Would like you to do the human rights movement a favor this year. Human Rights Day is December 10, the day the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in Paris, France in 1948.

Most people in the world have never read the UDHR, let alone have a copy or even know about it. Yet it remains the best document ever scribed for all of us people.

Truthfully, it gets a little boring to read all at one time. So I asked two NYU students to produce this UDHR in animation so that more would see it…get the feel of it…enjoy it and pass it around. This has begun in earnest; festivals and museums all over the world are using it. The UDHR is finally reaching millions rather than hundreds. But we got a long way to go, as you might guess.

UDHR POSTER -11×17 in.	UDHR POSTER -8.5×11 in.
UDHR ANIMATION FOR iPHONE	UDHR ANIMATION ON YOUTUBE

Can I ask you to download it and take it to classes, to places of worship? To meetings of non-governmental organizations, to your families and to your friends. Help celebrate human rights this year by showing it anywhere and everywhere from December 1st to December 10th to commemorate the signing and the importance of the document that can be responsible for making the world a better place.

We all need to play our part in this world of offending governments, mine and yours.

Please help!

Jack Healey

Andrew created this AWESOME hand-made poster in support of December 10 – Human Rights Day and 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!

Now, he decided to AUCTION his poster on e-bay, and donate the money to Human Rights Action Center! Isn’t that the coolest thing ever?

THANK YOU, ANDREW! :)

One Day isn’t the Only Day – by Andrew @ additivedesigns.com

“Haha! Surprise! Just because it’s not December 10th doesn’t mean it’s time to stop thinking, and fighting, for Human Rights.

Big thanks to Razvan and Rajesh for pointing out something I should have done in the first place: auction off my poster and give the proceeds to charity.

Specifically the Human Rights Action Center.

So! Here’s the deal: The poster is now up on eBay and will be for 10 days. Whether or not you actually bid on it doesn’t matter, just help spread the word so that we can find a nice philanthropist. Or, just bid a couple bucks.

I have no monetary goals for this poster and what I can donate to HRAC; if we even got this up to $20 I’d be overjoyed. Anything helps.”

e-bay Charity Auction for Human Rights Action Center

One day I received an e-mail from Lee Kemp – a man who was asking me if I can customize one of these badges for him, because he wanted to put it on his blog.  What was special about his request was for the badge to say “Soldier in Support of Human Rights”.

In his request, he wrote “but as a former soldier with a strong belief in human rights I know that the vast majority of my former colleagues do as well.

I don’t believe that being a soldier excludes you from humanitarian ideals, despite the press to this effect.”

That got me thinking of the stereotyping that soldiers are being exposed to these days, due to the wars in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and such. Lee was obviously very conscious about this phenomenon. A lot of questions popped in my head, and wanted to know more about his stance on Human Rights, so I asked him to write a guest post for One Day for Human Rights.

He accepted, and I am very happy he did, because he wrote what I was hoping and needed to hear: the point of view of a humanitarian soldier! Sometimes we get wrapped up in stereotypes created by mass-media and society, and we forget to listen to the ‘other’ side. Therefore I am going to ask you to put your judgmental views aside, and read Lee’s article with an open mind and heart!

LEE KEMP: ‘A SOLDIER’S PERSPECTIVE’

“I accepted the kind invitation to write a blog post on here because I didn’t know whether people might be surprised to find that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is something that soldiers believe in, let alone fight for. So I wanted to take the opportunity to share some thoughts.

There’s a group on Facebook called “Soldiers are not Heroes”. Their position is a simple one; that you do not become a hero simply by donning the uniform of your country’s armed services. As a former soldier with operational experience in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan I would probably agree with that. It takes a little bit more. But where my beliefs part company with theirs is when they go on to describe soldiers as “mindless killer sheep” who are required to “put their conscience in a lockbox”. The implication is not that soldiers don’t have a conscience, rather that they are born with a superhuman ability to ignore it. I dispute this because I, like every soldier I have known, have a fundamental belief in the “equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family”. That belief doesn’t sit alongside being a mindless killer.

As a British soldier you do not, indeed you cannot devolve responsibility for your actions to a third party. You are required to act at all times within the law. Whether you are on warfighting operations like Iraq and Afghanistan, or peacekeeping operations like Bosnia, Kosovo or Sierra Leone, your actions and your inactions are governed by the Law of Armed Conflict; theft, rape and murder are judged as harshly as they would be elsewhere. British soldiers undergo mandatory training and testing on the Law of Armed Conflict twice a year and always before operational deployment. The training is always delivered by experienced soldiers and the unofficial mantra is always this; “if you fuck this up, don’t think for a moment the army will protect you. You’re on your own”.

The reason Britain embarks on any peacekeeping or warfighting operation is to uphold the human rights of others’. Yes, there are times when the issue is more complex. If for you Iraq was about oil, then for me it was about the 500,000 Iraqi children under 5 who died as a result of UN sanctions. If you think it was a crime to intervene in Afghanistan, I think it was a crime not to intervene in Rwanda. If you think that as a soldier you get your “conscience put in a lockbox” then you assume that soldiers are unaffected by the actions they witness. In that case I would ask you to think of my friend Donny who killed himself after developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Bosnia. Or think of the 4 American soldiers on active service killing themselves every week. If, even now, you  think that a soldier is a mindless killing machine without regard for people, then the 18 young, male veterans killing themselves in the U.S. every day won’t change your mind either. If soldiers didn’t care about the rights of others’, then it wouldn’t matter what they saw.

The most important word in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the first one. This is something that soldiers support. Otherwise they wouldn’t be soldiers.”

_____________________________

Please feel free to leave comments for Lee, and your opinion about his stance of a soldier for Human Rights!   You can also contact him on his website: http://www.leekemp.net/

Thank you,

Anca

Posted in The Huffington Post

“Sixty years ago, the best document ever written came together in Paris under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt. It is called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That’s the good news. The bad news is less than 5% of the world even knows about this document. Worse yet, many governments do not properly adhere to its tenants. This Declaration was written against the horrific backdrop of WWII, when human rights violations reached immense proportion. Although similar levels of human rights violations have remained consistent throughout the world in places like Darfur, Burma, and the Central Congo, the principles discussed in this document still remain ideals, rather than realities.

By the year 2010, 42% of the world will be under the age of 21. As was seen in the recent American election, there is a clamoring for change amongst this demographic. This exists not only for young people at home, but all over the world. When injustice occurs in far corners of the globe, this document empowers the innocent against the oppressor. Just as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as an example of justice and equality, so to will this new generation need a rulebook to combat oppression.

Such a rulebook already exists in this Declaration. For 60 years, governments have let this document gather dust in a closet. This anniversary reminds us that this Declaration is living and belongs to every citizen of the world, no matter what nationality, race, gender or creed. It is time to put this Declaration in the hands of the people, for there is an awful lot of suffering in the world.

This document is for, as Bob Dylan wrote, “the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones and worse.” If you are in a far-away land being tortured, raped, censored or held captive, this document is the “the chimes of freedom flashing.”

This is not just idealism. There are practical things you can do right now to honor Eleanor Roosevelt’s greatest achievement, and more importantly, protect the fabric of decency that should exist between governments and their citizens.

Below is a video of artists, activists and children reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — send it to everyone you know.

Sign the petition at www.humanrightsactioncenter.org to get this Declaration printed in every passport.

Write your representatives and encourage them to take the necessary steps to free Aung San Suu Kyi, the present, living-day symbol of Human Rights and the rightful leader of Burma.

Lastly, print a copy of the Declaration of Human Rights and put it in your wallet. Take it from a guy who has met his share of innocent people being abused: you never know when you just might need it.”

By joining the first list I know of in support of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and supporting our goal of putting this document into passports, where people might find it and read it, I want to say a BIG THANK YOU.  We have a big job in front of us but it is a necessary one. The world awaits the best document written for all of us.

Imagine waiting in line at customs in a big international airport.  Instead of standing in line anxious to get through, imagine all of us reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, together, while we wait.

Or some terrific and curious young boy or girl finds a thrown away passport in a garbage dump.  They sit down, read their rights, and go home with all the knowledge they need to change the world they live in.

Free the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!  Give it to the people, especially those who need it most, bother governments till they work for us, chase the torturer out of the chamber, give some food to the starving,  get our children into good schools and allow even the poorest the care of a good nurse and doctor.

Hey let us go for it! It is our time.

Thanks for your help,

Jack Healey

This site was done in order to create awareness on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of its Anniversary, by trying to get as many of you to blog/pod/video blog about it, showing YOUR opinion on human rights issues all over the world!

This blog post is meant to promote all of you out there who signed our Petition to print the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in passports, who support this document, and make everyone you know aware of this documents’ existence. Therefore, I am asking you to trackback to this post, or write a comment on it, with links to your actions!

I encourage people that live in less developed countries to write about the human rights issues in their own countries – it is a great way to open the eyes of the world on how people are being abused in places that not everybody is aware of the fact that such abuses exist.

Thank you all! Can’t wait to see what your opinions are on Human Rights!

Love,

Anca

SIGN THE PETITION at www.humanrightsactioncenter.org to get this Declaration printed in every passport.

Write your representatives and encourage them to take the necessary steps to free Aung San Suu Kyi, the present, living-day symbol of Human Rights and the rightful leader of Burma. Lastly, print a copy of the Declaration of Human Rights and put it in your wallet.