[SOUND] Welcome to the course, Human Rights for Open Societies. In this course, we will introduce one of the world's most developed human rights systems to you, the European Convention on Human Rights. Our underlying claim throughout will be that a solid protection of human rights is a necessary condition for societies to be open. So what exactly are open societies. Do you feel you live in one. Are you at liberty to do as you wish. And does your society offer you full freedom. Very few of us would answer this with a resounding yes, and probably many would tend to answer no or only partly. The first to coin the term, open society, was the French philosopher, Henri Bergson. With this notion, he wanted to describe the opposite of a closed society. In such a closed society, people only trust their own tribe or group and display hostility and fear towards others. For Bergson, an open society was one which would embrace all of humanity. His even more famous colleague, Karl Popper, further developed the idea of open societies. Popper defined open societies as places in which individuals are not bound by fixed traditions or one unchanging truth, but are open to changing insights and changing knowledge. For Popper, this required a democratic form of government. In his view, democracy was the only system able to channel changes in societies peacefully. It may not come as a surprise, writing as he did during the second world war, that he saw totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism and Communism as examples of fatal and dangerous claims to an unchallengeable truth. They were in a way similar to the closed tribal societies of old. By contrast, in an open society, citizens are free to constantly and critically question and rethink accepted truth. You may have a hunch by now that this has something to do with human rights. For example the right to freely gather information, to form an opinion and to express it. Going beyond the philosophical idea of an open society, insights from history and the social sciences can tell us more about what the idea entails in practice, and how is this connected to human rights. If we look back in time, we see two things. On the one hand, many rulers tried to establish control over the territories within which they exercised power. They tried to monopolize the use of violence, finances, and even ideas and religions, and to control who went in and out. On the other hand, with very few and rarely successful exceptions, societies have never become fully closed. On the contrary, over time, there have always been flows of people, goods, ideas, and innovations crossing borders. In that sense, whether they wanted it or not, many societies have to some extent always been open. The rise of the modern state in the past two centuries is in an important way marked by the attempt to control a specific territory. The idea of state sovereignty, it was for rulers or in democracies for citizens to decide on the rules and laws within their borders. Yet, as the horrors of genocides, ethnic cleansing, and many other crimes against humanity have shown, the idea that states can do as they like is not morally tenable. Moreover, social scientists have argued that societies that are also open internally are more successful economically and socially. The inclusion of as many groups as possible in the sharing of power and economic wealth is beneficial. To put it differently, the exclusion and discrimination of specific groups, women, ethnic minorities, religious groups, or the poor is harmful, not just to those groups themselves, but also to society as a whole. Being an open society therefore does not only have ethical, but also economic, and social benefits. These insights arose in parallel with the idea of human rights. First, within states as a counter weight to state power and later, especially after the second world war, also internationally. And this is another way in which human rights link to the idea of open societies. Human rights were conceived both as a concrete legal tool in the hands of people, as well as a moral idea, and allowing open societies, as opposed to authoritarian systems. The idea was also that protection was needed beyond the state. This is why first in several regions in the world, and later globally, human rights supervision systems were set up. The old conception of sovereignty has non-interference as do not criticize what happens in my state or society, has been re-conceived into something different, sovereignty as responsibility. A responsibility for states to guarantee and uphold the human rights of all those within their territories, irrespective of the group to which they belong. Obviously, not all states and people easily accept this new interpretation of sovereignty. Nor is the ideal of a fully open society a reality anywhere yet. But a system of human rights protection is the best guarantee to take steps forward towards that ideal. This was exactly the starting point for the drafters of the European Convention on Human Rights, or ECHR as it is often abbreviated. It was one of the world's first human rights treaties. In the late 1940s the 10 countries that created the convention perceived this revolutionary document as a necessary tool to prevent a return totalitarianism. In the preamble to the convention, they emphasized the close linkage between democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. None of the three can sustainably exist without the others. If you want democracy in your country to work, you need the right to vote, but you also need a free press and the freedom to organize political parties. If you have a conflict with your neighbor or with the state authorities, you need an independent, an impartial judge to look at your situation and to resolve the conflict in a just way. If you want to live in freedom, you need the security that your life will be protected and you will not be tortured or held in slavery. And no matter your ethnic or religious background, your nationality or your physical capabilities, you want to be treated equally for the reason for being human. All of these guarantees are let down in this European Convention. This treaty still forms the foundation of Human Rights Protection in Europe today. It is a good example in the protection of Human Rights through an international legal instrument. This is why we think it is a good object for study and inspiration no matter where you live. Also it is a dynamic and in that sense a truly open system that is able to meet the many challenges that the human rights that all of us face today. The every encroaching presence of modern technologies that follow our every footstep online and offline, the cross border issues of migration, free flows of information, extremism, terrorism, and the very real threat of societies becoming more closed, either socially or politically. In this course, we invite you to follow us on a journey of discovery on what the European Convention actually is. We will see when and how people can turn to the European Court of Human Rights to complain about human rights violations. We will show you how the court tries to solve many of the difficult human rights dilemmas of today. Whether it concerns your right to vote, respect for your privacy, or your rights as a foreigner in another country, you will learn how human rights are closely related to the ideal of open societies, and you will understand what an uphill battle it often is to make progress towards that ideal. Please join us in the weeks ahead for this journey into the land of human rights. 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