Issue: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

In 1948, when the atrocities from the time of World War II became known and named, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration contains a preamble and 30 articles that enumerate basic human rights that every human being is entitled to enjoy. Here's just a sampling of the rights that are set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

* The right to life, liberty, and security of person.

* The right to a nationality.

* The right to be equal before the law and not experience discrimination in the protections afforded by the law.

* The right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

* The right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

* The right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of him/herself and of his/her family.

* The right to education.

You can read the full text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights here, or watch a really cool video with an animation sequence for each article here. (The film is totally worth the 20 minutes it takes to watch it.)

The year 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration, so there have been a number of movements to spread the word about the Declaration and encourage people to get involved (personally and politically) in ensuring that their own life incorporates these principles of human dignity and human rights. Here are two websites that I recommend for learning more about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1) Every Human Has Rights. This campaign is sponsored by The Elders, an organization I've only recently learned about but that really gets my heart palpitating. (The video at the beginning of this blog post is from The Elders.) The Elders is a council of--well, of some of my greatest heroes, actually. Nelson Mandela, Graca Machel, Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, Muhammad Yunus, Aung San Suu Kyi, and others. The council has come together with the idea that if our world is a village, we need people with experience and commitment and compassion (a council of Elders) to share with us the value of their experience. So you can click here to get messages from The Elders, and here to get involved with the Every Human Has Rights campaign.

2) Protect the Human with Amnesty International. Seriously, take some time to check out this website. The Film, Music and More section is really great, with some fascinating films and book resources--too many for me to link all of them here, but go take a look. If you go to the Take a Stand section, you can quickly send letters and sign petitions on issues like Darfur, violence against women, political prisoners, and more.



"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Happy Holidays!

(Here is a gift this holiday season: Maya Angelou's beautiful Christmas poem, addressed to believers and unbelievers and Christians and Muslims and Jews and Buddhists and more. I wish you --sincerely-- a holiday season filled with joy and peace.)

Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem
By Maya Angelou

Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.

Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.

We question ourselves.
What have we done to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?

Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.

It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.

Hope is born again in the faces of children
It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors.

In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.

We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.

We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.

Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
implore you to stay awhile with us
so we may learn by your shimmering light
how to look beyond complexion and see community.

It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.
On this platform of peace, we can create a language
to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.
At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ

Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues the coming of hope.
All the earth’s tribes loosen their voices to celebrate the promise of
Peace.

We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace.

We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace.

We look at each other, then into ourselves,
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation:

Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.

Book Review: Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles

"Every time you say 'Africa is…' the words crumble and break. From every generalisation you must exclude at least five countries… Africa is full of surprises." (Richard Dowden)

This book is phenomenal, and I recommend it to anyone who is trying to deepen their understanding of the African continent. Richard Dowden is a journalistic veteran; he's spent over 30 years writing about Africa for several prominent British publications. From the outset of this book, Dowden acknowledges the impossibility of providing a comprehensive survey of Africa, but in my opinion this 554-page tome is a good attempt. Most of his chapters deal with specific countries: Uganda, Somalia, Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Burundi and Rwanda, etc. He also deals with continent-wide issues like AIDS, colonialism, and neocolonialism. Colonialism is an ongoing theme in the book. I've long had the sense that many of the current problems in various regions of Africa can be traced back to the abuses and travesties of colonial history, and this book definitely reinforced that idea for me.

My dad sent me this book after reading that Chinua Achebe (whose work I adore) wrote the Foreward. In Achebe's words, "The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, towards a deeper understanding of foreign peoples, cultures and situations. Richard Dowden's [book] succeeds marvelously." High praise indeed.

One of my favorite chapters of the book is the chapter on Zimbabwe. Dowden first met Robert Mugabe back in 1976, when he was still a revolutionary freedom fighter, and Dowden's explanation of Zimbabwe's history really helped me understand recent events there. Likewise with the chapters on Sudan and the Congo; in fact, I drew heavily on the information from this book when I wrote my blog posts on those two countries. And of course, anyone who knows me is aware of my affinity for former-colonies of Portugal, so I enjoyed the section on Angola and wished he'd included Mozambique as well.

According to The Economist's book review, Dowden's book focuses on "two questions: why is development so slow in Africa? And how, in the midst of so much savagery, does the humanity of Africans survive as one of the continent’s defining characteristics?" I can think of other wonderful books that have attempted to answer the first question (like Guns, Germs and Steel, and The End of Poverty). But Africa approaches it from a slightly different angle, with an eye bent toward history and toward the agency of individual people. I loved Dowden's prose for its honesty. He is unflinching in describing the horrors of wars and famines that he has witnessed in Africa, and not afraid to indict specific people for the role they've played in the collapse of communities, but at the same time there is no doubt how much he admires individual people and whole cultures that he has met and lived with in Africa. In his words:

"Westerners arriving in Africa for the first time are always struck by its beauty and size--even the sky seems higher. And they often find themselves suddenly cracked open. They lose inhibitions, feel more alive, more themselves, and they begin to understand why, until then, they have only half lived. In Africa the essentials of existence--light, earth, water, food, birth, family, love, sickness, death--are more immediate, more intense. Visitors suddenly realize what life is for. To risk a huge generalization: [In the West], amid our wasteful wealth and time-pressed lives we have lost human values that still abound in Africa."

That passage sounds a little like he might fall into the trap of romanticizing and exoticizing Africa... but for the most part he doesn't. (This particular passage describes something that I felt frequently, though certainly not always, when I lived in Mozambique.) He gives a clear-eyed look at a complicated continent, and it is one fantastic read.

(And I can't finish this review without mentioning one thing. See the boy holding the soccer ball on the cover of the book? My one-year-old daughter is obsessed with him. She carries this book --heavy as it is-- around the house with her, pointing to him and saying her version of the word "friend" over and over, and sometimes she kisses him. Maybe it's the way he looks straight out at you, nothing in his eyes but self-ness. This photo has a strong effect on me as well; I think it's a great picture. But whatever the reason, my daughter loves him.)

You can read other reviews of Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles here and here.

Film Review: Rabbit Proof Fence

Rabbit Proof Fence is a rare kind of film. Based on a true story, the film is set in Western Australia in the 1930s. At that time, the government had a policy of rounding up half-caste Aboriginal children and placing them in camps to become "civilized." The children were "trained" to become domestic works and become integrated into white society. Incredibly, and disturbingly, these kinds of government policies persisted (in various forms) into the 1970s in Australia. The term Stolen Generations is used to refer to the children who were separated from their families with the intention of removing all vestiges of Aboriginal culture from them.

In Rabbit Proof Fence, we meet three young girls who are kidnapped from their mother and placed into one of these camps. The three girls escape and begin a 1,000-mile journey home to their families, through the desolate Australian backland. The story is based on the life of Molly Craig whose daughter Doris Pilkington wrote the book Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence to document her mother's life. Molly Craig passed away in 2004, after a remarkable (and remarkably sad) life.

You can see a trailer for the film here. Rabbit Proof Fence is easy to find. Check Netflix, Blockbuster, your local library... You'll be glad you did.

One reason this film is particularly applicable to the subject matter of this blog is because of the interlink between a people's history and a people's present tense. In order to understand the kinds of systematic inequalities that persist throughout the world, it is essential to understand the roots, which are sometimes based in a more recent past than we'd like to acknowledge, of those inequalities.

Rabbit Proof Fence is moving to me on a number of levels. I first saw it years ago at the Tower in Salt Lake City. I remember I went with my friends Julie and John (who are now married to each other). I loved it because it taught me something meaningful about opening my eyes to the tragedies of racism, and also the beauty of other people and the world around me. Since then, I've seen the movie two more times. My own motherhood has created an even more intense connection to the film, and a greater empathy for the suffering of the mothers. It’s such a horrible concept: that a racist government could have the power to rip apart loving families. Side- by-side with this tragedy, though, is a very real sense of hope and defiance of racist systems. It’s interesting that re-watching the movie, I was surprised once again at the depth of its tragedy, and I realized that I had completely forgotten some of the more horrendous scenes over time. For whatever reason, after the movie ends the feeling that stays with me is a sense of the movie’s beauty and expansiveness, and over time the sense of outrage fades. Perhaps that’s another theme of the movie: forgiveness, and moving on.

Issue: World AIDS Day

Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. In fact, it's the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. So I thought it fitting to do a post about the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. (A pandemic is an epidemic that affects various geographical areas at the same time.)

If you take a look at this map, you'll see that AIDS truly is a global issue. Nearly 40 million people are infected, including over 2 million children. The countries with the highest rates of AIDS are the southernmost countries in Africa; in some areas, 35 percent of all people are infected with AIDS. Listen to this: 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981. These mind-boggling death rate has left an estimated 15 million children orphaned in Africa alone.



In the United States, the AIDS issue sometimes gets marginalized and treated as a "gay issue," since about 50 percent of Americans with AIDS are gay men. But Americans tend to drastically underestimate the global impact of the disease, as well as the fact that AIDS really isn't an issue that we can bundle up and put on the doorstep of any particular group. For example, the demography of AIDS is significantly different in Africa. There, AIDS is typically transmitted through heterosexual sex (in some cases from unfaithful husbands to their wives). In fact, in sub-Saharan Africa, nearly 60 percent of the people infected with AIDS are women. This is partially due to the fact that women's anatomy renders them more vulnerable to contracting AIDS. There are other reasons, too, like the fact that women typically have less control over their sexual choices than men, and the rampant rates of sexual violence in many parts of the world. (Sadly, forced sex is even more likely to result in HIV infection for a woman because of the increased risk of tissue tearing and blood-to-blood contact.)

HIV/AIDS is also transmitted from mothers to their babies (either in utero or sometimes through breastfeeding), through blood transfusions, and through contaminated needles. (In the U.S., "dirty needles" typically refers to needles used for intravenous drug injections, but in less-developed countries where health care facilities have considerably fewer resources at their disposal, it often refers to unsanitized needles used in hospitals and health clinics.) There is evidence that the role of contaminated needles has been underplayed in the AIDS discussion. There is plenty of controversy around questions of prevalent transmission in Africa, and also plenty of controversy around the best way to stop the spread of the disease (or at least which kinds of programs are most effective).

I personally saw evidence of the needle issue at a focus group in Mozambique. At the orphanage where we volunteered, I attended a meeting with orphan heads of household. Most of the attendees were teenagers whose parents were dead, and they came to discuss the realities of their lives. It was sobering; perhaps another day I'll write more about this experience. For today, I'll just mention that their economic situations were as grave as you might expect in a country where the average yearly income is $250. (Total. Per year. And don't buy the "cost of living is so small" argument either; Joe and I found it more expensive to buy groceries there than in Utah.) The children at this meeting talked about the economic challenges of trying to keep their siblings in school, trying to keep food on the table. But one thing that really stood out to me was their accounting of their experiences with health care. The teenagers reported that at local health clinics, if they needed a vaccination or injection, they were required to bring their own needles. None of them could afford to buy new, sterile needles--they could hardly afford food--and so they borrowed used needles from their neighbors and took them to the clinics.

This focus group helped me understand why an estimated 16 percent of Mozambicans are infected with AIDS. It also helped me understand the staggering implications of the AIDS orphan situation for these 15 million African AIDS orphans. (The number might be much higher; it's hard to get good numbers.) The situation of AIDS orphans deserves a post in and of itself, so I will come back to it later, but for now please check out this website and this article for a good overview. Also, a few years ago I wrote an essay about my experiences at the orphanage in Mozambique that you can read here.

A couple of other good websites for learning more about the global AIDS pandemic are The Global Fund and (RED).