CBC Ideas Week: Brave New Worlds

How do we create a better world? How do we articulate the kind of future we want to live in, something that has never been tried before? This five-part series, moderated by CBC Ideas host Nahlah Ayed, explores efforts throughout history to imagine new possibilities and make them real by focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Born out of the devastation of the Second World War, the Universal Declaration sought to set the world on a new course. The rights it sought to uphold have evolved over the decades since, at times widely upheld, at others eroded and denied. Each panel charts the state of one of these human rights through the years. What kind of new world were these rights supposed to create? What do they mean in the 21st century, and can their ideals be reimagined in the service of new utopias? What’s the relationship between rights and realities, between calling for a more just world - and actually bringing it into being?

The Rights to Leave, to Return, and to Seek Asylum: Articles 13 and 14

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” One also has the right to seek “asylum from persecution” in other countries. At a time when record numbers of people are forcibly displaced, Nahlah Ayed and her guests discuss where these rights came from, and what they could mean today.