Human Rights News - Church of Scientology Human Rights Department

June, 2005

Youth Push For — and Get — Human Rights Education

Youth for Human Rights International’s awareness campaign reaches important milepost: a European Parliament resolution to make human rights a reality for all schoolchildren

Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) delegate Quentin Michel

It is rare to see Palestinian and Israeli representatives share the same podium, let alone shake hands, Quentin Michel (17) of Paris told a gathering of youth at last November’s Universal Children’s Day conference in Belgium. “But not so when Israeli Rene Wasserman and Palestinian Zeina Hamad embraced in friendship and sent a message to adults back home.”

The young human rights advocate was recounting a highlight of an international youth summit he attended last August at the United Nations headquarters in New York. His point to the Children’s Day audience three months later: Youth can change the course of history with an understanding of human rights. And, as proven within just months since his talk, they can change rapidly.

Michel’s speech opened the November 20, 2004 symposium at the Church of Scientology International’s European Office of Public Affairs and Human Rights in Brussels. There, he and fellow Children’s Day conference delegates from nine European countries urged government officials and diplomats to make human rights education part of school curricula across the continent.

The Israeli & Palestinian delegates at the International Youth Summit held in New York in August 2004.

Three weeks later, on December 10, the young humanitarians again emerged in Brussels to lead the Human Rights Day celebration. Once more they delivered their message to Europe’s leaders: make human rights a reality for every child on the continent.

Their persistence has, in just five months, been rewarded by the adoption of a European Parliament resolution calling for “the inclusion of a subject on the Member States school curricula to cover both fundamental rights and the human rights recognized by the international community”

The “European Parliament Resolution on Promotion and Protection of Fundamental Rights: the role of national and European institutions, including the Fundamental Rights Agency," adopted on April 21, 2005.

Michel said that this mandate will “open the door for freedom of conscience in France.”

Freedom of thought and freedom of expression depend utterly upon every citizen’s understanding of their right to believe, to know, to think and to judge for themselves,” he said. “Only with that basic understanding, can they then exercise and safeguard that right. Human rights education will help make our country one in which people of different faiths or belief systems are respected, and not immediately stigmatized simply because they look, speak or act in some way unfamiliar with traditional upbringing.”

Young Human Rights Champions

Churches of Scientology throughout Europe play a prominent role in promoting human rights education by marking important commemorations, such as the Universal Day of the Child and Human Rights Day, explains Jean-Louis Gagnot, Human Rights Director for the Churches of Scientology in France. Each church’s human rights department serves as a generation point for the special humanitarian programs that are spearheaded by Michel and other young Scientologists under the banner of Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI).

Founded in 2001, YHRI’s purpose is to teach children about human rights, so they become advocates for tolerance and peace. It publishes a child-friendly text, What Are Human Rights? containing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and available in 21 languages. YHRI also organizes regular seminars for children, using What Are Human Rights? to impart an understanding of their rights and those of others.

With the support of the United Nations non-governmental organization, Friends of the United Nations, YHRI last year organized an essay-writing contest across Europe. Quentin Michel’s winning essay earned his trip to the UN’s New York headquarters to accept his award. “Going to New York and Brussels has changed my life,” he said. “Firstly, not just anyone can go to the UN. Ive met great peoplesome much younger than mewho are all truly committed to advancing human rights. We dont challenge the others cultures, their way of thinking, and so on. We respect them.

We each come to these summits with our own viewpoints, but we share a common purpose, and this is something really exceptional: We fight for our ideals, we talk of our goals, why we feel they are worth fighting for. It always makes me want to carry on this way,” he said.

Award-winning Human Rights Film

Common to recent YHRI youth conferences has been the presentation of a new human rights music video, which has brought each of the events to a dramatic finale. The video, entitled “UNITED,” has been airing on “Atout C UR” TV and in 15 languages around the world.

In May and June, 2005, UNITED won the Grand Jury Award from the prestigious New York Independent Film Festival; UNESCO’s “Best Short Film on Human Rights” Award in Florence; and the “Spirit of the Moondance” Award from the Moondance Society in the United States. In all it has, so far, garnered more than ten major film festival acceptances, says its director, Taron Lexton, an American film school graduate who grew up in South Africa during the country’s transition from apartheid to democracy.

Since the video’s premiere at European Youth for Human Rights conferences last fall, YHRI representatives have given special viewings to government officials and representatives of non-governmental organizations. Many have also stated their intention to incorporate UNITED into human rights educational programs.

Ms. Imaculee Ilibigaze of the United Nations Development Program and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide commended YHRI for its efforts to raise human rights awareness internationally through the UNITED video and other educational tools. “I can think of no more important action for peace, and for aiding the respect we must each have for one another, than making these rights known and applied.

The youth that are part of your organization deserve all possible help and encouragement in their work in their home countries.”

UNITED’s impact is reverberating everywhere,” Lexton said “It conveys the power that human rights consciousness and cooperative action can have in curbing violent confrontation and intolerance amongst youth. And those who see it take its message to heart.”

For more information on the UNITED video or ongoing YHRI events and activities, visit www.youthforhumanrights.org