Truly Honoring Us All

One of the cleverest logos (hand-cum-dovetail, or vice versa, depending on how you tilt your head) ever made adorns the intentions and heralds the pulse of society that the international Human Rights Day represents in oh so many ways.

Observed year after year on 10 December since 1950, this momentous day commemorates the United Nations General Assembly’s proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) charter on the 10th of December, 1948. This continues to be one of the UN’s top achievements in its short history. How else can you explain the fact that the Declaration remains the most translated document of our time, checkable at this moment in 500 different languages worldwide.

This year’s theme and slogan pivot around the same idea, equality, a concept spanning directly from Article 1 of the UDHR: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

Theme: EQUALITY – Reducing inequalities, advancing human rights
Slogan: All Human, All Equal

The themes, efforts, initiatives, and events organized by the UN every single year around this date carry a message of hope, while intrinsically or very directly criticizing head on the many problems facing the world and its many and varied populations today:

• inequality, which leads to rampant poverty and racism
• a new social contract featuring economic, social, cultural, and personal/community development rights
• right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment
• equal opportunity for youth in finance, health, social protections, and a long list thereof
• reversing vaccine inequality and injustice (unequal distribution, hoarding) with global solidarity
• climate justice, by addressing now environmental degradation, climate change, growing rates of pollution, nature loss
• preventing conflict for heightened inclusion and diminished discrimination

Events
Events in and around the 10th of December and directly or indirectly sanctioned by the UN or partner organizations are numerous and varied. Here is a short sample to whet your appetite:

• Exhibits (one of many, many examples)
  The World in Faces, which honors the right to their own culture of indigenous people, as consecrated in the preamble and a few articles of the Declaration of Human Rights.
  Photographer: Alexander Khimushin.
  Coupled with ‘By the World Forgot’.
  Photographer: Christoph Lingg.
• Online Conversation hosted by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.
  Topic: Equality.
  Date: 10 December.
  Location: Geneva UN Office (with headquarters in NYC, this is one of the 4 major locations scattered around the world)
• Art Competition around 2021’s all-pervasive theme: “What does equality mean to you?”
  Location: Trinidad and Tobago
• Awareness Campaign to focus on and promote shared living between host communities and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
  Location: Cameroon

Don’t forget to check out the link for the UN website below if you are interested in further reading or committing to the cause. Social media hashtags are:
#Standup4humanrights
#HumanRightsDay

Sources:

https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Day