Human Rights Day 2025: We Have the Power to Change the World
Human Rights Day comes around once a year. Human rights, though, demand our attention and vigilance every day of the year. This Human Rights Day we mark the 77th anniversary of the UN’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and despite the deeply troubled and troubling state of our world, I’m feeling unabashedly buoyant and remarkably optimistic that we will (because I am confident that we can) advance the transformative change we so desperately need.
I am, of course, also deeply fearful, outraged and fretful about the world’s many fractures and ruptures. The list – the climate emergency, genocide in Gaza, Trump’s seemingly limitless descent into fascism, ‘nation-building’ that privileges pipelines over Indigenous rights and the environment, the normalization of the notwithstanding clause, Ukraine, Sudan and Afghanistan, forced displacement and closed borders, economic inequality and homelessness, blowing up supposed ‘narcotrafficking’ boats in the Caribbean, and the sinister and insidious ways that hate has become embedded across so many facets of our lives; just for starters – grows longer every day.
So, yes, it absolutely is tempting to give up on human rights amidst all of that. At times, it in fact feels impossible not to give up. We’ve all felt it, probably on a daily basis. There is no doubt that there are considerable forces pushing us to do just that, intent on convincing us that we are powerless against the purveyors and champions of hate, division, domination, violence, greed and exploitation that are marshaled against the precepts of rights, justice and equality that we cherish. Determined to make us accept that even if we are distressed, there is little point trying to do anything about it.
But I do not have the slightest inclination to give in to that pessimistic temptation. The magnificence and essential humanity of the universal human rights promise remain irrefutable. The means of delivering the promise are within our grasp. Our challenge is to embrace our power, individually and collectively, to make the promise soar.
No matter how often I hear variations of the conclusion (sometimes expressed with reluctant regret, other times with gloating smugness) that we have reached the end times for human rights, I resist. Not only out of stubbornness, though there is that. I resist because I know, in both my mind and my heart, that we have not by any measure reached those end times because, if we were to be completely honest with ourselves, it is glaringly evident that we have never truly embarked on the human rights journey. It is glaringly premature to conclude that the universal human rights promise is a wrongheaded failure or, more benignly, has proven to be a well-intentioned disappointment, because we have yet to fully embrace what the promise requires of us, including in our own lives.
While delivering the 2025 CBC Massey Lectures on the theme of Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World, I’ve had an incredible opportunity over the past three months to engage with people across the country about just that. What do human rights mean in their own lives? What is their read of the state of human rights in our world? Have they given up on the human rights promise? How deep is their conviction and determination to be changemakers? It truly has been a gift to have what proved to be myriad uplifting conversations, full of moments of humility, heaps of learning, reassuring affirmation that belief in human rights remains strong and, everywhere, to be surrounded by solidarity’s empowering embrace.
I was not expecting that, at least not to that extent. If anything, I anticipated being challenged – primarily even overwhelmingly – by expressions of cynicism, anger, tiredness and even a degree of fatalism that humanity’s path is irredeemably set. I was prepared to hear much about people’s fears for our world (which I did, of course; fears that I share). I worried that discussions would be subsumed by doom and despair. I readied for pushback that championing universal human rights was seen as hopelessly naïve or delusionally idealistic.
And of course there were substantial elements of that doubt and disbelief. How could there not be? One would have to be devoid of any knowledge of the world around us to feel otherwise. But having had rich exchanges with close to 5,000 people from one end of the country to another – ranging from energized Q&A sessions after lectures in large concert halls, intimate talks in public libraries, lively discussions on university campuses, and quiet conversations out on the land – more than anything I have heard rejection of the status quo and impassioned determination to forge something better, grounded in universal respect for human rights.
The lectures end with a rather ambitious agenda (how could it be anything but) built around six key imperatives: 1/ put human rights first; 2/ embrace universality and commit to equality; 3/ protect human rights defenders and the right to protest; 4/ ensure justice; 5/ be expansive (in such areas as the rights of nature, economic justice and digital technology); and 6/ believe in and champion human rights.
And where do we start? I was struck with how often the theme that resonated most deeply is how vital it is that we simply recognize that silence is not an option. Not that we all need to be at the head of the protest, bellowing into a megaphone. But we cannot be silent as we move through our own lives.
Start today by challenging yourself to have a conversation, perhaps an uncomfortable one, with someone new or unexpected about the genocide in Gaza, putting Indigenous rights and reconciliation above pipelines, or how crucial it is to uphold trans rights.
Look for where you can go further and take action (you can find suggestions here), and make a pledge, with yourself, that you will do so weekly or daily. Encourage family, friends, neighbours and co-workers to do the same, even if you feel hesitant about bringing it up because you worry you will be seen as preachy. It is time to preach!
If you can afford it, consider increased financial support to human rights, environmental, humanitarian and social justice organizations that are reeling from government cuts (fighter jets and critical minerals are in, HIV/AIDS prevention and food security in refugee camps are out).
And above all, make solidarity your mantra. Ask yourself who you are standing with? Who are you overlooking? Whose voice dominates and whose is silenced? Reach out, not with raised elbows but with extended hands. And imagine your hands and so many others, linked across your community and globally, as an unshakeable foundation on which we truly, at long last, build and deliver the universal human rights promise.
If we believe, if we join together, we can get there. But only if we act. Change begins, always, with one person.
