Sixty isn't so old

The Elders are Mary Robinson to Ela Bhatt, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Fernando Enrique Cardoso, Gro Bruntland, Graca Michel, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu and Muhammed Yunus.  Their mission is to use their wisdom and experience to show leadership and help build peace in places of conflict, ensuring future generations live in a world where their rights are respected.

The journalists were the 30 winners of the Internews Every Human Has Rights awards and were flown from around the world to Paris to share with us the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.  The top prizes in broadcast, print and online as well as a special public prize were awarded to journalists from Brazil, Mauritania, Ghana, the US, Australia and Argentina. Their stories of blatant human rights violations in their countries today served to bring home the reality that the Declaration is still so far from being upheld and that only by informing people about their rights will we ever see its aspirations fulfilled.  Some wanted their pictures taken with Kofi Annan and, reporters to the core, they wanted their chance to ask some tough questions of the ex-leaders present too.  

GCAP was there as one of the partners of the Every Human Has Rights campaign which ran throughout 2008 and gave us the chance to build the links between poverty and human rights more explicitly than we had done before.  Along with Amnesty, Action Aid, Internews, CIVICUS, UNICEF, Save the Children, Realizing rights and many others, the year had allowed us to build synergies and combine our work on development and rights in a new and exciting way. 

It provided us with tools to use for education and outreach, actions to take and a space to profile people from our groups and their work on rights.  

By Saturday 44,000 individuals had signed the campaign pledge to uphold the declaration and many millions more through groups and organisations has supported it.  The feeling that we had managed to achieve something special with our year long effort was celebrated but we asked what more can we do?  Who will we give this pledge to and how will we build a movement that holds leaders accountable for the protection of their citizens fundamental rights?  Fortunately there was time the next day for us to get tho the heart of that matter.

Kumi Naidoo spoke on behalf of GCAP, highlighting how ironic it was that the Declaration was signed in a largely intact colonial world where the aspirations did not reflect the reality of so many nations.  He also reminded Mary Robinson somewhat cheekily of her march through Glasgow in June for the Every Human Has rights campaign carrying her banner upside down, captured forever by TV cameras and repeated throughout the evening news.  “Working with the Elders comes with a price too,”  he jested.  Mary later smiled sweetly and reminded Kumi that she would get even for the jibe.

The star of Saturday nights show was unanimously agreed to have been Stephane Hessel.  He was present at the signing of the Declaration and now 91 years old, he bounced onto the stage to remind us if the way the world was in 1948, the world he has caught up in as a German-born Jewish man exiled to Paris and later a concentration camp survivor who went on to hold various French diplomatic posts overseas.  

Jimmy Carter also left the audience hanging on his every word as he expertly delivered a speech that brought us back to the Georgia of his childhood and memories of the civil rights struggle in the USA.  He took us on the journey through some US and world history to show how the Declaration was being ignored almost from the day after its unanimous signature.  He left us with the thought that we will only make its aspirations a reality if we believe in it and we live it every day and expressed hope that the new US President would show leadership when he takes office in January.

I wondered if this all means that the UDHR has to become the new Gideon bible. The new tome of every man woman and child  so that we know its contents backwards so the powerful never get away with its abuse for lack of accountability.  Could it be in every hotel room in the world by 2010?

Later in a small dinner for partners and special guests Monsieur Hessel stood to recite the Yeats poem The Song of Wandering Aengus (1899) dedicated to Mary Robinson and in perfect English which concludes;

“Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among the long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.”

We stepped out into the golden Parisian night uplifted and with greater resolve I think.

Every Human Has Right campaign celebration and media awards.

Kumi's blog "Five things to advance the Human Declaration"

Marivic Raquiza article "Poverty and Human Rights Violations Are Two Sides of the Same Coin"

Written by Ciara O’Sullivan, GCAP.