Category: Musings

From Kelly Manjula Koza’s archives: Written in 2009 to celebrate a ground-breaking international document, the ideals of which we still work to attain. The Declaration was signed on December 10, 1948.

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Sixty-one years ago, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Much contested and debated at the UN before its acceptance, the UDHR was developed as a non-binding agreement of nations working towards and upholding basic human rights for all individuals around the world.

Eleanor Roosevelt, a key player driving the drafting and acceptance of the UDHR, stated that the document would educate people as to their basic rights as humans and encourage nations to adopt laws promoting and safeguarding essential human rights.

In April, 1948, ER wrote in Foreign Affairs:

In the first place, we have put into words some inherent rights. Beyond that, we have found that the conditions of our contemporary world require the enumeration of certain protections which the individual must have if he is to acquire a sense of security and dignity in his own person. The effect of this is frankly educational. Indeed, I like to think that the Declaration will help forward very largely the education of the peoples of the world.

Sadly, many rights specified in the document are still far from being universal, and adoption of the UDHR continues to meet opposition from number of governments around the globe. And, while ER and the United Nations consider the document to be personal and “belong to each and every one of us — [to] read it, learn it, promote it and claim it as your own”, the rights enunciated in the UDHR are not so well known, even by those here in the US — the home of the Constitution that provided a strong foundation for the drafting of the UDHR.

How familiar are you with the UDHR?

At a very basic level, the Declaration covers the following:

• Protecting children’s rights
• Fighting discrimination
• Halting torture and political killings
• Advancing the human rights of women
• Reinforcing workers’ rights
• Spreading the word of free expression
• Halting religious persecution
• Advocating for fair trials and due process
• Securing freedom from want for all
• Protecting human rights defenders

On this Human Rights Day, take the step of educating yourself as well as helping others. Visit the following sites to learn more about the UDHR and human rights:

• The full text of the UDHR, from the United Nations
• A well-considered interactive quiz about the UDHR and human rights
• A UN-produced index of human rights and related issues across the globe
• The quiz and index are both links on a portal developed for the celebrations and outreach commemorating last’s year’s 60th anniversary of the UDHR.

While the technology of the world has changed drastically since 1948, attitudes and the implementation of policies safeguarding human rights have not changed much. The UDHR is as critical now as it was 61 years ago. The peoples of the world must move beyond the document, and implement universal acceptance of human rights, as human rights are timeless — and priceless.

Photo by SpecialKRB, via Flickr • CC BY-SA 2.0

From Kelly Manjula Koza’s archives: I wrote this some years ago for my old blog; it was originally published with a different photo.

The Thanksgiving holiday understandably brings thoughts of gratitude, and fosters much charity.

I hope these thoughts of gratitude will continue for individuals throughout the next holiday season — which all too often becomes the season of marketing and materialism, with little room left for gratitude — and into the new year.

While I value the good actions and gratitude shown over the Thanksgiving holiday, gratitude must well from within every one of us, each day of our lives. All too often, we not only forget to express gratitude, but in our competitive, time-driven, negatively-focused world, but we fail to create the mental space necessary to recognize our own gratitude.

We are the ones who suffer, for without gratitude, life becomes dry. When we fail to recognize, value, and have gratitude for what truly matters to us, that which we overlook falls out of the spectrum of our life. When we are grateful, “What we appreciate, appreciates”, as Lynne Twist so concisely states.

We cultivate gratitude by paying attention to the small things in life, by making time to realize and express our gratitude, and by living our gratitude. As John F. Kennedy said, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

When the going gets rough, expressing and living with gratitude is not so easy. Many spiritual traditions remind us that tough times are not coincidences, or mistakes; difficulties in the path of life are opportunities provided so that we may grow and temper ourselves. We must practice meeting difficult times with the same gratitude we would meet good times. This has practical as well as spiritual benefits, as the following quote states:

When asked how things are, don’t whine and grumble about your hardships.  If you answer “Lousy, “ then God says, “You call this bad? I’ll show you what bad really is.” When asked how things are and, despite hardship or suffering, you answer, “Good,” then God says “You call this good?  I’ll show you what good really is!
~ Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

The world is having a difficult time, and we as individuals can make a difference in our own lives, and the lives of others by cultivating and expressing gratitude – not just on a designated holiday or event, but every day, in every aspect of our lives.

For what are you grateful? Can you ask yourself, and give thanks, every day?