Today is Human Rights Day

The UN General Assembly proclaimed 10 December as Human Rights Day in 1950, to bring to the attention ‘of the peoples of the world’ the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.

This year’s slogan, Human Rights 365, encompasses the idea that every day is Human Rights Day. It celebrates the fundamental proposition in the Universal Declaration that each one of us, everywhere, at all times is entitled to the full range of human rights, that human rights belong equally to each of us and bind us together as a global community with the same ideals and values.

I believe that the path to human rights for everyone begins in each one of us.  We have to ask if we believe the person we know and the person we don’t know, the person we like and the person we don’t like, the person we fear and the person we do not fear---whether all of them are worthy of dignity just as we are?

Human rights start with that essential decision by each one of us. Once we decide that The Other is actually us, the process of creating equal rights follows much more easily.