Big Ideas The six years that remade human rights (2025 CBC Massey Lecture 2)
Mar 24, 2026
Alex Neve, an international human rights lawyer and former Amnesty International Canada leader, traces six pivotal postwar years that reshaped legal protections. He surveys the roots of human rights, Nuremberg and genocide law, the 1948 Declaration, Geneva Conventions, and the Refugee Convention. Short, vivid scenes show how universality, prevention, justice and collective responsibility emerged in that era.
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Origins Of Universal Human Rights
- Universal human rights grew from millennia-old values like sacredness of life and reciprocity.
- Alex Neve traces roots through Maori, Navajo, Confucian, Ubuntu, and Enlightenment thought showing legal codification in the 1948 Declaration.
Setsuko Thurlow's Hiroshima Testimony
- Setsuko Thurlow recounts being 13 in Hiroshima and seeing charred bodies and schoolmates after the atomic bomb.
- Alex Neve uses her story to show the immediate human horror that spurred global resolve to constrain apocalyptic weapons.
Nuremberg Introduced International Accountability
- The Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals introduced crimes against humanity and individual accountability under international law.
- Alex Neve highlights this as the first legal enforcement of universality, even if applied selectively by the victors.