Human Rights Day 2021

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Today, the world celebrated the seventy-third anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on December 10th, 1948, in the aftermath of the atrocities of World War II. The document is crucially important as it is considered at the foundation of International Human Rights Law.

In the post-World War II context, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights spelled out "the value of a human being by virtue of existence, in abstraction of worldly powers" (History of the Declaration). A value that comprises many inalienable rights, including, for example, the right to live free from fear, want and oppression, as well as the right to develop one’s potential.

In 1989, the world recognized that children were also human beings with inalienable rights, separate from their parents, and from the adult world, which begins at 18 years of age. This commitment, to protect and fulfill the child’s human rights, was set forth within the legal framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the UN General Assembly, on November 20th, 1989.

Similarly, at the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, on September 4th to 15th, 1995, the relevance of human rights to women’s rights was specifically set forth in Article 9 of the Conference Platform Declaration for Action, as follows. 

“Ensure the full implementation of the human rights of women and of the girl child as an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” 

A platform that ushered in a new era of human rights action, specifically on behalf of women and the girl child. 

In December 2021, the Human Rights Watch organization reported on a plethora of human rights violations. Below, a sample list of some of the crises in focus.

• Barriers to universal access to COVID-19 vaccinations, testing and treatment.
• Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on poverty and education.
• The increasing death toll among undocumented immigrants, attempting perilous journeys by sea in Europe, and under exploitative and inhuman conditions from Central America and Mexico to the Southwest border of the US.
• The movement to find alternatives to undocumented immigrant detention.
• The degrading treatment of immigrant children and adults in various host countries.
• Backlash against women’s rights, for example in Afghanistan, or as related to the surge of violence in homes, due to the COVID-19 pandemic (UN Women Joint Statement).
• Civil war crimes in the Northern Tigray and Amhara regions of Ethiopia.
• Repression in Afghanistan.
• The Myanmar military coup, resulting in brutal repression of peaceful anti-coup protesters, and the use of force, continuing to drive the Rohingya population into refugee camps.
• The “strike hard against violent terrorism” campaign in China’s Xinjiang region, to manage ethnically diverse populations.
• The “drug war” in the Philippines.
• Widespread famine in Ethiopia, Madagascar, Yemen and South Sudan, as well as on-going in the Central Republic of Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
•  Apathy in the face of climate change, which has already caused a significant toll on lives, health and livelihoods, and the creation of a new class of climate refugees.
• Documentation of abuses carried out on international Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) populations.
• Investigations of disappearances in conflict zones.
• The impact of misinformation on human rights.

plus more…

References

Chomsky, A. (2014). Undocumented: How immigration became illegal. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 

Youth for Human Rights  https://tinyurl.com/h2bryypj

Human Rights Watch  https://tinyurl.com/2p8hzhu2

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989)
https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/convention-text (full text, English version)
https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention#learn (About)

UN Platform Declaration at the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women (1995)
https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/declar.htm (full text, English version)

UN Human Rights Day (Dec. 10, 2021)  https://tinyurl.com/2etca6dp

UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights (full text, English version)

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/udhr/history-of-the-declaration (History of the Declaration)

https://www.un.org/en/udhr-video/ (Multilingual video collection)

UN Women Joint Statement on Human Rights Day 2021 https://tinyurl.com/2p9yse3f

World Population Day 2018

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Today is World Population Day, first proclaimed in 1989 by the Council of the United Nations Development Programme, and subsequently voted as Resolution 45/216 by the UN General Assembly, in December 1990.

The theme selected for this year’s celebration, “Family Planning is a Human Right”, reaffirms an idea introduced 50 years ago, during the first UN International Conference on Human Rights, held in Teheran (Iran), in 1968. The idea of “Family planning as a human right”, expressed in 1968 and reaffirmed in 2018, is simply that: 

Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children. [UN Doc, Parag. 16. Teheran (Iran) 1968]

At the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), the UN reproductive health and rights agency, the 2018 World Population day theme celebrating Family planning, specifically means:

 ...to deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled. [UNFPA mission statement]

For live world population statistics, visit the World Population Clock.

For interactive world population data, visit the UNFPA World Population Dashboard.

A few highlights are included below: 

• Current world population is 7.6 billion (Worldometers)
• Approx. 83 million people are added to the world population every year (UNFPA)
• The world’s global population is estimated to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to UN Population Projections.
• Maternal deaths: 830 women and girls die in childbirth each day from preventable maternal causes. 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. This figure is down 44% since 1940. (UNFPA)

References

WHO – World Health organization – World Population Day

http://www.who.int/life-course/news/events/world-population-day/en/

UN World Population Prospects

https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/  

UN – World Population Day 2018

http://www.un.org/en/events/populationday/ 
UN General Assembly Resolution 45/216   
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/45/a45r216.htm
UN Proclamation of Teheran, April 22- May 13, 1968.
http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/l2ptichr.htm  

UNFPA – UN Population Fund Agency

https://www.unfpa.org/ 

UNFPA – Maternal Deaths

https://www.unfpa.org/data/transformative-results#end-maternal

UNFPA – Population Dashboard

https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard

UNFPA – Population Growth Trends

https://www.unfpa.org/world-population-trends

UNFPA - World at 7 Billion

https://www.unfpa.org/world-7-billion

UNFPA – Statement for World Population Day 2018

https://www.unfpa.org/press/family-planning-human-right  

Worldometers –World population clock

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

International Translation Day 2014

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Oopse… that was yesterday, on September 30, 2014, the Feast of Saint Jerome, according to the Saints’ Days of the Gregorian calendar. 

Saint Jerome was the first to translate the Old Testament of the Bible from Ancient Hebrew to Latin, in the year 405 AC, at a time where translations of the bible existed only from Greek (translated from Hebrew) to Latin. Thus, it is in his capacity as first translator of the bible that Saint Jerome is considered the Patron Saint of Translators, in a Christian calendar tradition that assigns patron saints to just about every profession. For example, Saint Nicholas (December 25) is Patron Saint of bakers, Saint Francis (October 4) is Patron Saint of ecologists, Saint Matthew (September 21) is Patron Saint of bankers, accountants and stockbrokers, Saint Lucy (December 13) is Patron Saint of writers and electricians (!), and so forth for every day of the Gregorian calendar, commonly used in the Western world.

International Translation Day was launched by the IFT - International Federation of Translators, a European-based organization founded in 1953 that regroups more than 100 professional associations of translators, interpreters and terminologists worldwide, including the American Translators Association. The IFT thus represents more than 80,000 translators in 55 countries. 

Each year the IFT selects a theme for International Translation Day. The 2014 theme was “Language rights: essential to all human rights”. Indeed this is the idea that Human Rights to dignity, freedom, justice, health and peace for all human beings, as set forth in the provisions of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, are contingent upon effective communication. In other words, it is impossible to uphold and defend human rights without the ability to communicate in a language that is mutually understandable. Take the case, for example, of immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, tourists or foreign workers, who lose their linguistic rights in courts, hospitals or government offices when they are unable to defend themselves, or express themselves or explain their situation in the language into which they are thrown. 

The IFT thus calls for a greater awareness of the need for professional linguistic services, to avoid the tragedies of injustice, imprisonment and irreversible damages to health arising in those situations where people cannot express or defend themselves in a language that is mutually understandable.

Mark your calendars for International Translation Day on September 30, 2015 with another theme. And in the interim, spread the word! 

Reference
International Federation of Translators
www.fit-ift.org