With Peter Mansbridge
"All are equal before the law and entitled to equal protection of the law." — Universal Declaration on Human Rights
We're living through tumultuous times, with strongmen rising to power around the globe and nationalist populism on the march. So what does that mean for human rights?
The film marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — originally drafted by Canadian legal scholar John Humphrey and championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, and signed by most UN member states in 1948. The Declaration sets out 30 rights meant to guarantee health, freedom, equality and dignity for all people, and has long stood as the standard every nation was supposed to be reaching for. Today, though, many of those same rights are being openly questioned — including by leaders in Western countries.
For his first independently produced documentary since leaving CBC, Peter Mansbridge hit the road to take stock of human rights today, and who's still defending them. The project paired him with Claus Kleber, chief correspondent for Germany's ZDF; the two veteran newsmen travelled separately to multiple countries to see how human rights are actually being lived by ordinary people.
The result is eye-opening, and at times heartbreaking — a portrait of institutions, from authoritarian China to liberal Canada, failing to uphold rights agreed to seven decades ago. But hope comes through too, in the people the reporters meet who risk their own comfort and freedom to stand up for the rights of strangers.