The recently-released film Invictus tells the story of how Nelson Mandela was able to use a sporting event, the 1995 Rugby World Cup, to help heal deep racial fissures in South African society and move the country further towards reconciliation.
As Foreign Policy's latest photo essay makes abundantly clear, however, sport does not always play such a commendatory role in promoting human rights. In their essay, journalists Kayvan Farzaneh and Andrew Swift show how young children are being used to do hard labor in preparation for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, and how New Delhi's homeless shelters and slums are being destroyed in preparation for the games. In many cases the destruction of shelters and slums is causing this already vulnerable segment of the population to freeze to death. A wide range of human rights issues are in balance here, including these children's right to education (Article 25 of the UDHR), their parents' right to an adequate standard of living (Article 26), and most fundamentally, the right of everyone to some kind of shelter - so that no one has to freeze to death.
Check out the photo essay, entitled "Bricks for Bread and Milk," here: http://tinyurl.com/ylgagho
This post killed it.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what Morgan Freeman ("God") would have to say about this.
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