Magazine article: United For Human Rights (2009)

The IAS-sponsored human rights campaign grows ever more urgent as Scientology itself grows ever larger.

UNITED FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Once you present LRH materials in 50 languages, including those spoken by populations in human rights watch-listed zones, you are committed to ensuring people have the freedom to avail themselves of the materials.

The IAS-sponsored human rights campaign grows every more urgent as Scientology itself grows ever larger. Because the moment you present LRH materials in 50 languages, including those spoken by populations in human rights watch-listed zones, you’re committed. You owe those people every opportunity to freely avail themselves of LRH materials.

Therefore our IAS-sponsored human rights initiative is designed to engender worldwide support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

To that end, human rights educational materials are provided to human rights bodies, including United Nations affiliates and the greater human rights network.

Concurrently, Youth for Human Rights extends itself into similarly aimed organizations in human rights crisis zones, while at the same time our human rights online advocacy and education programs activate and mobilize millions more. As a result we generate international support for universal human rights enforcement.

That is why the program is entitled: United for Human Rights.

THE MIDYEAR REVIEW

The Youth for Human Rights mobilization initiative originally brought the program to the worldwide human rights arena. Our review begins with the Youth for Human Rights advance team, headed by IAS Freedom Medal Winner Mary Shuttleworth. The location is East Timor at the tip of the Malay Archipelago, what East Asian watchers once described as a “perfect human rights storm.” Now independent, with a popularly elected president, its history includes oppressive Indonesian rule, rebellions against it and human rights abuses.

To help the country establish stability, our human rights materials are being translated for widespread distribution.

Another arm of the Youth for Human Rights Malay Archipelago project traveled to the Indonesian province of Aceh, where shock-troop action and human rights violations abound. There they received requests for the Youth for Human Rights materials for police cadets, for the high schools and the universities.

Moving on to Africa, the tour joined up with Youth for Human Rights International’s representative at Uganda’s Kampala University. They presented the program to government officials in central Uganda where they also are in the process of translating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In South Africa, they presented program materials to the National Commission on Human Rights Chairman and government leaders.

Managers of a new children’s museum in Jordan requested Youth for Human Rights PSAs. In Barbados, an Organization of American States representative is interested in Youth for Human Rights for member states from El Salvador and Guatemala to Nicaragua, Honduras and Haiti.

The human rights program ripples out across humanity with Youth for Human Rights on screens in Geneva, Human Rights Day celebrations in Brussels and Milano, at the World Peace Day in Rome and at Tokyo’s commuter hub in Shinjuku.

The program spans 93 nations where Youth for Human Rights partners with 561 government and humanitarian organizations.

Human rights PSAs play on the big global networks from CNN International and Cable to BBC America and Voice of America, and on no less than 3,500 stations worldwide. And that is how more than 400 million received the human rights message this year.

THE STORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS
However courageously one or another human rights organization may pursue a specific cause, whether human trafficking or political imprisonment, no one adequately defines the subject. Hence, there’s no real agreement and no real linkage.

That is why we provide a definitive presentation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the one document on which all human rights advocates depend, and therefore the common purpose. It is presented in a short film, The Story of Human Rights, and part of a complete educational package, replete with a student manual including both a brief synopsis of human rights development and the Universal Declaration itself.

It amounts to a lesson plan for human rights activation and linkage to the United for Human Rights program. But at the core of the package is the definition of human rights and the history of those rights, all provided in only 10 minutes.

[Sidebar]THE STORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

This striking new short film defines—simply and concisely—one of the world’s most misunderstood subjects: human rights.

If you’re human, this film is about you.

Bonus Feature:

30 award-winning public service announcements that illustrate each of the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

UNITED FOR HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN FACTS
• The program is designed to engender worldwide support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

• Human rights educational materials are provided to human rights bodies, including United Nations affiliates and the greater human rights network.

• Youth for Human Rights links with similarly aimed organizations in human rights crisis zones.

• Human rights online advocacy education programs activate and mobilize. [/Sidebar]

[Images caption p. 41] The Youth for Human Rights World Tour, headed by IAS Freedom Medal Winner Mary Shuttleworth, circled the globe. (Clockwise from above left) The regional governor of Aceh, Indonesia; presenting the campaign in Timor-Leste; new Youth for Human Rights group in Barbados; a Youth for Human Rights round table at Moscow’s famed Helsinki Group organized by IAS Freedom Medal Winner Vladimir Kuropiatnik (center, next to Mary Shuttleworth); at the Jordanian Children’s Museum in Amman and an event at the Gauteng Provincial Legislature in South Africa.

[Images caption p. 42] (left) Human Rights PSAs are on screens all over the world. Human Rights conferences in Uganda (above) and in Soweto (below).¹

Notes