Witness is an international non-profit organization that uses video and online technologies to shine a light on human rights abuses around the world. For the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, Witness staff discuss some of the videos and images that have touched them over the past few years.
At the end of the video, viewers are asked what image has opened our eyes to human rights. For me, this picture is one of the most enduring symbols of how the demand for human rights can inspire extraordinary courage in ordinary people.
What images most symbolize human rights to you? Send an email to undispatch AT gmail.com and we will update this post with your response. Please indicate if you would like to keep your response anonymous.
UPDATE: See some reader responses below the fold.
Sure, they existed before 1948, but it was only then that they were codified into the remarkable document known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This cool video from Amnesty International gives a fun tour through some of the Declaration's stunning 30 articles of the freedoms, rights, and liberties that every human being possesses.
This is worse than many people may realize:
The European Union sidestepped an appeal by the United Nations on Monday to dispatch troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in the east of the country where war has displaced a quarter of a million civilians. Although a statement by EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels said a formal response to the request from Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, would be forthcoming in due course, it was clear that differences among member states made the deployment unlikely. The statement came four days after Mr Ban wrote to the EU saying a European-led force was urgently required to ensure humanitarian aid supplies reached those who had fled fighting between government and rebel forces in Congo's North Kivu province. The EU deployment would fill the security gap until the UN's own peace force, Monuc, was reinforced, a process Mr Ban said could take another four months.This is not the first time that Europe has demurred on this question. Nor is it the first time that an urgent request has been lodged in abeyance. The head of MONUC head, Alan Doss, made his request for more troops months ago, and -- even though it was quite clear that troops would take months more to deploy once authorized -- this need was met, belatedly, only once fighting in eastern Congo reached a fever pitch. MONUC cannot be put in the position of acting as Congo's national army -- which, the FT reports, is utterly in shambles. A rapid reaction force is desperately needed, and the British, the Germans, and the other countries responsible for torpedoing this request should be made to feel the heat for their reluctance. Waiting for the situation to get even worse in the next few months is not an acceptable option.
Marty Peretz , unsurprisingly, counts himself among those irreconcilably disgusted at the mere prospect of the Durban Review Conference. He seems, unfortunately, just as misguided and misinformed.
And [the Durban Review Conference] is already fixed to bring ignominy on Israel...and also shame and dishonor to the United Nations. Americans are truly disgusted with the U.N., and not only because of its treatment of Israel.As I've articulated before -- and as everyone who has heard any of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rants can attest to -- it is not a surprise that Iran and some other countries and NGOs are going to mouth anti-Semitic statements. But doing so brings ignominy on no one other than themselves. And if Peretz is willing to heap "shame and dishonor" on the entire United Nations simply for the membership of this handful of "bad actors," he probably has a much bigger problem -- one that indicts the entire reigning system of sovereign states and international organizations writ large -- than with one single conference. Perhaps even more glaringly off-the-mark is Peretz's inference about popular American sentiment toward the UN. If he had read our polling [slideshow below], he would know that Americans are overwhelmingly supportive of working with the UN and other countries and international organizations. To accuse them of the opposite is to simply slather Peretz's own animus against the UN onto the millions of Americans who believe in the organization. And that, to me, seems truly ignominious.
Not withstanding news out of Illinois, in which Governor Rod Blagojevic was arrested this morning on "pay to play" charges, today is International anti-Corruption Day. He's a video from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
One reason last Sunday's elections in Ghana went off without a hitch? Cell phones.
The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (Codeo), made up of Ghanaian civil society groups, is using mobile phones to provide what it believes will be a near perfect view of the conduct of the polls and the results. The system works like this: volunteers with mobile phones monitor a representative sample of 1,000 out of some 21,000 polling stations. As voting gets under way, they send text messages containing data on the conduct in their polling station to a toll-free number. A cheat-sheet lists the codes. For example, a text containing "D1" means "ballot box missing". Mobile-based schemes have been used to monitor votes in Indonesia, Montenegro, Egypt and Sierra Leone in recent years, but the developers say Ghana has the most sophisticated version yet deployed. Codeo volunteers hope the SMS-based scheme can be replicated elsewhere to prevent incumbents leaning on electoral officials to bump up their tallies. [snip] After counting finishes at each centre, the monitors send the results via SMS to allow a computerised tally of the outcome. "You can confidently come up with results that are 95 per cent reliable," says Ms Potakey. "It's a big deterrent to politicians because all eyes are watching."And all fingers are texting. That's democracy.
After months of wrangling, the EU mission in Kosovo (known as EULEX) has finally deployed, taking over the police, justice, and customs responsibilities that have been held by the UN for over ten years. Kosovo, of course, declared independence in February 2008, a declaration that has been recognized by some forty-odd countries (including the United States), vehemently rejected by erstwhile sovereign Serbia (and its supporters in Moscow), and accepted by an odd mix of EU countries (excluding, notably, Spain, worried about its own separatist movements).
Moving the EU in to ease the UN's transition was long expected and should be praised as a sign of progress. Yet not everyone in Kosovo seems happy about it right now:
Kosovo's Serb minority rejects the EU deployment, as most EU member states supported Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia earlier this year. Ethnic Albanians fear that the EU made too many concessions to Serb leaders in a bid to garner their support, and fear that these will lead to Serbia having a say over Kosovo's affairs in areas where Serbs live -- eventually splitting the country along ethnic lines.I suppose that grudging acceptance was to be expected from both sides, as any tricky compromise in such a tense situation is bound to engender. But the fact that the EU police are there, their flag is flying, and everybody seems calm gives hope yet to the peace process that brought this fellow a Nobel Peace Prize.
At the United Nations Correspondents Association dinner, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon adopted the hip-hop persona ban.i.am, and busted a rhyme modeled on will.i.am's YouTube sensation, "Yes, We Can." The chorus to this version, though, is "Yes, We Ban." The rhymes start around minute 5.
If you want to see more of Ban Ki Moon's efforts at hip-hop stardom, check out his tribute to Jay-Z at the United Nations Association's 50th anniversary gala this year.
From the UN News Center:
An estimated 40 per cent of the population of the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (DPRK) -- almost 9 million people -- will be in need of urgent food aid in the next few months due to a shortage in cereals, according to a new United Nations report. A joint assessment by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) found that agricultural production will fall short of what is needed this year because of critical shortages of fertilizer and fuel, in spite of favourable climate conditions during the past growing season. "DPRK will face a severe food situation over the coming months," said Henri Josserand, Chief of FAO's Global Information and Early Warning System..."The prospects for next year are bleak, with a substantial deficit of basic foods that will only partly be covered by commercial imports and anticipated food aid."Read more.