“This declaration would have great moral force, and would say to the people of the world “this is what we hope human rights may mean to all people in the years to come”. These are the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady of the United States between 1930’s and 1940’s, and one of the main pieces in the creation of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
This year the UDHR completes 70 years since it’s proclamation on 1948, right after the II World War, having the purpose to never let anything like the holocaust happen again.
The UDHR was created by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on 10 December 1948 and is composed by 30 articles that explain what every human being should have as a right, it’s universal because the document testifies that there are not distinctions among people and no discrimination should be allowed. It covers topics from freedom of speech, to the right of having a decent place to live. It is also important to say that the UN can’t force countries to change their laws and make them respect the human rights making the access to these basic rights even harder.
Despite all this time of existence, many people still don’t know what the human rights actually guarantee for everyone. Therefore, we’re here to clarify you in this subject.
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Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Even though this is the first, most basic, and therefore most known article of the whole declaration, we still see it being violated in a daily basis. The repetition can indeed banalize it, but we must keep in mind that it is against the human rights to discriminate and act of violence towards others. An example of violation of this article is how the disabled are treated all over the world: the lack of accessibility in many places is a sad reality they have to face everyday.
Another problem that was recently exposed by the Human Rights Watch is how people with disabilities end up in institutions without the basic conditions to a decent life, even though they should have the same rights as anyone else.
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Article 2
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Again, such a basic, essential concept, nothing more than prime justice, and again we see several human beings been forced to fight for it every day. It’s the XXI century, science is more advanced than ever before, robots are practically out there living among us, and it’s still a need to discuss sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia and so many others. Discuss something as simple as the duty of respect each other, is something we should learn as child. Human should be treated as humans. All of them. It’s that simple.
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Article 5
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Cases of police brutality are becoming more and more known everyday: it’s all over the news and present in different countries around the world. One single research on Google, and you can find a handful of examples of police officers beating up suspects, sometimes also followed by videos. What should be the exception, slowly turns into rule when the criminality rises up, making the situation even more critical. The website Mapping Police Violence shows with data everything there is to know about deaths caused by the police in the USA, and like how many times the victims weren’t even armed.
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Article 13
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
Yet, in poor communities at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we hear stories of people being searched when they enter their neighborhood on a daily basis. It’s also relevant to say that police officers and military can’t inspect everyone, so they have to choose the ones with more “suspicious” appearance to do it, making the black population the more affected by it, since Brazil is still a very racist country. The inspections are part of a state policy of military intervention established in the end of 2017, apparently without taking in consideration the Human Rights Declaration, that, as already highlighted before in this article, was written in 1948. For the governor of Rio, Luiz Fernando Pezão, the “defeat of the criminality” is a priority above the UDHR, even though we haven’t seen any decrease on the violence numbers since the intervention began.
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Article 16
Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
Seeing girls under 18 being forced to marry older men is, unfortunately, something common around the world, but mostly at sub-Saharan Africa, according to data from the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef). Also, Unicef estimates that, even though the number decreased in the last decade, 12 million girls that are still in their childhood get married every year.
Girls are truly the most affected by this practice, but still they aren’t the only ones having this right violated. Cases of boys being forced to marry brides from rich families that didn’t want to pay a dowry are becoming common in India. These boys have guns pointed to their heads during the ceremony, clearly being deprived of their rights, as you can see in this article from the UK journal Telegraph.