Although most people have heard of the term “human rights,” many do not know exactly what it entails, but understanding one’s rights is the first step to protecting them, said Mary Shuttleworth, the director of Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI), a US non-governmental organization, yesterday in Taipei.
Shuttleworth was in Taiwan on the last stop of her world tour to promote human-rights awareness with youth. Since founding YHRI in 2001, she has been on four such trips, visiting more than 60 countries.
“Though in 1948 the UN published ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ containing 30 articles of rights that every world citizen is born with, more than 90 percent of people have only a vague understanding of them,” Shuttleworth said.
Because of this, when people, especially children, have their rights violated — including rights to privacy, freedom of thought and expression and food and shelter — they don’t even know it.
The common factors contributing to the lack of human rights of youth in all parts of the world — whether in developed or Third World countries — are poverty and apathy, she said.
“Because of poverty, many children in the world are denied access to food, shelter and education,” she said, adding that poverty also leads to unfair distribution of wealth between the rich and poor.
“What’s also detrimental is apathy — a common belief shared by people who think that ‘there is nothing they can do [for these children],’” she said.
In addition to meeting political leaders — Shuttleworth is scheduled to meet Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) today — the YHRI also makes educational tools based on the declaration’s articles to help people learn them.
YHRI has distributed millions of booklets titled What Are Human Rights? — an abridged version of the articles — in more than 20 languages, Shuttleworth said.
Since 2004, the group has also shown a human-rights music video, UNITED, the 2005 winner for “Best Human Rights Film” at the UNESCO-sponsored Taglio Corto Film Festival, to more than 130 million people, she said.
“If children can learn about their and other people’s rights at an early age, the world would be one of mutual respect and peace,” Shuttleworth said. “While human rights is an elusive concept for many people in the world, [we want to] make it a reality.”
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