By Nina Murchison
Before this summer I knew nothing about Human Rights. I didn't even know what they really were. That was until I saw a video which opened my eyes (link below). I realised the importance of these rights and how violated they are, for most people. I believe they should be more recognised, worldwide, and I wanted to contribute in this process, so what better way to start than by spreading the knowledge of the basic rights in school? You have the right to know them, So...
What are human rights? I bet most readers won't know the answer to this simple question. Let me help, Rights: “things to which you are entitled to or allowed ; freedoms that are guaranteed.” ; Human Rights: the rights we simply have for being human, people. Most of us don't have our rights violated... others, can have most of them violated, but some, can have all of them just ripped away .
These are some violated rights in Argentina:
The Right to Seek a Safe Place to Live. If we are frightened of being badly treated in our own country, we all have the right to run away to another country to be safe. In other words, we have the right for a safe place to live.
No Slavery. Nobody has any right to make us a slave. We cannot make anyone our slave.
No Torture. Nobody has any right to hurt us or to torture us.
Now, knowing that one of our rights is the right to a home, a safe place to live, why were there (in 2005), more than 100 million homeless people in the world, and if slavery should not be allowed, why is argentina being known for human trafficking, and why is torture still being imposed. No one should be forced into slavery, into human trafficking, no one should suffer torture. We should be free. How is it fair to all the woman and KIDS (mainly), who have been raped, abused, and who have disappeared as if they were no one , not being remembered, barely noticed? Why them? This is against humanity.
A statement of a mother looking for her daughter that was recorded by ‘The Guardian’:
“My daughter Marita left our house between 9 and 9:30am to request an appointment with a gynaecologist. She gave me a kiss and said she'd be back within an hour. She only took five pesos with her for the bus. I never saw her again.
When she didn't come back I presumed she must have had an accident. My husband and I went to the local hospital, but she wasn't there. Then we tried all the other public hospitals and clinics in the town, but nothing. Absolutely no sign of her.
At 3pm I went to the police station to report her missing. The police didn't want to hear. They said she was probably off with a boyfriend somewhere. I said her husband and three-year-old daughter were at home, but they just shrugged their shoulders.
So then I went looking for the woman who had advised Marita to go to the gynaecologist. She is a nurse and lives close by. But when we knocked on her door she refused to open it. After that I went straight back to the police station and demanded they take my statement.
For three days I looked all over the city. I combed every inch – the roadsides, the back streets, the parks. I figured she might have been attacked and raped perhaps, then dumped somewhere.
On that third day, we received an anonymous phone call. The person said they'd seen a high-end taxi with blacked-out windows parked halfway down the street on the morning Marita went missing. They were waiting. When my daughter walked past two men jumped out, hit her and threw her in the back of the car and sped away.
Everyone in Tucumán knows who owns those taxis. They own 1,500 taxis across the province, of all different kinds. They're the mafia. As well as the taxis, they control the drugs and prostitution racket.
After that phone call my strategy changed. I took a photo of my daughter and went round all the red light areas. There I came across a woman who said she had seen my daughter. She claimed she had been sold to a prostitution ring in nearby La Rioja province. They'd paid the equivalent of 2,500 pesos [around $660] in drugs for her. (...) I'll never stop searching. I tell Micaela to call me grandma, but she insists on calling me her second mother. She deserves her own mother. Every girl does.”
This could happen to anyone, worldwide, no matter the social class or country. We may have some more protection, less chances of being the unlucky ones, but yet, that doesn't mean we are not next. This should not be ignored, the change has to start with everyone of us.
We will probably not be able to stop slavery, nor stop torture, we will probably not give a home to all the millions of homeless people, but we can change something. We CAN construct a home for another family, for example through Techo, a non-profit organization created by young latin-americans in order to build houses from scratch for people in need. It won't change the world, but it will change their world. If each of us changes just a bit, just by a small action, the world will change. There's always something you can do.
People may consider these rights meaningless, what then?, if they are impotent, why do we have to know them? who will protect our rights if the law doesn’t? ... We will. These rights won’t be meaningless if we recognize them, if we know them. World wide, if we all know our rights, who will take them away? If they are recognized, if they are protected, they cannot be taken away from us. Make the small changes, not only for the sake of the world, humanity, but also for your own sake. My goal here was to simply capture the attention of whoever is reading this, to focuss the attention on a broader and better cause, for the recognition of rights, the recognition of people.
We have to start looking at the world with different eyes. We have to start looking, not just ignoring. Because these facts are real, and they are still occuring this very moment. They are reality, maybe not ours, but someone's, the worlds.
please watch!!! at least from minute 5 onwards:
a link containing the 30 human rights:
the compleate article form The Guradian:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/20/argentina-human-trafficking