People were killed for it since the beginning of time, in the name of power: religious (i.e. Inquisition), military (so many empires built on murder) or just the need of feeling superior (i.e. racism).

Having it makes us who we are, opens the gates of creativity, humanity, happiness. Being denied it makes us useless puppets.

It works on every level of society: from basic family relations, to work environment, to globalization of human interactions.

Used properly, it is responsible for our most wonderful creations. If used for the wrong reasons, it is responsible for the worst atrocities ever committed.

Somewhere in this world, there is a 63 year old woman in prison. She was rightfully elected as the president of her country and she won the Nobel Peace Prize for peacefully fighting the military regime that is killing, torturing and abusing her nation. Aung San Suu Kyi is the symbol of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of our days, and she keeps fighting the military regime with nothing but wording her beliefs. Her beliefs that people are born free, and noone has the right to treat them otherwise. She said to the world: “Use your freedom to promote ours!”

Do you know what freedom I’m talking about? Do you know what most of the unhappy people in the world need? Are you using it at it’s best potential, or you are just following others while denying your own right?

Freedom of opinion and expression: individuals’ most powerful weapon, oppressors’ most feared enemy.

My favorite article from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 19: FREEDOM OF OPINION AND EXPRESSION ARE GRANTED TO EVERYONE.

What is yours? Do you know what your rights are? Do you take them for granted? Please comment. Express your thoughts! :)

Also, don’t forget to print the UDHR poster (11x17in.- tabloid) (8.5x11in.- lettersize) and share it with everyone today. The world needs people to be aware of their Human Rights, we all need to read it at least once.

Rejection is tough to deal with, so you learn to shut down your emotions and play along. Before you know it, you only care about your well being. You don’t care about how bad you hurt other people, it doesn’t matter that you feel love and kindness, you have to act tough and cold in order to survive the angry mob mentality. Ignorance is celebrated, insensitivity becomes standard.

I was there, I know it’s true. I did my best to not show affection and love and the only consequence was that I hurt other people as well. I made others go through what i went through myself, I knew it and ignored it, and in the end I hurt even more.

Peer pressure is such a bitch! A lot of the human rights violations are the result of peer pressure, if you think about it: not having the strength to tell mean people to go fuck themselves resulted in racism, hate, violence, crimes against humanity. The way we interact with each-other, as society, never ceases to amaze me. We tend to follow others that we consider are cooler / better/ smarter than we are, and we ignore our beliefs and who we really are. Personalities get shifted, feelings are being left out and we don’t care about anyone else but ourselves.

Care. That is what it all comes down to. At what point in our lives we learn to care not about how others see us, but about how truthful we are to who we really are? When do we feel strong enough to do something because we think we should, not because we are expected to or just because other people do it? When will we replace insensitivity and ignorance with care?

Why would you care that some women are being raped and murdered in South-East Asia, when you are so comfortable in this little coffee shop with your laptop and coffee? Why would you care that so many people starve to death in Africa, when you’ll go home and have your nice warm dinner? Why would you care that so many people are being abused and tortured, when you can just have your fun on your nice warm side of the world? Why would you care that so many people don’t have access to basic needs to live, when you want a better car?

Because the more care you bring into the world, the less room there is for hate and sooner or later, this will benefit you as well.

As I write this I can’t help thinking about what will others think of me after reading it. Will I be misjudged and thought of as weak because I care? Thankfully I learned from my mistakes, and I am just doing what I think is right, and that makes me stronger.

There’s no point for freedom when ignorance is celebrated and I am done with being ignorant. Freedom of thought, freedom to be me, freedom to care.

Do you care? We’ll see tomorrow, December 10! :)

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

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

December 10 – HUMAN RIGHTS DAY passed.

People blogged about it, more than i was expecting, actually! OneDayforHumanRights.org had 2311 referrals…which explains a little bit why I haven’t gone through and make my own list promoting people who blogged about Human Rights on December 10! However, you can find a link list on the December 10 – Show YOUR Support for Human Rights page, posted by the bloggers themselves. :)

Due to its success, I am planning to keep this website and ask people to blog about it again the following years. It will not be as special as this year, because it won’t be the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the Human Rights are something we need to keep promoting and make everybody aware of.

So to wrap up the statistics, here is the final update for the Human Rights Day 2008:

- 1849 signatures for the Petition to print the UDHR in passports

Please keep signing and spread the word about the petition! I will keep promoting it until January, when Jack will try and talk to the new elect-president Barack Obama and get the Universal Declaration of Human Rights printed in the US passports!

- 1535 followers on Twitter

- 387 people became members of the “One Day For Human Rights” Facebook Group.

- i have also created a One Day for Human Rights FACEBOOK CAUSE that now has 178 members.

- 37 people accepted the invitation to join the “One Day for Human Rights” FLICKR Group.

Out of these, only 4 people created Art for Human Rights. Billion thanks to Andrew, Tanya, Fred and Bill for supporting our tiny Flickr group! They did an awesome job! :)

THANK YOU all so much for your support and for taking action to promote Human Rights!

As of now, I am considering to create a forum for this website, as a means to create and make possible a live discussion on the subject of Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Things would probably get heated a lot on it, hence my tiny bit of holding back. What do you guys think? Should I do it? Please let me know your opinion in the comments section. :)

Thank you again! *huge hugs*

Love,

Anca

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

- 265 new signatures for the Petition to print the UDHR in passports, bringing the total number of signatures up to 829!

- 628 more followers on Twitter – total number of followers: 1074 :) Thank you all for your interest and support, and a billion thanks to Brian Carter for his ‘following’ hard work’ :)

- 151 people became members of the “One Day For Human Rights” Facebook Group, and a total of 306 confirmed that they will take action in promoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10

- i have created a One Day for Human Rights FACEBOOK CAUSE http://bit.ly/14tgP

- 15 more people (total of 29) accepted the invitation to join the “One Day for Human Rights” FLICKR Group. Please keep joining and show your creativity inspired by human rights issues! :)

So many more people have posted blog posts on their personal websites already! Please, if you are one of them, post a link in the comments section, or email me at anca at onedayforhumanrights.com to make you a part of this website!

Thank you all so much for your support and help while my hectic times! Please keep promoting the Petition and this Campaign! 4 days left, and we need as many involved as we can!

Love,

Anca