Human+Rights

= = =Education= Amanda Farrell: Having an education is an important part of every society. If one desires to become something in life, he or she must have an education. However, how are people expected to progress through education if it is not readily available to them? Education is a human right because without it, people would be hindered from taking advantage of all opportunities available to them. It is also necessary to function as good as possible in society. The issue however with education is that classrooms are often crowded and teachers as well as supplies are often unavailable. The issue of education is central in Third World countries where there are often few educated people. If more people were educated, life would probably be better. To help solve the issue, many people are stepping in to help. Some like [|People's Movement for Human Rights Education] which advocates for this right and states what should be done to achieve it. Well known organisations like UNESCO also advocate for this and play an active role by building free schools for children and adults in third world countries. Others like [|Right To Education] look at the legal issues challenging educational rights. At the same time, they also play an active role in solving the issue. [|Amnesty USA] is another that seeks to volunteers to advocate for education and its importance. Other sites like IREHR discuss a variety of human rights that are directly related to education. Though education is for all, UNICEF focused primarily on primary and secondary education for children as they are the future. In the video below(above?) UNICEF campaigns for children's education through a simple cartoon. I think their method of increasing awareness is good. The only way we can really go about helping everyone have access to education is by making others aware of the problem. In America, education is available to almost anyone and we often forget that it is not the same way in other places. If we start by making people aware of this, then maybe we could spark interest leading to action. media type="youtube" key="e5R4jAxKY-I" height="344" width="425" AMANDA FARRELL

(Ian Burwasser)

(Ian Burwasser): According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Human Rights are defined as international norms that help to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal and social abuses. The focus on Human Rights as we think of it began back in 1948 when the United Nations created its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While the concept of human rights seems to be inarguable, the truth is throughout the world people are being persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for their political and religious beliefs. There are organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations who police against human rights abuses and try to make the public aware of them in the hopes of putting pressure upon the offending regimes to stop their action. The internet is a great help in this, as it can make photographic and textual proof of such actions public quickly. We saw this most recently during the riots in Iran when the current government attempted to stop protestors from arguing against elections that appeared to be fixed. The use of twitter, skype, and facebook brought the horrors of the streets to the attention of the world.

(Ian Burwasser) Websites dedicated to Human Rights http://www.un.org/rights/50/decla.htm http://www.amnesty.org/ http://www.freetibet.org/ http://www.freetibet.org/ http://www.echr.coe.int/echr/Homepage_EN

(Ian Burwasser) This is a video that shows the riots that followed what is considered an illegal election in Iran in June 2009. People took to the streets to protest, but the government did not allow them the basic human right of free speech and became violent agains the protestors. media type="youtube" key="KcHT8-ps64w" height="385" width="640"