Alex Neve (Paul Thompson)

If Canada named poet laureates for human rights, University of Ottawa professor, lawyer, and internationally recognized social justice advocate Alex Neve would rank as a top-tier candidate.

Neve’s bona fides as an authentic, compassionate messenger for suppressed voices, his decades of work as secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, and his contagious optimism amid the global gloom make him a perfect pick for the renowned Massey Lectures, the annual series that includes the wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr., Doris Lessing, Ursula Franklin, Jane Jacobs, Margaret Atwood, and Tomson Highway in its six-decade legacy.

Universal is a timely, focused, and very accessible cri de cœur that ably maps the history, politics, and legal foundations for all people to enjoy inherent human rights that, while codified in treaty, covenant, legislation, and legal precedent, are all too often ignored or attacked. Though he is inspired by the foundational documents and subsequent renovations of the international human rights architecture (first drafted in 1948 as the United Nations’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights), Neve eschews rose-coloured glasses for an honest, at times painful, reckoning with repeated failures throughout the world to keep the promises of “never again” provoked by the Second World War’s atrocities.

Neve is an elegant, inviting writer whose narrative is infused with a poetic social passion that documents dramatic journeys to destinations rarely in the headlines. With each chapter, he outlines the core concepts that inform the definition of universal human rights and then puts a human face on them in accounts of his interactions with front-line activists in prisons, refugee camps, and genocide zones as diverse as Guatemala, Bangladesh, Chad, Syria, and Indigenous nations here in Canada. As Neve contemplates humanity’s worst behaviours, from torture dungeons to sites of mass detention for children, he centres inspirational personal declarations of hope from individuals who, objectively, might at first glance seem incapable of harbouring such faith.

Critical to Neve’s optimism is its basis in an historical overview that explores religious texts, poetry, Indigenous governance and practices, Enlightenment philosophers, and contemporary voices that, across cultures and politics, are joined in honouring the sacredness of life, common humanity, respect and reciprocity, and fairness and freedom.

The book’s structure, built around Massey’s five-lecture format, is buttressed with the necessary research, analysis, and bountiful real-world illustrations that are a balm for the cynical and an uplift for the hopeless. Neve provides readers with workable pathways to revitalize, renew, and re-engage with the concept of giving human rights their turn at the forefront of our lives. It’s a responsibility incumbent on all people; he consistently shows that it is most often one person’s determination to do what is right that drives action, and we cannot rely on complacent or, worse, antagonistic governments.

One refugee Neve recalls meeting spoke of universal human rights as a lifeboat whose seaworthiness, rickety at the best of times, was nonetheless a potential pathway out of unforgiving circumstances. It’s a tribute to Neve’s command of the material that he generously entertains critiques of his faith in that lifeboat, acknowledging failures while illustrating times when, with a patch here and bit of inflation there, the idea can be made flesh, as in the recent fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the international arrest warrants naming officials responsible for war crimes from Gaza to Ukraine, and the incremental steps taken to advance Indigenous rights.

Despite being welcomed into a venerable Canadian canon, Neve is not shy about exposing  Canada’s own inconsistent application of human rights, from historic and ongoing mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples to more recent governmental failures to abide by its own treaty commitments and lofty rhetoric.

Neve concludes Universal with an extensive prescription for what ails us, laying out key benchmarks that should be met, commitments Canada must undertake, and global changes needed on issues from climate change to reconciliation. Ultimately, he reminds us that just as we Canadians now enjoy the fruits of hard-fought victories such as same-sex marriage, the abolition of the death penalty, abortion access, public health care, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ equality rights, we can, through collective action rooted in shared values, continue to welcome ever more drowning people onto the human-rights lifeboat.