Every year we celebrate Human Rights Day, which falls on December 10. However, on that date, we also remember that violations of human rights still occur all over the world. There is a lot of discrimination against race, or people from certain economic groups, especially during this pandemic.
Many still have difficulty in getting access to health and protection from the COVID-19 pandemic. This was highlighted in the theme of Human Rights Day 2020, “Recover Better – Stand Up for Human Rights”.
The theme focuses on the need to build back better by ensuring Human Rights are central to recovery efforts. UN hopes to reach common global goals, only if the society can create equal opportunities for all, address the failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination.
The COVID-19 crisis has been fuelled by deepening poverty, rising inequalities, structural and entrenched discrimination and other gaps in human rights protection. Only measures to close these gaps and advance human rights can ensure we fully recover and build back a world that is better, more resilient, and sustainable.
Four points become the main focus of the UN related to Human Rights during this pandemic. The following is the explanation as quoted from the website www.un.org.
- End discrimination of any kind: Structural discrimination and racism have fuelled the COVID-19 crisis. Equality and non-discrimination are core requirements for a post-COVID world.
- Address inequalities: To recover from the crisis, we must also address the inequality pandemic. For that, we need to promote and protect economic, social, and cultural rights. We need a new social contract for a new era.
- Encourage participation and solidarity: We are all in this together. From individuals to governments, from civil society and grass-roots communities to the private sector, everyone has a role in building a post-COVID world that is better for present and future generations. We need to ensure the voices of the most affected and vulnerable inform the recovery efforts.
- Promote sustainable development: We need sustainable development for people and the planet. Human rights, the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement are the cornerstone of a recovery that leaves no one behind.
Under UN Human Rights’ generic call to action “Stand Up for Human rights”, the UN aims to engage the general public, UN partners and family. To bolster transformative action and showcase practical and inspirational examples, that can contribute to recovering better and fostering more resilient and just societies.