Human rights, a term that ought to resonate within us all as humans, though rarely understood nor engaged with in most of our societies today. This is potentially because it’s one of the things we’ve normalised to a point that we undervalue them, as they are inherent to our existence. Come to think about it, they did not come naturally to some generations in the past, but again, that doesn’t mean we should appreciate/celebrate the mere existence of a document that has not been coupled with actions in most societies.
As a team, we recently had two sessions on human rights with American Friends Service Committee. Not only did this give us an opportunity to reflect through a document that recognises the dignity of humans, but it also allowed us to contextualise these rights in South Africa. “Equal,” a word that appears in more than five articles of the universal declaration of human rights…so, South Africa as a country that is filled with so much inequality cannot claim to be obeying this document.
I don’t think South Africa is entirely delivering what this document holds. The socioeconomic issues pose an important description of our society, in that all humans are equal but some are more equal than others. This can be derived from systems of inequality in different sectors of the country. We can talk about the issue of access, who gets access to what and what the differences in the quality of those things looks like. What’s the point for one to have the right to something, yet can only possess that thing if it’s in its poorest quality? Look at education, health care, housing/settlement etc.
I think we need to stop individualizing human rights, cause then we won’t be able to see them beyond ourselves. At what point do we get to be vocal about systems that benefit us at the expense of other people? We need to do something about the human rights we enjoy but which are still a dream to some people around us.