Monday, December 10, 2012

Human Rights Day & New Generations





Human Rights

"Giving voice to the voiceless means providing them with formal and genuine means of making themselves heard (...) this is what UNESCO works to achieve."
Irina Bokova,
UNESCO Director-General

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted on 10 December 1948. It expresses the values and fundamental freedoms that lie at the heart of a united humanity. 

"The Declaration is one of the most humanistic and inspiring texts ever written – it is also a call to action, for people and governments to join forces to raise awareness about and enforce human rights and to ensure that they are exercised in full."

At a time of uncertainty and change, we are duty-bound to observe the principles of human dignity and fundamental freedoms – there can be no justification for breaching them.

The Human Rights Day gives us an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to these values and our resolve to put them into practice across the world for all to enjoy.


Education:
Education should encompass values such as peace, non-discrimination, equality, justice, non-violence, tolerance and respect for human dignity. 
Quality education based on a human rights approach means that rights are implemented throughout the whole education system and in all learning environments.
All schools and other educational institutions make a special effort to inform children of their rights according to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

Teachers have a crucial role on the alert of poverty or child labour cases among their students.

In our days, teachers help students draw attention to situations like students living below poverty line in their own schools, or countries.

As educators, we can hold events at the school as at St Kentigern's school, to  draw the attention of the media in our city and start nationwide campaigns fighting the injustice of poverty among our students. 

We live in developed countries. And our children live hard times. Incredible. How can students be successful in school curricula if some of them come to school without taking a good meal? Unbelievole? No, this is the truth.

Let us draw inspiration from some good actions to strengthen respect for human rights of children and young people.



This holds the key to more inclusive and stronger societies, to live in peace and to strengh our work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Children should be able to learn about children rights and access information on their rights. 

The Council of Europe has therefore produced child-friendly material which is available in different languages. It's free online on the website of the Council of Europe Programme Building a Europe for and with children.


Teachers are encouraged to use and disseminate this material. 




"This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century - solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others."

Elie Wiesel

Credits : Unicef
Activities :
  • Organize lecture series, film series, book discussions, workshops, seminars, debates among students, parents, on human rights;
  • Go out school with your students to help other young people and old people within  your community;
  • Ask your students (Secondary education) to write out a specific article from the United Nations Declaration;



Finally, the social transformation that is needed to achieve a peaceful society can only be achieved through the active contribution of everyone, regardless of where we live, or our social and cultural background.

The new reality needs new children rights in developed countries! So, let's develop our best effort to humanize the school by helping our students to live better in our cities.

G-Souto

10.12.2012
copyright © 2012G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com

Licença Creative Commons
Human Rights Day & New Geneations bG-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

References:
Credits: video UNESCO
Building a Europe for and with children
http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/children/

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