Heyllo! My name is Anca, and I started One Day for Human Rights.

There are a lot of human rights day sites / actions out there, so why start another one, you might ask. Because I wanted to do more than working for Jack Healey‘s (Human Rights Action Center), and because I believe that more can be done than what’s out there so far.

I wanted to make something different than ask you to donate money for this cause: to bring awareness. Less than 5% of the worlds’ population heard about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and probably less than that read it, even though i consider it to be one of the most important documents ever written. Have you read it? Do you know your rights as a human being? I know I haven’t until 4 years ago.

I grew up in communism until the age of 10. I remember very well the revolution to overthrow it, because we had to run away from home due to my family being in danger. My father was out there, risking his life to make a difference, while my sister, my mother and I were worried sick about him. When we went home, we had a bodyguard with a big rifle watching over us, and that made us feel very restless, worried and afraid. The presence of a gun around a child is such a wrong thing! Now, being an adult, I can only imagine all the child soldiers out there in Burma and  Darfur, not being protected by guns, but being forced to use them to hurt other people. Their future as adults is already decided, and I’m pretty sure that it  will not be a bright happy one.

I was lucky! Lucky to have had the opportunity to develop in freedom, even though I am sure a lot of the people in my country would disagree with me. Negativism, depression and fear for the future still rule Romanians, consequences of the 40 year long dictatorial regime not respecting the people’s human rights. It will take generations for the attitude of the people to change for the better, but I have faith that it will happen.

There are so many more reasons for me to be involved in promoting human rights, but I told myself I’ll keep this article short, for your sake :)

I know from experience that it is very hard to keep being motivated to fight for this cause. I’m a graphic designer, and never considered myself as an activist. The results come slow, the support is short handed and these can be very frustrating for someone used to getting immediate results from their actions. It is so much easier to donate $5 and sleep better at night because you ‘made a change’, but the real challenge is trying to make other people to believe in the reasons that determined you to donate the $5.

This is my challenge. This is the One Day for Human Rights challenge. If you are reading this it means you came to this website because you already are on my side (well, hopefully at least :)), but I wish that for one day a year, you will try to make someone else aware of the rights we all have as humans, have someone you know or you think they need it to read the UDHR, talk about it, spread the word. For you, as one person, the accomplishments will probably be small, due to the difficulty of getting people out of their comfort zone, but overall I believe that together we can make a difference. If the result we’re going to have is for at least one person to have a better life in this world, then I will declare this cause successful!

This cause was started by me, Anca. Even though I do work with Jack Healey and Human Rights Action Center, One Day for Human Rights is my cause, and I have noone else to support me except you, the people that care about these moral issues. I have no material incentive for you, as I have nothing to gain personally from doing this (well, except sleeping better at night :)), but I need your help and support more than anything. I need you to talk/write about human rights, for one day: December 10.

Will you? Would you? Should you? I believe that you should, as a moral duty to our world, but ‘will you’ and ‘would you’ I can’t answer. I encourage you to tell the rest of the world what are your reasons for supporting human rights in the comments section! Or, you can just write about it on your own blog, on December 10! *wink wink*

Thank you!
Anca

Tags: activism, human rights, human rights day, Universal Declaration of Human Rights