Best Of: UDHR@75: Can our human rights system ever fulfill its promise?

Strength & Solidarity Season 6 will start in November. Meanwhile we’re repeating some of our favourite shows from past seasons. This week we're revisiting episode 39, first released, December 21, 2023. Original Episode Description from December 2023: The ⁠Universal Declaration of Human Rights⁠ (UDHR) turned 75 on the 10 December 2023. Passed by the UN General Assembly in the wake of two brutal world wars, it expressed an aspiration for a new world, one in which every human being’s rights would be acknowledged and respected, and international law would regulate the actions of states and hold them accountable for violations. That vision is as powerful today as it was then and it has sometimes, and in some places, been realized. But the failures are many. Despite their pledge, governments have repeatedly abandoned principle to pursue their own interests, leaving ordinary people – sometimes an individual, sometimes millions – without protection from brutal mistreatment or immiseration and lacking any recourse. Why does the the global human rights system fail? And can it be made to work? A group of moderators from the Symposium on Strength and Solidarity for Human Rights get round a table to argue it out. For a list of supplemental readings and additional information about this episode’s content, visit ⁠https://strengthandsolidarity.org/podcasts/⁠ Contact us at [email protected]