December 10 is Human Rights Day

PHOTO:© Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

This year’s slogan for Human Rights Day is “Dignity, Freedom, and Justice for All.”

2022 recognizes the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be celebrated on 10 December 2023. Ahead of this milestone, starting on this year’s Human Rights Day on 10 December 2022, we will launch a year-long campaign to showcase the UDHR by focusing on its legacy, relevance and activism.

In the decades since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, human rights have become more recognized and more guaranteed across the globe. It has since served as the foundation for an expanding system of human rights protection that today focuses also on vulnerable groups such as persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and migrants.

However, the promise of the UDHR, of dignity and equality in rights, has been under a sustained assault in recent years. As the world faces challenges new and ongoing – pandemics, conflicts, exploding inequalities, morally bankrupt global financial system, racism, climate change – the values, and rights enshrined in the UDHR provide guideposts for our collective actions that do not leave anyone behind.

The UDHR enshrines the rights of all human beings.

From the right to education to equal pay, UDHR established for the first time the indivisible and inalienable rights of all humanity.

As a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”, the UDHR is a global blueprint for international, national, and local laws and policies and a bedrock of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.

The 2030 Agenda for sustainable development explicitly recognizes it is grounded in UDHR and has to be implemented in a manner that realizes human rights.

The UDHR has inspired many struggles for stronger human rights protection and helped them to be more recognized.

In the (nearly) 75 years since the proclamation of the UDHR, human rights have advanced. However, progress does not mean the fight for rights and equality ever ends.

Whenever and wherever humanity’s values are abandoned, we all are at greater risk. The solutions to today’s greatest crises are rooted in human rights.

Rights violations reverberate across borders and across generations. These can be, must be, collectively overcome.

We need to stand up for our rights and those of others.

The UDHR calls upon everybody to stand up for human rights. We all have a role to play.

We need an economy that invests in human rights and works for everyone.

We need to renew the social contract between Governments and their people and within societies, so as to rebuild trust and embrace a shared and comprehensive vision of human rights on the road to a just and sustainable development.

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