Human Rights Day 2009

Discrimination sucks.

So, I might be 35 minutes late but we can just pretend I'm a time zone west where it is still December 10, 2009...OR that every day is human rights day.

From the OHCHR:

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. These first few famous words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established 60 years ago the basic premise of international human rights law. Yet today, the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe...

The realisation of all human rights - social, economic and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights – is hampered by discrimination. All too often, when faced with prejudice and discrimination, political leaders, governments and ordinary citizens are silent or complacent.

Yet everyone of us can make a difference.

Word to that. Reflect on the past 60 years and go forward into the next 60 years with this in mind: don't discriminate but do create a better state.

(Oh, yeah, that's an English Degree in the works for ya.)

Happy Birthday Convention on the Rights of the Child!

Many happy wishes to the first UN treaty to tie together civil & political and social, cultural, & economic rights! For more information check out the state of the world's children.

Oh yeah, only the USA and Somalia have yet to sign.

Glad we are chllin' with failed states in upholding internationally accepted human rights norms. Stay classy, USA!

Art on the Armistice

"An artist shares his grandmother’s tales of hardship during World War I"

Wise Words

Hello friends.

I just went to a phenomenal presentation (organized by GW Human Rights Law Society) by Justice Sonia Picado -- the current Chair of the Board of Directors/ President of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. Please check out her further baller credentials and just know that she has been a hearty contributor to any major human rights occurrence in Latin America since 1960. Dirty War in Argentina. Samosa--Nicaragua--she was always on the ground.

In addition to demonstrating that she's an encyclopedia, and offering hilarious comments and inspirational tales of keep the faith no matter what the circumstances...She made one point that stood out to me in regards to HRTE.

A student who attended a public hearing at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently spoke about how moved she was by the extremely impoverished indigenous Colombians who traveled so far to appear before the court. She described being moved to tears in the audience by their stories and troubled by the court's "heartless" procedural responses. She asked Justice Picado how to reconcile your human compassion with the legal framework.

Picado's response was essentially to be privately motivated by these endless tales of injustice. She noted the difficulty of translating this to the court. She continued that in the courtroom--or other professional sphere-- you must to be as objective as possible. She said, "If you're not objective there will be no justice." She continued to explain the importance of increasing professionalism and prestige in the human rights sphere in order to achieve the canon's goals.

I began to wonder how to reconcile this obvi on point argument for the desperate and proven need for more grassroots based human rights work. To make it a people's movement, where does this extremely inaccessible yet important work fit? How to connect the essential works of individuals like just Justice Picado with on the ground community based movements throughout the world? Perhaps an easy/obvious question that I wrestled with throughout many a HRTE event. How to keep the human component with the need for institutional change?

Just thought I'd share. Happy weekend!

Sri Lanka & Reconciliation

Here is a great BBC in Pictures about an art camp in Sri Lanka established to promote reconciliation among children. [That's like a triple whammy of good things].

Ummm, How about now?

Great mix Fi

In other (less artistic, more disconcerting) news:

According to Obama's NSA, he will take on "don't ask, don't tell" at the right time.

See post title for my position about when in fact the right time is.

The Messengers

This mix brightened my gloomy Jo'burg morning. It is so good on every level: musically, artistically, politically, poetically.

I think it also really speaks to the themes we are trying to explore with human rights & the humanities.

Check it and download ASAP.

Darfur Onionism

Per Reid's prompt this is what I have found to lighten the mood on HRTEblog:



[via Africa is a Country]

But, even though it is humorous, I think it is still very telling about the kind of activism that is being used to highlight the situation in Darfur. Not only do the crying and gunshots get covered up the by noise of celebrity personalities, but so do some of the larger issues - and the larger amounts of money donated to help the millions of refugees and IDPs.

For a great look at humanitarian relief check out Change.org's blog.

Death Penalty Things

This first piece is a really wonderfully written and researched accounting of the facts behind Cameron Willingham's case (a man executed who was very likely innocent).  

This one is essentially a comment on the first.

Thirdly here is an entirely different case.  Though it involves the death penalty, it has very little else in common besides some apparent inappropriate legal conduct.

Next, a truly mind-boggling case in which an office closing led to a stay of execution not being filed and, subsequently, to the prisoners execution that night.

Lastly, Innocence Project home page

That's quite a lot of material (whoops).  As I mentioned to Joel earlier, the right not to be executed: for something that it is likely you did not do, based on an improper conviction, or because an office closed, seems like one of the more basic human rights.

Hopefully Fi or someone else will post something relatively light-hearted soon.

WarDance: The Healing Power Of Art

Here's some info about the movie we are viewing this saturday




"“War/Dance,” in spite of its slickness, is an honorable, sometimes inspiring exploration of the primal healing power of music and dance in an African tribal culture. The competition in the capital city, Kampala, is obviously much more than an entertaining talent show. Through music, dance and drumming, the children transmute fear and pain into profoundly cathartic spiritual affirmation.

These ancestral dances are connected to their homeland and their tribal roots (they are members of the Acholi tribe) and ultimately to their core identity. When they perform the Bwola, the tribe’s intricate, 500-year-old royal dance, you feel its ritual power healing broken lives.

The children are victims of a 20-year civil war that has cost tens of thousands of lives in northern Uganda which the movie, to its detriment, barely mentions and about which it supplies no historical background. Many were abducted from their villages in the middle of the night by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group that turned kidnapped boys as young as 5 into soldiers and girls into sexual slaves. Many were snatched in front of their parents, and some were forced at gunpoint to beat and kill family members and neighbors.

The movie focuses on three children from the Patongo camp who make the long journey to Kampala in 2005 in trucks guarded by security forces: Rose, a 13-year-old choir singer who witnessed her parents’ murder by the rebels; Nancy, a 14-year-old dancer who took charge of her three younger siblings after her father’s killing and her mother’s abduction; and Dominic, a 14-year-old former child soldier in the Lord’s Resistance Army, whose passion is playing the xylophone.

It is the first time that children from the Patongo camp have qualified for the competition, in which more than 20,000 Ugandan schools compete, and expectations of their success are low. In the refugee camp 60,000 people live in squalid, cramped quarters without electricity or running water, and many suffer from malnutrition and disease. Because they come from a war-torn area where resources are scarce, they are looked down on by their southern rivals, who know that many were forced by the Lord’s Resistance Army to commit atrocities." -http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/movies/09ward.html

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2saj4gJ4Lvw

Website:
http://www.wardancethemovie.com/

Let's Hear if for the Boys!

From being citizens of the world and part of a global news readership it is common knowledge that Saudi Arabia is, for lack of a better term, bat shit crazy. That being said, here is my favorite fact from my research this evening:

The governmental Human Rights Commission opened a women’s branch, but its board remained all-male.

And here is a video about other rights violations:

HRT(rain)

Just a phenomenal picture.  It is for Turkey's Human Rights Train (great combination).  Here's a link to some coverage of it.

http://blogs.hurriyetdailynews.com/freedomtrain/

HomeGrown Festival Tonight (9/12)! 5-10pm @ 315 Detroit St

As the battle for national health care plays out in our nation's capitol, issues of human health are being highlighted by the media. Well-known author and food activist Michael Pollan relates the problems of declining American health to the problems of the American food industry in his New York Times op-ed. Access to healthy foods, sustainable farming, and keeping industry local are all concerns that relate directly to the vital rights of human nutrition and human health.

TONIGHT we can all support local food and human health at the HomeGrown Festival at the Farmer's Market in our very own Ann Arbor. Free live music, great local food, and a new local beer and wine tent are available to anyone who comes by between 5-10pm. Have a good time and use your dollars (if you choose) to make a consumptive vote for healthy, local foods.

BRAVE NATION!

http://bravenation.com/tom_hayden_naomi_klein.php

Other episodes include conversations with Bonnie Raitt, Carl Pope, Van Jones, Pete Seeger, Majora Carter, Dolores Huerta...etc.

finally the human rights community takes a few important ques from VH1's Behind the Music.

enjoy friends.

Human Rights Through Blogging

So, it has been unanimously decided to use this blog for anything and everything related to raising human rights awareness. Read a tear-jerking article about children growing up in Rio's poorest favelas? Share it here. Watch an inspirational documentary about education access for girls living in Pakistan? Link it here. See a community mural that brightens up your day as well as the city? Show us. Use the blog for discussion--as a platform--as a place to share and exchange information and to notify folks of cool happenings in the area. If you'd like to contribute and do not have access then leave a comment and we'll get you on. We will also post HRTE events here throughout the year (which can also be found in the calendar below). So check back and post away!

Welcome all! (And please excuse the nakedness of our blog!)

We are currently setting up our blog but to learn more about HRTE and/or how you can get involved, then stop by our booth at Gayz Craze or Festifall. You can also shoot us an email or stop by our mass meeting on Tuesday, September 15. Check out our nifty calendar below for more details!