YHRI's focus is to teach the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to young people everywhere so that they know and insist on their rights and those of others. Realizing that the Declaration had to be made available in a form understandable to the young, in March 2002 YHRI released the English-language edition of What Are Human Rights? This booklet contains a simplified version of the Declaration written especially for children. Instantly popular with teachers, government officials, community and religious leaders, not to mention the children themselves, What Are Human Rights? has already been translated into 21 languages. It has routinely proven to be very successful in helping children understand why human rights are vital.

In 2004, YHRI released UNITED, a street-savvy, five-minute film that has won more than a dozen awards for its moving portrayal of how human rights awareness can curb violence and intolerance. UNITED, in turn, inspired the UNITED Human Rights Handbook and the 30 public service announcements that articulate the key concepts of every article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

YHRI’s future projects include the following:

• Encouraging educators to start reaching human rights using the UNITED Human Rights Handbook, the PSAs, UNITED and What Are Human Rights?
  
• Encouraging government to incorporate the teaching of human rights into school curricula
  
• Human rights educational tours.
  
• Broadcasting of the 30 PSAs by TV stations all over the world.
  
• Assisting youth and adults to start new human rights chapters.
  
• Translating What Are Human Rights? into more languages.
  
• Distributing the booklet in volume to educators and youth.
  
• Distributing the UNITED human rights music video to schools, communities, youth organizations and others.
  
• Encouraging artists to produce and donate children’s murals with human rights themes.
  
• Holding essay-writing contests for youth on human rights.
  
• Lectures to schools and children’s groups.
  
• Seminars to raise public awareness of child slavery.