Human Rights Day - Reducing Inequalities and Advancing Human Rights
Since 1950, December 10 has been dedicated to... the Day for Human Rights: the day on which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the United Nations (UN). This year the UN is establishing the theme “Reducing inequalities and Advancing human rights” the focus on equality.
Human Rights Day has been proudly ours for years Issue calendar. On this day, Issuemakers wants to reflect on the universal human rights of everyone and also discuss the past, present and future of human rights.
The origins of the first human rights declaration
On December 10, 1948, the UDHR was adopted by the UN. Discussions on the text of the declaration took place from January 1947 to December 10, 1948 in New York, Geneva and Paris. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the American president, played an important role in the creation of the UDHR. For example, she insisted on a non-binding declaration that would be supported by many countries. This universality ultimately succeeded: all UN member states accepted the UDHR and references to the declaration are included in constitutions more than 90 countries to find back. Since the creation of the UDHR, the UN has adopted more than 300 treaties and declarations in the field of human rights, many of which are binding on the member states. The document can be read in more than 500 languages, making the declaration the most translated document in the world.
Human rights in the Netherlands
This year's theme – Reducing Inequalities and Advancing Human Rights – is related to the first article of the UDHR. This article states the following: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Equality and the prohibition of discrimination are at the core of human rights. It is therefore not surprising that the UN is focusing on this in 2021 with the slogan “All Human, All Equal”: the unfair distribution of vaccinations for COVID-19 has made the gap between rich and poor countries more visible and wider. Due to recent financial and health crises, millions of young people are at risk of facing the harmful effects of increasing inequality and poverty.
The UN wants to tackle inequality by making our economy run on human rights. This means that power, resources and opportunities are shared more fairly and are not in the hands of a handful of dominant states. According to the UN, human rights are central to making societies better, fairer and more sustainable.
At Issuemakers, human rights and social impact are also of paramount importance and that is why we like to work for clients with the same ideal, such as Tony's Chocolonely, WomenINC and FMO Bank.
Where are human rights going?
While this year's UN focus on Human Rights Day is on equality, in previous years it was on standing up for human rights. The previous themes were: “Recover Better – Stand Up for Human Rights” (2020), “Youth Standing Up for Human Rights” (2019) and “Stand Up for Human Rights” (2018). The question arises as to what theme the day will have in the future and which human rights issue will grab the attention of the UN.
The magazine To be continued from Amnesty International has this question in the article “The future of human rights” answered in detail. The magazine's researchers used a survey to ask 40 experts what the most important human rights issues will be in the future. Their vision: climate change and poverty and (economic) inequality. These two issues are an extension of each other and reinforce each other. Climate change will lead to a large flow of migrants and refugees (also read our blog “The 'climate refugee': a non-existent issue (yet)”), which, according to the experts, causes more inequality and poverty, more racism and discrimination, growth of the extreme right and oppression by states.
According to more than half of the experts, the UDHR offers too few options to solve these problems. The fact that the declaration is non-binding is mainly cited as a reason, together with the lack of power of the UN to enforce compliance with rights. Although the UDHR does not give the UN many options to counter threats to human rights, most experts believe that the UN should continue to take on this role. Others, however, point to the limited power of the UN and hope that influential states will stand up against human rights violations themselves in the future. The EU is also mentioned as a potentially important actor in combating violations.
Which issue do you think will be the most important in the field of human rights? And how do you think the Netherlands can handle this issue? manage?
