December 10 – Human Rights Day 

December 10 – Human Rights Day

Today, 72 years ago, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an instrument that recognized the freedom and equality in dignity and rights that are inherent to all human beings without exception, which will be a cornerstone for the development of the current international corpus juris on Human Rights, which includes the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as the most important specific instrument on the human rights of children.

Despite the progress made in the promotion and protection of human rights, since that December 10, 1948, there are, even today, millions of people in the world who, for different reasons, do not enjoy fundamental rights.

2020 has been a year of particular challenges for modern society due to the current pandemic, which has made visible weaknesses in it and has exposed a marked inequality to go through complex situations that appear jointly with the health problem as an initial difficulty, and therefore, for the realization or exercise of human rights.

The pandemic scenario represents a risk to the exercise of human rights of children because, on the one hand, the confinement that is taking place in many locations in the region has broken or weakened the access to rights such as education and has increased the risk for them to suffer serious human rights violations, and on the other hand, the current crisis scenario and the one to come when pandemic ends, can focus, both State and society efforts in other areas.

Therefore,  the call launched by the IIN together with the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to join efforts to protect the budgets destinated to the promotion, protection, and exercise of the rights of children;  to strengthen their child rights protection systems; and to take immediate actions to guarantee children the minimum requirements necessaries for a life that does not compromise their development and dignity,  it is truly valid to bring it into our reflections to commemorate this new Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, considering that it is a call to reinforce the individual and collective commitment to human rights of this priority group and also to practice the postulates of Declaration which celebrate today.