Mrs Okafor's garden

About this video

Back in Riverside, a building company makes an offer. It will pay for a new playground and new benches, if the town lets it build a car park on Mrs Okafor's garden. She has lived there for forty years and doesn't want to sell. Everyone else in town would be better off. Can the town just take her garden?

Many people answer no: it is her garden. Even if the whole town gains, something belongs to her that the town can't simply take. A right is something each person is owed, which protects them. Rights work like a shield around each person: they say what may not be done to you, even if doing it would be better for everyone else. Looking at results adds up everyone's good; rights say some things can't be added up and traded, because a person isn't just a share of the total. It is the same idea as "people are not tools", written as a protection.

Every right comes with a duty for somebody else. If Mrs Okafor has a right to her garden, everyone else has a duty not to take it; if a child has a right to go to school, someone has a duty to provide a school. Rights don't settle every case: the town could offer her a fair price and ask again, and she could agree, and rights can clash with each other. But a right means that her "no" must be weighed, not just outvoted.

After the Second World War, in which whole groups of people were treated as if they had no rights at all, the countries of the world wrote down the rights every person has. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was agreed by the United Nations on 10 December 1948: thirty short articles, including the right to life, not to be tortured, to be equal before the law, to go to school, and to think and speak freely. Human rights are rights every person has just because they are a person. This video goes with the What a Right Protects lesson of Ethics Level 1 on Knaph.

Transcript

1. 0:00A company offers Riverside a playground and benches. On one condition.
2. 0:05A car park on Mrs Okafor's garden. Everyone else would gain.
3. 0:11A right is like a shield around each person. It can't just be added up.
4. 0:17Her right is everyone else's duty. Her no must be weighed, not outvoted.
5. 0:231948. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rights for every person.
6. 0:29A right protects you, even from what's best for everyone else.