MINELRES: ERT Appeal on the Occasion of Human Rights Day
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[email protected]
Fri Dec 11 20:00:03 2009
Original sender: Equal Rights Trust <[email protected]>
UN Human Rights Day 2009 Devoted to the Fight against Discrimination
London, 10 December 2009
On 10 December - international Human Rights Day - The Equal Rights Trust
(ERT) invites new endorsements of the Declaration of Principles on
Equality, a set of key principles drafted and signed by 128 leading
experts and launched by ERT in October 2008. With this renewed appeal,
ERT responds to the initiative of the UN High Commissioner on Human
Rights to declare discrimination as the theme of Human Rights Day 2009.
Stating that complacency is discrimination�s best friend, Navi Pillay,
the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, speaking ahead of Human Rights
Day, called on individuals worldwide to make an extra effort to tackle
discrimination, starting from their own homes and workplaces.
ERT has also addressed specific recommendations related to the rights to
non-discrimination and equality to the governments of nine countries on
which it had focused its work earlier this year: Latvia, Malaysia, Mali,
Moldova, Sudan, Thailand, Uganda, UK and the USA.
In her video message devoted to Human Rights Day, the Trust's Executive
Director, Dr Dimitrina Petrova, said that despite the range of
international covenants and conventions prohibiting discrimination, 80%
of UN member states have no comprehensive anti-discrimination
legislation. She stated that the Declaration of Principles on Equality
should be the new covenant on equality for the 21st Century, and called
on organizations and individuals to endorse the Declaration as the basis
on which states should develop comprehensive anti-discrimination
legislation.
To watch the video with Dimitrina Petrova�s message, as well as messages
from other leaders in the human rights movement, including Thomas
Hammarberg, Bacre Waly Ndiaye, and Anthony Romero among others, in which
they describe their personal experience of discrimination, click here.
To see summaries of advocacy actions undertaken on the occasion of Human
Rights Day by ERT, click here:
http://www.equalrightstrust.org/newsstory071209/index.htm .
To watch the video message of UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Navi
Pillay, click here:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/AboutUs/Pages/Videos.aspx .
To endorse the Declaration of Principles on Equality online, click here:
http://www.equalrightstrust.org/endorse/index.htm