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Human Wrongs [1]

['Ed Holland']

Date: 2024-12-09

This blog was written by Laura Hassler, Director Musicians Without Borders

December 10th: International Day of Human Rights.

Since our founding in 1999, Musicians Without Borders has referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a framework of guiding principles, a collective conscience for our organization and our programs around the world.

Why? Because music creates connection and empathy, builds community, brings people together: but, just as any powerful human potential, music can also be used to unite one group against another, as it has been many times. So, it is crucial for social changemakers to have guidelines, and the declaration provides these.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created following World War II, a global agreement on principles that would apply to all and prevent such horrors as were experienced in that war from ever happening again. And while it was created by the victors of that war, most nations of the world recognized its value and signed on.

But in today’s world, powerful nations call upon human rights to justify sanctions, coups and wars, while ignoring—or even systematically violating— human rights of the powerless when it serves their political purpose. Human rights for children in DRC, working as slave labor to mine cobalt for corporate profit? Human rights for families forced to flee from wars in Africa, Asia or the Middle East, only to be detained in prison-like camps in the EU, or drowned at sea? Human rights for children bombed in their tents in Gaza?

If human rights only apply when politically convenient to the most powerful, they are not really rights—they are arbitrarily applied privileges. When every global human rights organization calls out genocide, while the world’s great powers continue to fund and defend it, there are no universal human rights. There is the hypocrisy of power and there are human wrongs.

So, where are we with our gold standard?

The answer can only be: we hold it more tightly than ever. Just as in a world of violence, we continue to stand for the principles of active nonviolence, so too in a world of wrongs, we hold on to human rights, recognizing that governments and political powers will only comply when we humans insist that they do.

December 10—International Day of Human Rights. May we do everything humanly possible, everything humanly right, to extend universal rights to all humans.

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[1] Url: https://www.musicianswithoutborders.org/2024/12/09/human-wrongs/?utm_source=Musicians+Without+Borders&utm_campaign=ef4d80c8a3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_12_09_10_49&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-ef4d80c8a3-195083085

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