10 Dec Making Every Day Human Rights Day
Human Rights Day today draws the curtain on the 16 Days of Activism, which began on 25 November with the dedication to ending violence against women and girls.
With each passing year, we have focused attention during the period on calling for new laws designed to better protect our women and girls and stop the now endemic scourge of domestic and sexual violence in our society despite our massive investments in education.
This year’s 16 days of soul searching may have demanded even greater attention in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. But just how much thought have we given to the other reminders over the same 16 days of those other fundamental rights that demand greater and sustained guarantees in a rapidly changing world?
As we remained on high alert throughout the 16 days in our national endeavour to keep COVID-19 out of our community, we may have missed the proverbial boat in also demanding the end of slavery in all its modern-day forms, an end to all forms of racism and discrimination, and most of all, an end to the criminal, immoral and ultimate betrayal of public trust that is corruption.
We stand challenged today on the occasion of Human Rights Day to stand up for human rights and place them at the centre of our post-COVID world if we are to recover and build back better from this global pandemic and its devastating effect on our economy.
As we forge our own new path into that new society, let us be mindful that all our ambitions in that new world order will require more funds and where we cannot earn more money, we will have to rethink the smarter use of what we already have.
To do so, we will need to join hands as one nation in creating a more robust system for accountability, transparency and integrity within our society as a whole. From individuals to government, from civil society and grass roots communities to the private sector, we all have a role to play in ensuring a better and sustainable country for our future generations.
In our new order, we must hold our leaders to account at all times, and we must demand from our business community responsibility and integrity. We must make way for a vibrant, active and, above all, honest civic space that can demand and obtain open access to information and a balanced press that can present that information to the wider public.
Human Rights Day will only hold its true value when our society can make it last 365 days of each year. And for that, the 16 days of activism must also be carried through the same 365 days to ensure that our women and girls, as mothers, carry the message of rights to their children where they can have true and lasting meaning.
For, in the words of civil rights activist and drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt, without a concerted citizen action to uphold these universal rights and give substance to them “in small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world”, they will have little meaning anywhere and we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.