Videos
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Belle
Humans are complex beings. The movie “Belle” (director Amma Assante) explores human complexity, particularly as it manifests in everyday human relationships. The movie is set in the late eighteenth century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Dido Elizabeth Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the central character of the movie. She was born into slavery, but her father, Captain John Lindsay, was the nephew of the Lord Chief Justice William Murray (Earl of Mansfield). By this chance of fate, Dido escaped a life of slavery and was brought up instead in British high society – as part of the Lord Chief Justice’s household. The movie explores what life may…
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We have to bring the world together and learn to live as one
Sometimes our musicians capture in few words ideas at the heart of human rights. This article is dedicated to the song “United”, which was produced by a group of musicians “Playing for Change”. They wrote the song in cooperation with 7 billion actions, bringing together musicians from around the world. Where some might see the figure of 7 billion as a cause of alarm, these musicians see 7 billion human hearts. As 7 Billion Actions say on their webpage: 7 Billion Actions is connecting people and creating positive change through the universal language of music. Music has the power to break down boundaries between people. Music transcends geographical, political, economic, spiritual and ideological distances, uniting people…
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‘We will always remember you’
Sometimes, there is no need for words. This, I think, is one of those times. This video says it all.
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Bartolome de las Casas: An early human rights worker
Bartolome de las Casas is one of those remarkable people in history who arose at the very beginning of the modern human rights movement. A great humanitarian; he learnt human rights in his encounter with the people of Central and South America during the sixteenth century European invasion of the Americas. He used his office as Dominican friar and later Bishop to uphold the human rights of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Las Casas came to the America’s as part of the colonial expeditions from Spain, arriving in 1502 in Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), at the very beginning of the encounter between the Europeans and the people of the Americas.…
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Love Your Mother
Pictures of planet Earth “our home planet” capture our imagination. This one commemorates Earth Day and its message is simple: we need to love the planet we live on. It’s easy to take our ability to see the whole Earth for granted and to forget that until the ‘Space Age’ at the end of the 1960’s we had simply never seen it that way: we’d never got the whole thing in perspective. “The Blue Marble”, the photograph that appears in our logo, was taken in 1972 by Harrison Schmitt, one of the astronauts of the Apollo 17 mission. Robert Poole is his book Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth describes it as ‘A photographic manifesto for…
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What ended chattel slavery in the British Empire?
The question of how legal chattel slavery in the British Empire came to an end is an important question to ask. It is far from a historical curiosity. The end of legal slavery in the British Empire potentially contains lessons on how the human rights abuses of our own time might be addressed. Given the political and commercial interests invested in the continuation of slavery and the slave trade how could change ever have come about? Slavery in the British Empire: Hochschild In this video, Adam Hochschild, talks about why chattel slavery in the British Empire ended. He discusses the different stories that have been told (and not told) about this…
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The Berlin Wall and Barack Obama
In recent days Germans and those affected by the Cold War are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is an anniversary worth celebrating. A chasm between the politics of the west and the communist world dissolved and people that had been kept apart for 40 years were suddenly able to come together. The process has not always been easy and far from perfect, particularly in respect of poverty. Nonetheless walls came down: literally and metaphorically. The White House press release on 6 November leading up to the event says little beyond congratulations: On the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the fall…
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Angelina Jolie and the Refugee Warehouses
What makes someone like Angelina Jolie take an interest in the lives of refugees? What makes anyone take interest? In this video Angelina visits refugees in Afghanistan. It’s clear that there is no “foreignness” in how she relates to them. She sees them as people who are suffering, and to whom we should respond.
