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Human Rights and Wrongs - November 09, 2006
I thought I understood human rights, but all I knew was enough to make me think there was nothing I could do to really make a difference in the world.
My perception ran to the high profile: Rwandan genocide, torture and the plight of women in Africa who go out looking for firewood and find rape instead.
It was Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, who flew from Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Frankfurt, Germany, then to Atlanta, Georgia and finally, to Norfolk, Virginia all in one day to deliver a lecture on "Human Rights in the Contemporary World" at Old Dominion University, who set me straight.
When a woman suffers that kind of gauntlet to give you a message and all the connecting flights are on time, even Atlanta, you have to reckon somebody up there likes what she has to say and wants the message passed on in a timely fashion.
I met Robinson during the reception and again afterwards. I was there with my 12-year-old son who was chosen, with a classmate from St. Patrick's School, to present a gift to Robinson. It was quite an affair to remember with a bagpiper leading them in to the lecture hall and a choir of fourth graders in their dress uniforms singing, "May the Road Rise Up To Meet You."
At the reception, after we met, I faded back a bit to eavesdrop as a sea of admirers ebbed and flowed around Robinson.
Robinson deftly mingled her own passionate feelings with the words of Eleanor Roosevelt and sips of water on a parched, travel-weary brogue.
She quoted Eleanor Roosevelt, Chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission of 1948, over and over in various conversations and later in her speech, as if reciting a most beloved piece of scripture: "Where after all,do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."
Dignity. So simple. So often absent from daily lives. How often do we tread on what we do not recognize as the human rights of those with whom we live and work and interact daily? All along in life I have thought of large places on the map when in reality and practicality I was missing the simplest way to send my ripple into the pond of humanity, through the preservation of the rights of those around me.
How often has a coworker been demeaned or the victim of vicious talk and I stood idly by?
Where was my voice when political candidates slung mud all over my mailbox and TV screen? Did I object? No. I just let it go, as so many all around the world let go the small miseries until we became immune to the passage of grief on a wider scale.
"Human rights work begins here, working in preschools, buying fair-trade products and coffee not sold by those who profit for the abused inn other lands where human rights are violated daily," Robinson said.
Again I wondered where has my voice been? In my wallet apparently and misused. Coffee? I never even gave it a thought before. I had a dim memory of a Nestle's chocolate boycott when I was my son's age.
How cocooned had I become with four children and only the time to read the headlines that screamed of torture, but never coffee or fair trade? Now the truth: when I saw the headlines of rape and torture did I quickly turn the page?
So I will slow down now and read more than the headlines and check the labels and my harsher tones.
To answer Eleanor Roosevelt, I am where human rights begin. Now, thanks to Mary, I'm on the way.
Editorial NOTE: Mary Robinson was Ireland's first female president, serving from 1990-97 and resigned the presidency four months before the end of her term of office to take up the post of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. She is the founder and executive director of the pro-human rights organization Ethical Globalization Initiative (www.realizingrights.org), housed in Columbia University's Earth Institute. She serves as an adviser to the institute, teaching in the international and public affairs department, and is a senior research scholar at Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute.
Lisa Suhay has been a frequent contributor to Daily Wisdom and her first book resulted from a DW reader passing her stories on to a Christian Publisher. She now writes from Norfolk, Virginia and is the author of seven children's books. Write to her through her website at LisaSuhay.com
I thought I understood human rights, but all I knew was enough to make me think there was nothing I could do to really make a difference in the world.
My perception ran to the high profile: Rwandan genocide, torture and the plight of women in Africa who go out looking for firewood and find rape instead.
It was Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, who flew from Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Frankfurt, Germany, then to Atlanta, Georgia and finally, to Norfolk, Virginia all in one day to deliver a lecture on "Human Rights in the Contemporary World" at Old Dominion University, who set me straight.
When a woman suffers that kind of gauntlet to give you a message and all the connecting flights are on time, even Atlanta, you have to reckon somebody up there likes what she has to say and wants the message passed on in a timely fashion.
I met Robinson during the reception and again afterwards. I was there with my 12-year-old son who was chosen, with a classmate from St. Patrick's School, to present a gift to Robinson. It was quite an affair to remember with a bagpiper leading them in to the lecture hall and a choir of fourth graders in their dress uniforms singing, "May the Road Rise Up To Meet You."
At the reception, after we met, I faded back a bit to eavesdrop as a sea of admirers ebbed and flowed around Robinson.
Robinson deftly mingled her own passionate feelings with the words of Eleanor Roosevelt and sips of water on a parched, travel-weary brogue.
She quoted Eleanor Roosevelt, Chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission of 1948, over and over in various conversations and later in her speech, as if reciting a most beloved piece of scripture: "Where after all,do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."
Dignity. So simple. So often absent from daily lives. How often do we tread on what we do not recognize as the human rights of those with whom we live and work and interact daily? All along in life I have thought of large places on the map when in reality and practicality I was missing the simplest way to send my ripple into the pond of humanity, through the preservation of the rights of those around me.
How often has a coworker been demeaned or the victim of vicious talk and I stood idly by?
Where was my voice when political candidates slung mud all over my mailbox and TV screen? Did I object? No. I just let it go, as so many all around the world let go the small miseries until we became immune to the passage of grief on a wider scale.
"Human rights work begins here, working in preschools, buying fair-trade products and coffee not sold by those who profit for the abused inn other lands where human rights are violated daily," Robinson said.
Again I wondered where has my voice been? In my wallet apparently and misused. Coffee? I never even gave it a thought before. I had a dim memory of a Nestle's chocolate boycott when I was my son's age.
How cocooned had I become with four children and only the time to read the headlines that screamed of torture, but never coffee or fair trade? Now the truth: when I saw the headlines of rape and torture did I quickly turn the page?
So I will slow down now and read more than the headlines and check the labels and my harsher tones.
To answer Eleanor Roosevelt, I am where human rights begin. Now, thanks to Mary, I'm on the way.
Editorial NOTE: Mary Robinson was Ireland's first female president, serving from 1990-97 and resigned the presidency four months before the end of her term of office to take up the post of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. She is the founder and executive director of the pro-human rights organization Ethical Globalization Initiative (www.realizingrights.org), housed in Columbia University's Earth Institute. She serves as an adviser to the institute, teaching in the international and public affairs department, and is a senior research scholar at Columbia Law School's Human Rights Institute.
Lisa Suhay has been a frequent contributor to Daily Wisdom and her first book resulted from a DW reader passing her stories on to a Christian Publisher. She now writes from Norfolk, Virginia and is the author of seven children's books. Write to her through her website at LisaSuhay.com
