Alex Neve

This was good. What held my interest but at the same time were all of the stories of people’s rights being violated. Often in the name of economics or out of fear. But inspiring were the stories of people fighting the good fight and overcoming inertia and status quo. Neve makes the good point that making human rights personal, close to home, makes it easier to understand the need to always struggle for rights to be recognized even though human rights are innate and inalienable and to be show more empathetic to those marginalized by the powers that determine who will be granted rights and who will not. This entire book, Universal, is an argument that human rights is not a club where only some are admitted. Human rights are for everyone, all the time, everywhere. show less

Neve gives a good overview of the birth and troubled life of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I found myself nodding along in agreement ... until the lectures deteriorated into a somewhat angry diatribe; a polemic. So, on balance, meh.