In honor of the United Nations International Year of Youth:
The future starts today! Opportunity starts today! Knowledge empowers! Action starts today! Teach human rights... and responsibilities!
Young people around the world, today we start building a world where everyone has basic human rights. Today, it is time for reflection and rededication to basic human rights set out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Knowledge empowers.
Reflect on the pain and suffering as well as the millions of innocent lives lost in events that led up to and during the World Wars. Those were the events that led to the UDHR in 1948. I have traveled extensively in the USA and circled the globe 7 times to more than 70 countries on 5 continents. I have seen, firsthand, the devastating situations that exist today. I have no illusion that we have realized even the most basic human rights around the world. Ignorance is a fertile breeding ground for abuse.
Knowledge empowers. We have made progress in many ways. People, like you and I, worked and made great improvements. Many people from ordinary backgrounds, ordinary homes and with ordinary means, all with a common determination that they could help make this a better world in some small way.
This year, in honor of the United Nations International Year of Youth, Hope urges leaders in countries around the world to recognize that children who do not know their rights are vulnerable, and to promote the UDHR and "cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories," in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly when this document was adopted and proclaimed on December 10th, 1948.
Rededicate yourself to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Read those rights. Teach those rights. Get educators and leaders to teach those rights. Knowledge empowers.
It doesn't take a genius to improve the conditions around one. Knowledge empowers. It does take ordinary people, like you and I, determined that we can make this world better in some small way. Knowledge empowers. Every time you teach someone about human rights you make this world a little better! Knowledge empowers. Together we can make this world a whole lot better! Knowledge empowers.
The future starts today! Opportunity starts today! Knowledge empowers! Action starts today! Teach human rights... and responsibilities!
