto and House of Anancy Press. The CBC Massey Lectures series is produced by Pauline Holtzworth. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Arronday Williams, and Sam McNulty.

Special thanks to Karen Chikiluk and Annie Bender. Our senior producer is Nikola Lukshic. The executive producer of the Massey Lectures and Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.