Ideas - Massey Lecture 4 | How people power makes human rights real

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that universal human rights begin in “small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.” In his fourth Massey Lecture, Alex Neve reflects on moments when people power won the day.*Read this article to learn about the "most powerful" moment in Alex Neve's 40-year-career.

Every day, your eyes are working overtime, from squinting at screens and navigating bright sun to late-night drives and early morning commutes. They do so much to help you experience the world. That's why regular eye exams are so important. Comprehensive eye exams at Spec Savers are designed to check your vision and overall eye health. Every standard eye exam includes an OCT 3D eye scan, advanced technology that helps your optometrist detect early signs of eye and health conditions like glaucoma, cataracts, or even diabetes. It's a quick, non-invasive scan that provides a detailed look at what's happening beneath the surface. Don't wait. Give your eyes the care they deserve. Book an eye exam at Specsavers from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at

Spexsavers.cavers.cai.a.com. I exams are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to learn more. Folks who are sitting a little further back would like to come down closer. Feel free. Don't be shy. You can get up close and personal. It's good. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad. I'm John Gowdy. I'm a CBC Labrador morning reporter here in Happy Valley, Guse Bay, for those who don't know me. And it is such a privilege to be your host this evening for the fourth installment of the 2025 CBC Massey Lectures. Universal, renewing human rights in a fractured world by Alex Neve, who is with us this evening. And I had the privilege to be sitting in the front row in Happy Valley Goose Bay,

watching the first ever CBC Massey Lecture in Labrador come to life. The night began with a performance by a beloved local Inuit drum dancing, group called Voices of the Drum. Those powerful pounding reverberations, of course, not only filled the theater, I'm sure you all, like I, were feeling it deep inside. I could feel my chest bone. I could feel it in my soul. And I think it's still beating.

This year's CBC Mass. lectures are all about human rights. Here's another way to say that. They're all about people, about the inherent value in every human life and the power in every one of us to help forge a better world, a world in which the human rights of all

are truly respected. It's the kind of world for which Alex Neve has been fighting for decades. Had that pleasure of meeting him and having a couple of conversations. He is a human rights lawyer, who served as Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada from 2000 to 2020, 20 years.

Our new mission is to take the Massey Lectures to even more corners of our very large country. And we thought Labrador would be the perfect setting for Lecture 4. Small places close to home. Human rights made real. Our home that night in Happy Valley Goose Bay was the Lawrence O'Brien Center, filled with music, laughter, and intimate conversations. Speaking not from the stage, but from the floor, here is Alex Neve.

Universal. At its heart, one person, one name. I learned that from the people of Jorlo. In Central Africa in 2006, as genocidal violence in Sudan's Darfur region spilled into neighboring Chad, I spent several weeks with an Amnesty International Research Team, traveling along the Chadian side of that troubled border, documenting brutal attacks against isolated villages that had left a macabre trail of death and fear.

This part of Eastern Chad is arid and barren with rocky, hard-packed earth, shifting sands, gnarled trees, and scrappy bush. It was the peak of the dry season, and only the widest stream beds had a few drops of water left. One afternoon, we came upon the smoldering ruins of the village of Jorlo. There was no one there. The silence was eerie, broken only by our hushed voices, camera clicks as we took photos, pen scratches in our notebooks, and soft footsteps as we moved along the village's dry, craggy paths.

Life had disappeared from Jorlo. No home was left intact. There were bullet casings everywhere. The remnants of ordinary life left behind were haunting. Two small shoes, seemingly a matching pair for a very young child, hundreds of meters apart on opposite ends of the village. Twist and blackened bed frames. Metal bowls, tin buckets, clay pots, baskets and cups and plates, strew in everywhere. Some dented and covered in soot. Others in shards. Crops and food stores had been torched, and what appeared to have been precious water cisterns were smashed to pieces. These ruins were signs of an attack by Darfur's murderous Janjouid militia, who were descending upon villages in the area, killing, raping, and beating hundreds of Chattians, destroying their homes and forcing them to flee.

There was no one left to tell us what had happened. how many had died and how many still lived. Where had they gone? Two days later, we came upon the people of Jorlo around 50 kilometers away. In an open field, they had taken shelter in a small grove of those stunted trees. Sheets of fabric were draped in the branches to shield against the remorseless sun. They had fled with little, but as much as they could manage. And we were welcomed. We gathered under the only only tree broad enough to offer some shade. And we heard the harrowing account of the attack only 10 days earlier. The details were horrific, including descriptions of rape and of elderly people and children being burned alive in their huts. Forty people had been killed. I sat with a group of elders as they provided me with names and ages of the men, women, and children who had been killed. My notebook filled quickly. We soon reached 39 names, and we stopped. There was a great deal of discussion. People reviewed the names in my notes, and I was asked to read them aloud several

times. I assured them that it did not matter if we were missing one of the names, but that did not ease their consternation. Time passed, maybe an hour, and I was notified that the four name had been remembered. I was invited to reassemble with the elders back under the tree. Only once we were all seated, did someone speak his name, reverentially. Harun Yakub. There was so much in that solemn moment. It was not the fact that Harun had been killed, that was the point.

But rather, it was honoring that he had lived and would long, be cherished for that life, and that his name was being spoken to me and through me to the world because they believed that would serve his memory. I have written Harun Yakub's name on a piece of paper that I slip into the back of my new annual agenda every January 1st, which is then carried with me everywhere for another year. Over almost 20 years now, it has become creased and a bit smudged. It is, however, a simple reminder of an essential truth. Believing that every life lived is sacred and matters deeply is the very core of universal human rights. I had more to learn from the people of Jorlo. A few days later, we returned for a final visit. We were moving

on to another area and had some last questions. We were pushing the hour as we had a strict security protocol not to be out after dark. Dusk was descending quickly. We had the windows down in our land rover as we drove across the wide expanse leading up to the area that had become home, for now, for the people of Jorlo. We started to hear what at first was a murmuring sound. It grew louder as we approached and took on a musical quality like chanting. We could see a number of fires in the distance.

At first, they were only pinpoints of light, but by the time we drove into the site, we could see that they were six blazing bonfires. Sitting in circles around those fires were the children of Jorlo, probably around 200, ranging maybe from five to 16 years old. And what they were doing was learning, with nothing other than sticks to write within the sand.

They were doing so even though they had seen lovely, ones killed in front of them days earlier. They were doing so even though they did not know where tomorrow's food or water would come from. But still in the midst of that hardship, they knew how important it was to keep learning and that it was in their hands to make sure that happened. We stood at a distance and watched in awe not wanting to say or do anything that would disturb the magic around those fires. If I could take you there, you would feel just how pressure it is to be able to learn. And you would be inspired beyond your imagination by the resilience of the human spirit, by the deep faith in tomorrow that was gathered around those six fires.

One of the most important of all human rights is the right to education. And the people of Jorlo were making sure that this treasured right was not lost. We did eventually have to intrude into the firelight. It was now dark and we could not stay longer. I shared my sense of wonder with one of the women helping with the lessons. She had been one of the elders who had ensured Harun Yaqoub was not forgotten. I told her that I was astounded to see that they were able to find the time to teach given the enormity of the challenges they were facing. She told me that learning was the last thing they could give up on now, for that was the way to ensure they would again have somewhere peaceful to live.

Eleanor Roosevelt, who played a central role in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, once said, where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home, so close and so small. that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. What is smaller than one name or closer to home than a peaceful place to live? The people of Jorlo showed me that those are indeed the small places close to home where universal human rights begin. As we face the enormous crises of our fractured world,

existential threats to humanity and our planet, and as we so readily feel powerless to make a difference, those words, small places close to home, take on an even greater import. Beginning with those small places close to home, people find and exercise their power, individually and collectively, to demand, but also to deliver the promise of universal human rights.

The opening words of the United Nations Charter say so much. We, the peoples of the United Nations. Governments assembled at the United Nations in those transformative post-war years understood and acknowledged that human rights are from, for, and by the people. They do not belong to governments and are not a gift from governments. Human rights rest with the people. People are not mere beneficiaries. They are the driving force behind human rights. Yet, of course, governments routinely seek to shut people out of the corridors of power where debates and key decisions about their human rights take place.

That exclusion describes the history of how indigenous peoples have been treated in Canada. Even today, they are sidelined in decisions to push ahead with pipelines, dams, mines, and logging on their traditional lands, disregarding their rights as enshrined in treating. the Constitution, and international law. Federal, provincial, and territorial governments shroud their decisions about meeting Canada's international human rights obligations in layers of secrecy. Something that should be exceedingly transparent, what governments are doing to uphold our human rights is troublingly obscure.

How do we the people's triumph when so much stands? in the way. It begins with believing in human rights, even when there may seem to be every reason not to. Believing provides the edifice for empowerment, which ignites confidence that human rights will prevail. Empowerment, in turn, opens up a world of solidarity, reaching out across divides to foster community and forge movements. Solidarity unleashes determination to spread the word about human rights to those who believe and those who do not. Spreading the word reaches courageous activists at the front lines and calls people into the streets to defend human rights and to protest when they are denied. All of that lays the

ground for change making and the belief in human rights is made real. Along the way, from belief to empowerment, solidarity to spreading the word, defending and protesting through to changemaking, there is also doubt and uncertainty, skepticism, and even hostility. We, the peoples, are not always readily of a mind when it comes to the promise of universal human rights. But building and sharing the belief in human rights is a potent elixir. that can take the promise far. The universal human rights promise rises and falls by the extent to which it is believed,

by those for whom it matters most. I think of another time and another name that was shared because of believing. In the Parrot's Beak region of Guinea in West Africa, I met 60-year-old Mabinte Banguru. Three years earlier, she had fled Sierra Leone, own, after her husband was shot in the back by revolutionary United Front fighters when their village was attacked. A month before we met, those same rebels abducted her 15-year-old

daughter and mercilessly assaulted her 17-year-old son, this time in the supposed safety of Guinea. I asked Mabintay for the names of her husband and children. She readily provided her children's names, then she paused. She exchanged words with our interpreter. He said she was finding it difficult to say her husband's name because she had not spoken it aloud for several years. His name did not come until it did. Bakery Mambu. As Mobinti spoke her husband's name, we looked directly at each other. It felt as if she was telling me that she was passing his name to me because she believed it would help ensure he would be remembered. Bakery Mambo.

Mabintay did not share her husband's name with any expectation that it would lead to anything specific. She made no requests in his name. She spoke his name because she believed. It was plain that it was coming from a place forever felt deep in her soul. weeks later, I was back in Canada, speaking at an event in St. John's. I told the story of Mabinti Banguru and Bakri Mambo. Little did I know that there was a musician and songwriter in the audience.

It was St. John's. And that as I went on with my talk, he had quietly begun to compose. When I finished, his was the first hand-up for the Q-O-Wing. an A session. But instead of a question, he sang about Bakri Mambu. His lyrics brought Mabinti's belief across an ocean where it lodged in the souls of every one of us touched by that music. What a gift it was yesterday, here in Goose Bay, to listen and learn, captivated and mesmerized from Innu elder and fearless land and rights defender, Janquesh Elizabeth Panashoi,

who shows us what believing is at its very core and how it is felt not only in our own souls, but in the land. In her published diary, I keep the land alive. She writes of one day being out walking on the land alone. She stops to rest in a marsh and looks up at the trees, which in their swaying in the wind, appear to be dancing. She wonders why she was alone and why others weren't walking with her

to protect the land while she was seeking to set a good path for future generations. But then she notes, she realizes that the trees are her friends and that they are saying to her, don't worry, we're here and we know you care about us. Don't cry in your heart. We're still here, still dancing. Dancing trees that assure that they know we care are somehow a stirring metaphor for believing. Elizabeth Panashway blends believing with imagining and with dreaming. She tells us that before she began to protest for the land, she could not have imagined she would ever be able to do all the things that she has done. She tells of a recurring dream in which she is walking with other women across rotten,

ice in the spring breakup. People tell her that she won't make it, but she writes, I always go on. In one version of the dream, she is on a scadu with her husband, and they come to an ice path and a rushing river. She gets down to see which way to go, and she writes, We continue onward, and we make it to the other side. I always. go on, we make it to the other side. Believing is a blend of confidence and hope. In the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, it is natural to succumb to pessimism and to feel doubtful that human rights will be respected. Our own ability to make a difference feels infinitesimal. And so we stay silent and give up. But believing can overcome that disempowerment.

And with empowerment, we see that there is a way forward. Between 2010 and 2014, I traveled to Cote d'Ivoire in Western Africa four times with Amnesty International colleagues to research widespread human rights violations in the wake of a contentious presidential election in which the sitting president, Laurent Bagboe, refused to admit that his opponent, Alessan Watara, had been the winner. we worked closely with local human rights activists who were providing support in isolated villages in the west of the country where thousands of people had been killed and injured chased from their homes and where there had been high levels of rape and sexual violence one woman whose tirelessness never ceased to amaze me was clementine she was based in the city of dweckway her superpower was a bottomless well of compassion. And her overriding concern was the well-being of women and girls.

The last time I worked closely with Clementine was in 2014. Cote d'Ivoire's human rights record had been reviewed at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva a few weeks earlier. The government delegation had faced interventions from 86 other countries. I had tuned in from Canada to watch the live UN webcast of the proceedings. I was eager to provide Clementine with an overview of the UN review. It turned out that she and other activists had also watched it in real time, crowded around a neighbor's laptop. And they could not believe it as government after government spoke up about women's human rights. The exact concerns that they had been raising with authorities for years, but which they

felt were never taken seriously. She described how hearing the French government, which continues to have destabilizing influence in the country decades after independence, call for a strengthened national policy on sexual violence, was an enormous boon to their efforts. Clementine said that women's rights activists in the country often felt that their pleas were not being heard. But now they knew that was not the case. In the span of a few hours, the internet had lifted them from Dweckwe to Geneva. That support, she assured me, would keep them going for years. Believing in human rights begins in those small places close to home from where our circle gets bigger and bigger in common cause, in solidarity. Solidarity is what,

sustains resistance to injustice, offers protection in the face of repression, and propels movements for change. The roots of the word solidarity lie in part in the Latin term, solidum, meaning a whole or undivided thing. Without solidarity, we feel alone and vulnerable, surrounded by it, we feel protected and even invincible. In September, 2014, I joined an Amnesty International team visiting Mexican prisons as part of a worldwide campaign against torture. That brought us to the Federal Center for Social Rehabilitation Number 4, a maximum security prison in the state of Nayarit. We were there to visit a prisoner of conscience, Angel Colon, a Honduran, human rights and environmental activist who had once studied

for the priesthood. Anhelle had been arrested near Tijuana five years earlier. He was readying to try to cross the border into the United States, where he hoped to earn enough money to pay for cancer treatments for his young son. A Garifuna, Afro-descended black man, Anheel was subjected to vicious racism and severe torture by Mexican police and guards. He was eventually transferred to this remote prison where he had no access to a lawyer or consular visits.

His family assumed he had died or been killed while trying to reach the United States. He was not charged with anything. Finally, he was able to smuggle a note out with a family member visiting another prisoner. And that reached Amnesty International's office in Mexico City, the first news of Anhell's fate in five years. That is what brought us to the prison.

It took well over an hour for our team members to go through seemingly endless security checks before we were ushered into a small meeting room deep within the prison complex. Anhell was brought in, handcuffed, and shackled. This was a man who had every reason to feel despair and anger, but for the next hour it is no exaggeration to say that he boosted our spirits more than we lifted his. We had brought with us petitions signed by 2,000 people around the world calling for his release. Tears streamed down his cheeks when he heard that so many people were taking action to win his freedom. Five weeks later, I was back in Canada delivering a lecture about

torture at the law school at Western University in London, Ontario. I spoke at length about Anhell's case. When the talk wrapped up, I left the lecture hall, turned on my cell phone, and a text message came through from the Mexican human rights lawyer who was assisting Anhe. Angel is Libre. Angel is free. Eight months later, Anheel came to Canada. He spoke at Amnesty International Events, was interviewed by journalists, and testified before a parliamentary committee about the need to eradicate torture in our world. He told me that during those five years of being cut off from the outside world, he never gave up. He said, no matter how bad it was, I always believed I would be free again someday.

And then, when I saw all of those signatures and realized that hundreds of other people were with, me as well, I knew that the day had come. Several years later, I was back in Mexico with Amnesty International Colleagues. We had brought boxes of brightly colored paper butterflies with moving messages from Canadians across the country. The butterflies represented the valiant monarch, whose famous migration between Canada and Mexico seems to defy the bounds of what is possible. These ones offered support to the families of the tens of thousands of people

who had been disappeared in Mexico. These families were being threatened at attack themselves simply because they dared demand the truth about what had happened to their loved ones. Skeptics might dismiss paper butterflies with words of hope as symbolic gestures that make no difference. They did not see the powerful solidarity carried on those colorful wings. We traveled first to the city of Chihuahua. We worked closely there with the Center for Women's Human Rights

to organize a public event, to display the butterflies and demonstrate international support for the families. We mounted several of the butterflies on a wall in the women's center. Then we gathered across from the state governor's office, in front of a powerfully evocative sculpture known as the Cruz de Clavos, literally a cross of nails, each one representing a victim of femicide. The sun could not have been brighter nor the sky more blue. The accounts from grandmother's wives, sons, daughters, aunts, sisters, and brothers were heartbreaking.

And all around us, the butterflies, hanging from tree brands, and bobby pinned to close lines strung between lampposts shone in the sunlight and floated on the breeze. A young girl, perhaps three or four years of age, was running back and forth holding one of the butterflies, a particularly large one, above her head. Its wings were flapping fast enough that it almost seemed it would lift her into flight. I learned later that this girl's father was one of the disappeared. The following day, we were in Mexico City to join the annual Mother's Day March for the Disappeared. Family members held the butterflies aloft or close to their chests as they marched. From an elevated vantage point, looking out at the thousands of marchers,

it was profoundly moving to see butterflies everywhere. One of the march organizers whose teenage son was among the disappeared whispered to me, I believe those butterflies truly did fly here from Canada and look at the hope they have brought with them. Two years later, a colleague was in Chihuahua for meetings, including at the Center for Women's Human Rights. On his return, he shared with me the news that the butterflies were still up on that wall.

Belief, empowerment, and solidarity are the current for spreading the word about human rights, in neighborhoods and schools, in the arts, through campaigns, at public events, and through social media, building a foundation from which a culture of human rights can then take root. The message not only needs to be spread through loudspeakers and posters, it needs to be brought into the small places close to home. On another Amnesty International research trip to the western reaches of Cote d'Ivoire in 2011, I saw the word about human rights spread literally before my eyes. We had brought copies of a newly released report from earlier research into election-related violence and killings. We had a sizable box of copies of the

report, which were gone immediately once we cut through the packing tape. Soon we were coming across groups of people, flipping through the report, sometimes one person reading passages to the others. We came to the village of Zebli, where we had previously interviewed survivors of militia attacks. I noticed a well-thumbed copy of the report lying on a bench under a Beobab tree in the heart of the village. A young woman sat down and started to read. It was an on-the-ground equivalent of going viral. Violence was an ever-present risk on this trip. One of the safe places for us to stay was at Father Cyprian Ahure's Catholic mission in Dweckwe.

He had opened the grounds, roughly the size of a schoolyard, to over 20,000 people fleeing deadly attacks in surrounding villages. I mentioned to Cyprian how remarkable it had been to see how widely word of our report and the report itself had spread. Why would I find that surprising, he remarked, how could the truth of human rights be held back? And I'd just like to say one very important thing, too. You're listening to ideas, but Nella Ayat. On CBC Radio One, Goose Bay. I love the show. you for all you do with the great stories you cover in that show and ideas has been a part

of my radio ear for many many years and thank you for all you do and thanks for coming to goose bay such an honor to have you here absolutely he's a teller of tales when talk is But the little ones they listen Every time that he speaks Labrador musician Richard Neville showing off his pitch perfect ear before serenading the audience with his music. I am indeed Nala Ayyed

And you're listening to the 2025 CBC Massey Lectures on Ideas. Every day, your eyes are working overtime, from squinting at screens and navigating bright sun to late-night drives and early morning commutes. They do so much to help you experience the world. That's why regular eye exams are so important. Comprehensive eye exams at Spec Savers are designed to check your vision and overall eye health. Every standard eye exam includes an OCT 3D eye scan, advanced technology that helps your optometrist detect early signs of eye and health conditions like glaucoma, cataracts, or even diabetes. It's a quick, non-invasive scan that provides a detailed look at what's happening

beneath the surface. Don't wait. Give your eyes the care they deserve. Book an eye exam at Spexsavers from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at Spexsavers.cavers.cai.a. Eye exams are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit specksavers.cavers.cai to learn more. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always overdelivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough.

Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca.a. Eleanor Roosevelt, who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, once said that those rights begin, in quote, small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. In the fourth of the 2025 CBC Massey lectures, Alex Neve reflects on moments when people power won the day, and what he's learned from 40 years on the front lines of international human rights about belief, doubt, and the long

arc of change. From Happy Valley Goose Bay in Labrador, we continue with small places close to home. Belief, empowerment, solidarity, and spreading the word propels millions of people one person at a time to defend human rights and to protest when they are violated and denied, decrying injustice and demanding justice. Nell Toussaint, born in Grenada and raised in Trinidad, come to Canada as a visitor when she was in her late 20s. After working for a decade, she became seriously ill.

Without immigration status, she had no right to access necessary public health care, even with her life seriously at risk. In an act of remarkable courage, she challenged that, that denial of health care in court as a violation of her right to life and equality, even though she risked deportation. The Canadian courts ruled against her, concluding that it was justifiable to deny access to essential health care on the basis of immigration status. Nell was subsequently granted permanent resident status and had full entitlement to health care,

but she wanted to continue with her legal challenge in order to pursue justice for others. She turned to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which in 2018 concluded that her rights to life and to be protected from discrimination had been violated. But the Canadian government would not comply. Now did not relent. She challenged Canada's refusal to implement the U.S.

decision back in court in Ontario. That case was in early stages when sadly Nell died in 2003. But still, her legacy has not relented earlier. As representative of Nell's estate, her mother now continues to pursue that case. I once remarked to Nell how deeply I respected her perseverance, particularly given that she obtained access to health care herself. She said, imagine a world in which everyone did the right thing simply because it was the right thing and not just when it was in their own personal interests. She asked, wouldn't that be a better world? Defending human rights means persevering even when the immediate battle is lost. In Northeast British Columbia, Chief Roland Wilson and the West Moberly First Nations

stood up to the clout of the provincial government and BC Hydro in saying no to the construction of the site sea dam on the Peace River. Chief Wilson tirelessly defended the fundamental right of free prior and informed consent for his people and for all indigenous peoples. He did so through the courts, meeting with politicians, submissions to UN bodies, interviews with media, and solidarity campaigns with environmental and human rights organizations. Ultimately, construction of the dam reached such a point that even if there was an eventual victory in court, it would be too late to save the land. West Moberly reluctantly decided that their only remaining option was to settle their legal challenge.

But that has not marked the end of West Moberly's defense of indigenous rights. Chief Wilson and other community members now regularly join with other First Nations in the pursuit of justice, supporting their campaigns and intervening in other land rights lawsuits. Defending human rights often means taking to the streets when the universal promise is ignored and breached. I have taken part in hundreds of protests over the decades, ranging from a massive anti-apartheid crowd that seemed to have no beginning or end in London's Hyde Park, to small bands of people on the steps of Ottawa's Human Rights Monument during a snowstorm, protesting government failure to protect the rights of indigenous women, or across from the U.S. Embassy in bitter cold, decrying the death penalty. Palestinian solidarity protests in Ottawa and around the world have become a sadly regular occurrence since the fall of 2023. All of these protests have been energized by determination to spread the word

and they have been infused with solidarity, empowerment, and belief in the promise of human rights. What we are protesting, such as genocide unfolding in real time in Gaza, is often deeply distressing, yet the communal resolve on the streets is powerful and uplifting. In 1998, marking the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

governments unanimously adopted the UN Human Rights Defenders Declaration. It heralded an embrace of the critical role of human rights defenders in our society. But more than 25 years on, defending human rights has become more perilous. Defenders of the rights of women, refugees and migrants, 2S-LGBQI Plus and racialized individuals, and indigenous peoples, as well as land, water, and environmental defenders,

face particularly toxic threats and extreme violence. But they do not relent. Meanwhile, repressive governments have laid siege to the right to protest. Peaceful protests are violently disbanded, and protesters are arrested, imprisoned, beaten, or killed by police and security forces. And yet, protesters return to the streets the following day. Being here in Happy Valley Guse Bay, I have found myself remembering Enoch activist Diamson. for whom this was home. I first met Diem in 2017,

when they were named an Amnesty International, global ambassador of conscience, alongside national indigenous rights leaders, such as Murray Sinclair and Cindy Blackstock. Diem was honored for their efforts to raise awareness about violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada after their sister was murdered,

as well as their courageous and resolute protests about methylmercury poisoning connected to construction of the muskrat Falls Dam, including a hunger strike on Parliament Hill in 2016. Diem tragically passed away in 2021. They were only 29 years old. Four years earlier, at the Amnesty Award ceremony in Montreal, they powerfully summed up what it is to believe in here. human rights. I had someone tell me that they've never seen any radical change in their

lifetime. But me, as an indigenous woman, I have seen radical change even within myself. Becoming aware of the issues around me that affect me and how I can help change them, that may seem small, but it is a very big victory. When it comes to advancing human rights, every step forward is indeed. a big victory, and it does start within ourselves. But what about when people don't believe in human rights? Perhaps they see it as a false promise. Maybe they did once believe, but have given up.

People understandably feel betrayed by the frequency and gravity of broken human rights promises. They feel apathy and cynicism about the prospects of these promises ever being universally respected, especially when faced with powerful countervailing political and economic actors. Communities whose rights have consistently been sold short justifiably doubt the sincerity and even the possibility of the promise. In 2024, Queen's University law professor Artie Imsiz and I were invited to speak to the Palestinian Solidarity encampment at the University of Ottawa about international law and the situation in

Gaza. There was a sizable audience on a searingly hot afternoon. Many of the questions were thoughtfully skeptical. One student pointed out that for decades the much professed international rules-based order had failed Palestinians and had done so by ignoring and perverting international law. wanted to believe in the promise of universal human rights, but his anguished question was, how could he? We spoke of incremental gains, turning points, and the long game. We talked about reinforcing our efforts and developing new strategies. We agreed, how could we not, that international law had objectively failed Palestinians. We noted that many governments, including our own, were complicit in that failure?

We pointed out, though, that at this particularly dark time of genocide in Gaza, it was notable that there had also been an inclination to turn to international law. There are cases underway at both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. We highlighted that there had been a surge of new allies intent on reinforcing international law.

And we challenged everyone, including ourselves, to be human rights champions and to affirm publicly that no matter what, it was our expectation that international obligations would be respected. One of the students in the encampment approached me after our talk. She said that the discussion had her thinking about applying to law school, small places, close to home. It is one thing when,

in the promise, power and relevance of human rights is strained and diluted? What of those who see the promise as a threat and therefore something to be actively opposed? In a world in which politicians, commentators, and influencers increasingly traffic in disinformation, there are those who grow hostile to human rights, convinced that the promise has nothing to offer them and is beneficial only to others. Disbelieving in human rights has become a weaponized mantra in many economically marginized communities in the global north, where people were perhaps accustomed to enjoying the fruits of white privilege and are now susceptible to coming under the sway of hate mongers. Far from believing, they show antipathy and even hostility to the notion of human rights solidarity with others. witness the virulent backlash against

wokeness and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Yes, in the United States, but also in Canada. In the 1930s, folk and blues singer Leadbelly urged listeners in the United States to stay woke to instances of racially motivated violence and injustice in the sense of keeping their eyes open. That has been weaponized by right-wing politicians who decry what they now refer to as the woke ideology as an assault on individual freedoms, supposedly prescribing what people can think and say. Donald Trump has launched a full-out war on woke, gutting programs and firing civil servants and military leaders who stand accused of advancing diversity, equity, and including.

There are two important things to keep in mind. First, hostility to human rights grows when people perceive that upholding the rights of others comes at the expense of their own rights. That tendency is heightened when people feel economically, socially, or politically vulnerable themselves. Workers whose jobs have been disappearing or are increasingly precarious were decades ago, the demographic from which the labor movement was born and for whom social justice solidarity was a way of life. But today, that message of the universality of human rights is lost for many who have been encouraged to lash out against others rather than to find common cause. Second, though, when people are connected with each other and their respective needs and challenges become real and close to

home, rather than distant abstractions and bones of contention, the universality of human rights resonates differently. Where does the doubt and disconnect seep in? Research by James Ron and colleagues suggests that although positive ideas about human rights are present in the public's imagination, these feelings are not necessarily rooted in their personal relationships. Most people have never engaged with human rights concepts in a way that makes them feel real, and belief in human rights, therefore, can be easily dislodged or manipulated. Not surprisingly, belief is destined to be strong when human rights are made real, which takes me way back to the summer of 1987. I was an articling law student with a union-side labor law firm in Halifax.

One morning, the lead story on CBC's morning news was of a boatload of 174 sick refugees who had unexpectedly landed on the shores of Charlesville, a small fishing village near the southern tip of Nova Scotia. The previous summer, two lifeboats with 155 Tamil refugees, have been rescued off the coast of Newfoundland, and there had been considerable backlash in the country. I worried that reaction to these refugees, therefore, might be negative. I could not have been more wrong.

The human impulse to be compassionate came to the fore. The community hall in nearby Woods Harbor was opened up, and people got to work, providing blankets and water and making tea, Kool-Aid, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A few months later, I was in that part of Nova Scotia as our law firm was helping to organize labor unions in nearby sawmills.

We stopped by Woods Harbor, where we stopped to talk with two women readying for a charity supper at that community hall. We asked if anyone had hesitated to have such a large group of strangers show up unannounced on their beach. One of the woman assured us no one had given it a second thought. These were people in need who had suffered a difficult ordeal.

We may have looked very different from each other and we could barely speak to one another, she said. But what we had in common was our humanity. And that was all that mattered. She was sure that any community would have done the same thing. As we continued on our way, I remember thinking if only federal government leaders had spent time in that community hall on that day. Instead, just four weeks after the people of Charlesville were mixing Kool-Aid and making sandwiches, Parliament was recalled for an extraordinary emergency summer session to deal with a massive influx of refugee

claimants to Canada. Abstract ideas and heated debates about human rights become more intimate, more real, more believable when they are lived out at local level, close to home. When people exercise their collective power, change happens. It almost always starts with one person. And the impact often reverberates for many years.

In 1923, over 100 years ago, Descahaye, the hereditary chief of the Haudenoshone Six Nations Confederacy traveled to Geneva to petition the League of Nations and to impress upon other governments that the Canadian government was encroaching upon his people's sovereignty.

Descahaye was the first indigenous leader to seek to address the League, which had been established only three years earlier in the wake of the First World War with a mandate to advance international peace and security. He went to do so as a nation. And while he gained the support of a number of countries, the British government exerted sufficient political pressure,

and he was not allowed to address the League. While the League refused to hear from him, the mayor of Geneva invited Descahaye to deliver a public speech to the people of Geneva. His appeal implored the League of Nations to secure suspension of all aggressive practices by the dominion of Canada upon the Six Nation peoples. While he was in Geneva,

the Canadian government invaded and padlocked the Confederacy's council house. It was essentially a coup. Descahy was afraid that he would be arrested if he returned home, so we traveled instead to Tuscarora, New York. He could see Canada from where he lived, but he was never able to return.

He became ill with pneumonia, and his family was not allowed to come and see him. He died in 1925. In his last public speech, a radio broadcast only three months before he died, Descahaye urged powerful nations to refrain from dominating smaller nations before your minds lose the power to grasp the idea that there are other peoples in this world

beside your own with an equal right to be here. Words that are such a mantra for our world today. Desca Hay's tenacious advocacy is well remembered in Geneva. A number of events, including a reception hosted by the current mayor, were held in 2023, commemorating the centenary of his visit to the city. And 100 years later, his determination and courage is a source of conviction lifted up constantly by indigenous peoples in their struggle for self-determination

and to be recognized as governments and nations. The actions of one person can have far-reaching effects far down the road. In a 2005 complaint lodged against the United States at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Sheila Watt-Clutier and a group of Inuit elders and hunters alleged that the U.S.'s contributions to global warming were violating their rights. They pointed to the loss of traditional hunting grounds as the permafrost melted, sea-ice-thinned, glaciers receded, and coastal erosion. increased, and the impact of shorter winters and longer and warmer summers. The case was dismissed on evidentiary grounds, but is widely acclaimed to have been groundbreaking

in framing the climate crisis as a human rights crisis. Nearly two decades later, a group of elderly Swiss women filed a complaint against Switzerland at the European Court of Human Rights, alleging that the Swiss government, failure to adopt adequate measures to combat climate change was a violation of their rights, including putting them at risk of dying during heat waves. This time, the case was successful. In 2024, the court ruled that the Swiss government had not met its obligations for reduced greenhouse gas emissions and had not adopted measures to protect the women. Sheila shared with me a remarkable encounter she had during a Zoom call

several months after that European court ruling when she was introduced to one of the Swiss women who had brought that challenge the woman enthusiastically told Sheila that it was that petition launched by the Inuit 20 years earlier that had inspired them to pursue their case she told Sheila you were the ones who saw before the rest of us that the climate crisis is all about human rights Sheila told me that this shows us that you never know where your advocacy will lead it has taught her to trust that there will be impact whether that is immediate or far in the future even when we don't win we may be paving the way

for others to succeed. The obstacles to advancing human rights were formidable in the years immediately after the terrorist attacks of September the 11th. To raise human rights concerns, and there were many, about the U.S.-led response, was to invite being dismissed as naive or labeled a traitor. In early October 2002, a woman who introduced herself as Monja Mazig called the Amnesty International Office and was put through to me.

Her husband, Meher Arar, a Canadian citizen, had been arrested while changing planes in New York City on his way home to Ottawa from a family trip to Tunisia. Monia was concerned that he might be sent to Syria where he had been born. After two weeks in detention in Brooklyn, Mayher was indeed subject to extraordinary rendition to Syria by way of a CIA ghost plane. He then endured a year of unlawful detention, torture, and other egregious human rights violations. Monia mounted a truly heroic campaign to win Mayher's freedom. She made herself available to journalists and sought the support of Parliament. Most shied away at first, not wanting to associate themselves with anything related to the United States and terrorism allegations. Though there were notable exceptions, including two remarkable members of Parliament, both women and both now deceased, Alexa McDonough and Marlene Caterall.

Monia's persistence and her eminently reasonable request, give my husband, a fair opportunity to defend himself, gained momentum, and with time, Mayher's plight became one of the top political issues in the country. Finally, on October 5, 2003, he was released. The next day, I was at the airport in Montreal when Mayher returned to Canada and was reunited with Monia and their two young children. It was immediately clear to me from the the haunted look in his eyes that he had suffered a great deal. And there were so many unanswered questions about the role of Canadian officials in what had happened to him. He was determined to pursue those answers and seek justice for what he had been through. And he and Monia emphasized that

this was not only about them, truth and accountability were crucial in order to ensure this would not happened to others. Meher and Monia called for a public inquiry. And even though there was considerable public sympathy, it was clearly a tall order to convince any government to subject its national security practices to that level of scrutiny at a time when the legacy of the September the 11th attacks was still fresh.

But Meher and Monia did not relent. And four months later, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced that there would indeed be a judicial inquiry. And then after two years of hearings, the presiding judge, Justice Dennis O'Connor, released two voluminous reports of findings and recommendations. He made it clear that there is nothing to indicate that Mr. Arar committed an offense or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada. The Canadian government subsequently issued an official apology to Meijer,

Monia and their family, and compensated them for Canada's role in what they had endured. Justice O'Connor also made proposals for policy and institutional reform, particularly for badly needed strengthening of oversight of Canada's national security and law enforcement agencies. That eventually led to creation. of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. And in 2024, legislation was passed to establish the Public Complaints and Review Commission,

which will oversee the Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, although this new body has not yet been set up. But here's the point. all of this because monia mazig was determined to win her husband's freedom change begins with one person let me end with words that were shared with me yesterday afternoon by sheianne michel a young innu woman from shahaji She captures powerfully the heart and soul of universal human rights. Cheyenne said, when I think about human rights, I don't think about laws and policies.

I think about peace with the land and within our communities. Human rights means being able to live in balance with my culture and the westernized culture without having to translate that into someone else's legal language just to be heard. In Labrador, we as indigenous people carry so much history, grief, love, and responsibility, and as indigenous women, we don't just survive it, we hold it. We turn it into something sacred. We're the ones who keep the stories of what was lost and what still refuses to die. When I speak about human rights, I speak of the right to belong. That's really stayed with me, the right to belong. Is that not the very essence of universality? Harun Ya'coub and Bakari Mambu, Sheila, elderly Swiss women, Roland and Descahaye, Clementine, Anheel, Cyprian, and Nell, Monia and Meher, Diem Sonders, Elizabeth Panashoe, and Cheyenne, Michelle. One person, one name, one life.

Believing, imagining, dreaming. Fires in the distance, butterflies in the breeze, and dancing trees. Peace with the land, belonging. Within ourselves, change is possible. It starts there. Small places, close to home. The universal promise of human rights. Thank you so much.

Alex Neve with the conclusion to his fourth CBC Massey lecture titled Small Places Close to Home, Human Rights Made Real. Wow. Very inspiring, very compelling. You are truly a storyteller. Alex, it's a lot to think about. Special thanks to John Gowdy and the whole team at CBC Labrador. To Richard Neville and the Voices of the Drum and the team at the Lawrence O'Brien Center. In the next and final lecture, Alex Neve lays out his vision for a Canadian human rights agenda.

The lectures are co-sponsored by CBC, House of Anancy Press and Massey College at the University of Toronto. You can get the entire 2025 CBCMassie Lectures Series at cbc.ca.ca slash Massies after November 21st. And the series will be available on your favorite podcast app, CBC Listen app, of course. Visit your local bookseller for the book version of the lectures titled Universal, Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World.

The CBC Massey Lectures series is produced, by Pauline Holtzworth. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Sam McNulty. Our senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. The executive producer of the Massey Lectures and Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayad. And I want to leave you tonight with a musical performance from the end of our evening. Here again is singer-songwriter Richard Neville.

And it's a little introduction to where I'm from the coast. Labrador, South Coast, a place called Black Tickle. Still today don't have a road going in there, and people still got to haul their drinking water from wells. So Mr. Neve spoke about land and the basic rights, you know, of humans. And I always hear about my home, Black Tickle, why are they still there? Why haven't they moved, you know?

They should relocate. But it's home, and I think they got that right to stay there as well. It's a very simple song called Home on the Coast. You can watch the big clouds in And the ice of April Slowly break away And in the smallest house Bigger's love has shown

or a handful of cape, and a drop of tea and toast. Come December day, oh, we'll come December day, oh, will come again come again. It just brings us all together Through the winter Avent then When the wild snow Spin

Another love will roll When another sweater understanders, in that home on the coast.