Human Rights Day is celebrated every year on December 10 globally to commemorate the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR is a document that indicates the rights which everyone is entitled to as a human being regardless of the race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. The theme for Human Rights Day 2020 is “Recover Better - Stand Up for Human Rights”.
Human Rights Day 2020 Theme
The theme for Human Rights Day 2020 is “Recover Better - Stand Up for Human Rights” relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the need to build back better by ensuring Human Rights are central to recovery efforts. The United Nations, in its website says, “We will reach our common global goals only if we are able to 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.”
It also said: “10 December is an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of human rights in re-building the world we want, the need for global solidarity as well as our interconnectedness and shared humanity.”
Human Rights Day History
The date Of December 10 was chosen to honor the UNGA's adoption and proclamation of UDHR on December 10, 1948. It was on this date, the first global enunciation of human rights. UDHR is available in more than 500 languages and it is also the most translated document in the world.
Human Rights Day 2020 Significance
“Human rights are at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as in the absence of human dignity we cannot hope to drive sustainable development. Human Rights are driven by progress on all SDGs, and the SDGs are driven by advancements on human rights,” a statement on the UN website on Human Rights Day reads.