International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

March 21st marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Although many racially discriminatory laws have been abolished in many countries, racism is still one of the biggest issues in the world.
 
“Racism and intolerance can take various forms — from denying individuals the basic principles of equality to fuelling ethnic hatred that may lead to genocide — all of which can destroy lives and fracture communities.”
 
This year, the UN is turning the focus on the treatment of migrants on this day under the theme “Racial profilling and incitement to hatred, including in the context of migrants” since refugees and migrants are affected greatly by racial discrimination. They flee from the hate of their countries and come to another to be faced again with discrimination. They are regarded as someone who does not deserve the same behaviour as the people born in that country and are often even subjected to torture. In order to stop this unjust occurrence and in continuation with our Human Rights Campaign, we would like to remind you of Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
 
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
 
Unfortunately, there are still countries who are not taking this right into account in their policies regarding migrants. According to the Independent, Australia is one of the countries guilty of this: their immigant detention centres have been accused of torturing the inhabitants of the centres in different ways. Many of the migrants there have been held in detention for over a year with no trial and are only gaining medical help to be tortured more. In addition, the Guardian has reported that in Mexico police officers are torturing migrants travelling through the country. This is done since the police have been set a quota of migrants from Central America to be deported and in order to meet it, police officers are even detaining Mexican citizens who do not speak Spanish and torturing them into confession of being Central American.
 
Thus, to combat this, the United Nations invites you to participate in the campaing Stand Up for Someone’s Rights Today. The purpose of this campaign is to encourage people to take a stand if they see someone’s rights being violated.
 
To know more about the campaign Stand Up for Someone’s Rights Today visit the website Stand up for human rights 
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Check the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
 
The poster above is part of a campaign raised during the international project "IntercultuReality " which involved young people from different EU countries in several activities related to Human Rights and its awareness. Realizing that HR are not well known and recognized as it should, they created different posters based on some of the articles of the Declaration, in order to sensitize more people about Human Rights and the current reality. For the following months, we are going to show these posters to support their campaign.

For more information about the project  visit the blog  INTERCULTUREALITY
 
Sources used: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/there-is-increasing-evidence-that-australia-is-torturing-refugees-medical-experts-claim-a7107256.html
 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/04/mexico-torture-migrants-citizens-central-america
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