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 (11×17in.- tabloid) (8.5×11in.- 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.

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

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

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.

- 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