Human Rights Day "My Voice Counts", December 10

Established by a United Nations resolution in 1950 encouraging member states to set aside December 10th as Human Rights Day.  This date was chosen to commemorate the day when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948.  This doctrine is one of the core fundamentals of the United Nations and it's goal for world peace.

This years theme is "My Voice Counts", the intent of which is to work on including all people in the conversation about their lives.  With the recent uprisings in may parts of the world people have been taking to the streets to show that they do count, those few who try and subjugate the many need to take warning that the people matter and their voices need to be heard.  We have even had progress in some of the bastions of totalitarian societies with the military rulers in Burma (also known as Myanmar) allowing more freedoms and the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

There are still many hard roads left to travel as well as difficult situations to resolve.  The one the comes most quickly comes to mind is the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.  Conflict has escalated recently (though I did a quick search and it looks like there is a cease fire at the moment) bringing to light we have a lot of work to do yet.  I certainly do not have the answers for something like this but we need people much smarter than I to do the work of solving these sort of issues. We also need to show our support in the peaceful resolution of these events.

Of course it is not just in other places we need to look for examples of the subjugation of Human Rights. I would bet that within just about every community there is some sort of Human Rights failures. Just being aware of what is going on around us can help to start to change things. In the United States there was a huge debate on if intentional voter suppression was occurring. When debates like this happen in the oldest democratic nation are occurring we need to question how to ensure "My Voice Counts" in all parts of the world.

I encourage everyone to stand up for the rights to have their voice heard. We need to take all our voices into account and make the world a better place for us all.

Happy Human Rights Day!

Links:https://www.facebook.com/unitednationshumanrights

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Pages/WelcomePage.aspx

http://storify.com/UNrightswire