A new series of public service announcements (PSAs) in which children envision the type of world they will grow up into is being launched to promote the need to learn and apply the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The PSAs, to run in community-conscious newspapers and TV outlets across the United States, are a centerpiece of a massive new campaign to increase public awareness and use of the Declaration.
Each newspaper PSA pictures a child or teenager speculating on what his world will be like when he is older, focusing on whether he will still enjoy one of the rights granted by the Declaration. The PSA urges the reader to make human rights a fact by learning and using the Declaration and so help create a lasting foundation for freedom, justice and peace in the world.
The TV PSAs convey a similar message.
Readers of the print PSAs may also order a new booklet, Know Your Human Rights, an illustrated publication designed to teach the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The work is an adult version of the highly effective What are Human Rights?, now translated into 19 languages and containing the Declaration in language that children understand. Widely praised by teachers, government officials, religious and human rights leaders all over the world, What are Human Rights? has already become a standard text for many educators in their work with youth.
The need to increase public awareness of the Declaration is clear from a survey conducted for its 50th Anniversary by the United Nations Association-USA, which found that 92% of Americans had never heard of it.
The human rights campaign is being conducted by the International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance, a grassroots, tax-exempt organization that seeks to make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights known and used. Copies of the booklets can be downloaded here, the PSAs can be downloaded above, and both can be requested from the Foundation.
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