Stand Up for Someone’s Rights Today
Human Rights Day 2016
In this era of Brexit, Trump, Duterte and the destruction of much of the Middle East there is the temptation to retreat to the known and familiar, to build a wall around our own little enclave and focus on my particular concerns. What flows from this is, inevitably, fear – a fear which breeds resentment, distrust and intolerance.
Fear leads to a politics of a nationalism which views the “other” as suspicious, and all too quickly descends into racism, extremism and disrespect for the human rights of all. Human and humane values are under attack in many parts of the world. Race, religion, gender, skin colour and political views become the determinants of a person’s worth not the common humanity which binds us all.
Human Rights Day, celebrated every 10 December, reminds us that 68 years ago a group of people reeling from the horrors of World War II, Nazism and the rise of Stalinism set out to define a set of universal human rights, common to all peoples and countries, which would govern relationships between nations, governments and people. These were not to be bureaucratic and lofty but a recognition of what is needed to help human beings flourish and nations live in peace.
Speaking in 1947 Eleanor Roosevelt, the inaugural Chair of the Drafting Committee on the International Bill of Rights, said: Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home, so close and so small 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.
The view of the world from the nightly television news can be bleak but that must never obscure the extraordinary courage and commitment of so many – the white helmets rescuing people in Syria, the Italian coastguard pulling asylum seekers out of the water, welcoming German citizens flocking to railway stations as refugees arrive, Israeli and Palestinian fire fighters working together and ordinary citizens taking to the streets refusing to be cowed by acts of terrorism. In whatever part of the world we are it is not only possible but imperative that we stand up for the those whose rights are threatened on the basis of race or gender or political views.
The rights of immigrants, prisoners, people seeking asylum, people with disabilities and those living in poverty are frequently ignored when legislation is drafted, welfare programs initiated or access to education discussed. Human Rights Day is a reminder that we can Stand Up for Someone’s Rights Today.
Words: Coordinator Loreto JPIC, Libby Rogerson ibvm