[Music] I signed up to do this talk about 6 months ago full of optimism positive and I was going to give you a message of Hope and and then brexit happened I live in London and I went into a period of depression like many people and was rethinking my my attitude and My Views but I got over it and my classic optimism returned and I was looking forward for the last couple of weeks to celebrating the election of the first woman president of the United States you know she did get the most votes I hope
you realize that if it's any consolation and she probably would have got more had it not been for a number of measures that were taken in some parts of the United States to prevent black people and other minorities from voting but I feel here today A little bit like someone trying to tell you the story and sell you on the idea of global warming in the middle of a winter storm we are in a difficult period for human rights what the brexit and the recent us election and other events elsewhere in the world have done
is fanned the Embers the smoldering Embers of racism and xenophobia and they are making life very hard particularly for minorities here in North America and elsewhere in the world but my message is ultimately one of optimism because it involves taking a Long View I'm looking back 50 years and I'm looking forward 50 years 50 years ago the major human rights treaties the two most important treaties in the United Nations were adopted we call them the covenants they're related to the universal Declaration of Human Rights which is a little older and that began a very very
robust complex elaborate system that continues to grow that protects our human rights through the United Nations and through Regional organizations and and of course here in Europe we are very fortunate to have what is perhaps the jewel of them all which is the European Court of Human Rights only a few months ago the European Court of Human Rights issued an important judgment against Switzerland although it wasn't really directed against Switzerland it was directed against the United Nations security Council for the first time and it said that the United Nations security Council through its resolutions which
had to be enforced in Switzerland was violating fundamental rights of due process and of equality before the law I don't want to talk about the institutions and the structures and the documents I want to talk about the ideas behind human rights and how they have evolved until today to enable me in a way to project the future to look forward so I want to go back 50 years and look at some of the issues that have I think surprised Us in terms of how they emerged one of them that I've worked on a great deal
is the abolition of capital punishment Now 50 years ago most countries in the world had the death penalty and used it most of them about 90% of states in the world used it when the United Nations Secretary General was asked is there a trend towards abolition the Secretary General said I can't tell one way or another there doesn't appear to be a trend but Trend there is and every year for the last 30 years or so two to three countries abolish the death penalty and we're now in a situation where about 160 countries have abolished
the death penalty have stopped using it have changed their laws some most of them have actually adopted International treaties to prevent the restoration of the death penalty and there are fewer than 40 states that still use it and in those 40 States actually fewer than that more like 37 the numbers are declining there's less and less death penalty being used in most of them even in the United States where the death penalty was once thriving it has been in quite dramatic decline for the last decade or so and the numbers continue to drop and that's
largely because juries Ordinary People the the same people who voted earlier this week are the ones involved in taking the decisions and I'm not talking about the voters in the blue States in New York and Massachusetts and Vermont because they don't have the death penalty there we're talking about the voters in the South and they are increasingly reluctant to sentence people to death when I look into the future 50 years from now I'm convinced it'll be gone we're just those states are ticking themselves knocking themselves off the list every year will it take 10 years
or 20 years or 30 years I'm not sure but 50 years from now it's over and that could not have been foreseen or anticipated I think in 1966 I think if someone said that in 1966 people would have said you know what were you smoking this morning let me turn to another area of rights that I want to examine and and develop and that's equality rights actually the equality rights go back much further they go back to the what's really the beginnings of modern human rights which is the Revolutionary developments of the 18th century the
American Revolution the French Revolution and similar events those are the two big ones and in the Declaration of Independence which starts the American Revolution they say all men men are created equal and we have something similar it's like the first article of the universal Declaration of Human Rights is actually based on it says that all uh Men Are Born Free and equal in uh freedom and in rights that's the French declaration the only difference between that and the universal Declaration of Human Rights is we now say all human beings because the women who were involved
in drafting the universal Declaration of Human Rights said you're not going to say all men are born free and equal but those who drafted these ideas who who conceived of them back in the 18th century had blind spots they understood the notion of equality and they promoted it some of them were slave owners and there was certainly no place for women in their vision of a free and equal Society they' understood the principle but they hadn't followed through the logic of it and that's something that we see and that I believe will continue to see
if I go back 50 years now to 1966 we still had formally officially racist States in in the world South Africa being the most important one and in 1966 there was no end in sight they just put Nelson Mandela in jail and he did about 30 years almost 30 years in in prison in the United States they were just cleaning up their legislation getting rid of the final remnants of law that promoted racial discrimination the problems aren't solved but they were they were were just in the course of doing that in 1966 when we turned
to women's equality I looked at the number of women uh heads of government in the 1960s you know from 1960 to 1970 in the world there were three women who were heads of government and it improved in the next decade from 1970 to 1980 there were four and do you know how many there were in the last decade from 2007 to 2016 37 women heads of government so there have been dramatic changes I probably don't need to tell that to anybody in the room I think you understand it if you have any doubts talk to
your grandmothers and they'll tell you how it changed but the other thing about equality is that groups that were not contemplated in 1966 that were not discussed that people didn't consider were part of the conversation about equality have emerged more recently sexual minorities for one in 1966 most countries in the world including many of them in Europe criminalized gay sexual activity now that's all gone that's the thing of the past um certainly in this part of the world and now we have same-sex marriage but you know in 1966 there were laws in the United States
preventing marriage not between people of the same sex between people of different races there were laws still inforce 50 years ago so who could have foreseen this it's a bit like the death penalty what person in 1966 would have said 5050 years from now we'll have gay marriage we'll have equality recognized for sexual minorities another area where there was huge development was in the area of uh disability rights and again in 1966 disability rights were not really on the radar and now we have a very very uh strong system we have an international treaty we
have a great deal of attention being devoted to making sure that people who are disabled are in a position to play a full and equal role in our society in our social life and that's a great change that could not have been I think really foreseen in 1966 so the question is what happens in the next 50 years where do we go in the next 50 years I think in the area of equality rights to remain with that very important core issue in human rights the New Frontier the area that we have not addressed is
equality in economic and social rights economic and social status we have huge inequalities on this planet even here in this country they appear to have grown in many ways and very unfortunately these economic and social inequalities are also nourishing things like the populist movements that seem to be arising in different parts of the world and that are threatening human rights and yet they seem to be what what the victims of these of these violations turn to as a hope in order to enhance their desire for equal treatment how this will come about in the next
50 years I'm not in a position to say we will have to find Creative Solutions the fact is that the wealth has never been more unequally distributed in the world step wrote a great book about this a few years ago and I'm sure many of you have read this I think that on the planet Earth there's enough wealth to ensure that every single person on the planet is fed and housed and educated and has medical care but so much of it is hidden away in tact shelters in Panama and we have to solve that problem
and I'm confident that we will the other area and this is something that uh is in a way a newer right is the right to freedom of movement now the universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Covenant of 1966 says everyone shall have freedom of movement within their country Within the borders of their country that was a political concession it's like the slaveholders recognizing equality rights because if you think of the notion of freedom of movement we should have freedom of movement throughout the Earth without having to worry about borders for most of us actually
we probably assume we have it already as as prosperous European professionals um we are in a position to go out to the airport and fly anywhere in the world while we need is a passport and a credit card and we can do it we assume we have these Mobility rights but there are people watching this Elsewhere on the world and they're saying well I don't have that and that's the problem we have to correct we have gone through this terrible crisis in Europe that people sometimes call the refugee crisis with a million people trying to
enter the continent some countries have been very welcoming some have been not so nice what is it's people trying to exercise their right to freedom of movement and another important right their fundamental right this is also secured in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to seek Asylum and to enjoy Asylum from persecution and it's to our shame as Europeans that thousands of them have died in recent years drowned in the Mediterranean Sea doing nothing more than trying to exercise their fundamental rights some think the solution is to build walls that was an issue in the
recent election campaign in the United States build a wall that's going to advance Humanity you know we had a wall in Europe once not that long ago just over 50 years ago somebody in East Germany thought it'd be a good idea to build a wall and that wall came crumbling down we celebrated the anniversary again this week that wall came crumbling down and with it the people who had built it okay Humanity doesn't need more walls we need Bridges not walls now some of you are sitting there thinking oh he's a utopian he's naive these
things will never come to pass but imagine someone in 1966 talking about near Universal abolition of the death penalty equality for sexual minorities the rights of the disabled and so on these two seemed unimaginable if you call me a dreamer let me cite another dreamer Martin Luther King who said that the moral Arc of the universe is long but it tends towards Justice I won't be around in 50 years to see whether my predictions come true most of you will be pretty old I dare say you'll be sitting there thinking that guy I heard in
Zurich 50 years ago did he underestimate things was he conservative he never imagined how much things would change the fact is these ideas Freedom equality Justice they don't explain everything about the progress of humanity about our ability to live together but they explain a great deal and they provide us with a guide to what our future is going to look like thank you [Music]
