HUMAN RIGHTS DAY 2020 THEME: RECOVER BETTER – STAND UP FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
December 10th is Human Rights Day. On this day in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The declaration proclaims the inalienable rights to which everyone is entitled as a human being – regardless of race, color, religion, sex, language, political or other opinions, national or social origin, property, birth, or another status.
This year’s Human Rights Day theme relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the need to ensure Human Rights are central to recovery efforts. Our common goals can only be reached if we are able to create equal opportunities for all. We must address the failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to overcome entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion, and discrimination.
Human Rights Day gives us an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of human rights in re-building the world we want, the need for global solidarity as well as our interconnectedness and shared humanity.
Source: United Nations webpage at https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. […] Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Human Rights Day Resources
- Overview: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/AboutUs/Pages/HumanRightsDay.aspx
- A Toolkit that includes a human rights primer, covers the human rights system, human rights, and the U.S. and your role in human rights. https://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/uploads/human_rights_toolkit_final.pdf
- A comprehensive source for a wide range of Human Rights Day 2020 Campaign Materials. https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day
- UDHR in American Sign Language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6KqS565p24&feature=youtu.be