Youth teaching youth... The purpose of Youth for Human Rights International is to teach youth around the world about human rights, thus helping them to become advocates for tolerance and peace.

UNITED TOUR LAUNCHES!

From July 17 to August 9, Los Angeles-based Taron Lexton, who directed the highly popular UNITED music video, winner at the New York Independent Film Festival and the UNESCO Human Rights Film Festival in Florence, is meeting with officials and educators in Mexico, Venezuela, England, Ghana, India and Thailand.

Accompanying him is his mother Mary Shuttleworth, Director of Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI). Together they will release the UNITED edition of a booklet entitled, What are Human Rights? as part of a human rights education package which bears the slogan, “Learning to be UNITED.”

YHRI Director, Mary Shuttleworth with a group of Aztec Indians in Mexico.

Coorganized by YHRI and the Human Rights Department of the Church of Scientology International, the tour is to spread the word about the importance of teaching and implementing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UNITED, which tells the story of a kid with a heart for basketball who unites the youth of the world to defeat a group of bullies, has aired on television and cinema screens all over the world. It features a multi-ethnic cast of more than 150 artists and professionals and has been adopted by human rights and community activists from the United States to Macedonia as an educational tool.

YHRI Director, Mary Shuttleworth doing a radio show in Caracas Venezuela.

UNITED will be shown at a two-day series of Pan-African human rights events in Cape Coast in Ghana at the end of July. The events are part of Panafest 2005, attended by tens of thousands, with over 5,000 African and international visitors from a total of 32 countries.

In India, Youth for Human Rights International, the Church of Scientology and the government of New Delhi are holding a youth summit where they will show UNITED to gatherings of young people and release the new UNITED booklet.

>> For more about UNITED, go to the new website, www.unitedmusicvideo.com

UP COMING EVENTS !

Youth for Human Rights has some very exciting events coming up. On July 28 – 30 there will be a Youth Summit that will be held as part of the famous Pan-African Festival, Panafest 2005!
Right after this on August 4, a big International Youth Summit will be held. Here are our invitations to these wonderful events! Everyone is welcome.

Click on the images to enlarge and read the invitations

THE RIGHT TO PLAY

This is a fun right. In fact this has to be the most fun-filled right there is.

This right allows you to play, it allows you to relax and have fun. This is such a cool right! When you walk into your room and see all your toys sitting on their shelves or relaxed on the floor you have the right to play with those toys at that very moment. The exact wording of this right is, “The right to Play: We all have the right to rest from work and to relax.” Imagine how some kids, who don’t know they have this right, must feel. They are busy working all day with no time to relax – if only they knew that it was also their right to play for some of the time. As future leaders it is our job as the youth of this generation to inform all children and adults that we do in fact have this right!

Member of the Month: QUENTIN MICHEL

Sixteen-year-old Quentin Michel lives in Paris. He was selected to be the French delegate at YHRI’s Youth Summit held in New York City, USA, at the United Nations last August.
Upon arriving home he really got busy. The next month he spoke at a youth summit held by the Church of Scientology International’s European Human Rights Office in celebration of the International Day of the Child.

On the 19th of November, Quentin and other representatives went to the Flemish Parliament of Brussels to meet with a government human rights official and he proposed the idea to get human rights implemented into school curriculums.
He again travelled to Brussels, the European capital, for a YHRI forum on the 20th of November, attended by about 50 youth. Quentin was the MC. In the first part of the event, young representatives from the countries of Europe spoke about what human rights mean to them and their solutions for current human rights abuses.
Then Quentin and the other delegates then went out into one of the busiest public squares in Brussels and handed out YHRI booklets. Quentin gave his first TV interview with Flemish TV!
Well done Quentin –keep up the good work!

YHRI Art Contest

See the works of more talented young winning depicting what human rights means to them.

Michele Chang	Swarna Racha
Yun Xue	Amy Yang

Taking responsibility for human rights

— by Berza Simsek, 20 years old ~ Turkey

To understand the meaning of taking responsibility for human rights, we must first think about the concept. At once, it is both basic and complex. It is basic because they are the fundamental rights of every human being, and it is complex because rights and responsibilities should be taught together. These are not only rights for a single person, but for all people. For this reason, this concept must be considered in its social, political, moral and philosophical aspects.
To explain what “taking responsibility for human rights” means, I conceived of human rights as a chain. The effort to complete and unite all the rings of this chain, to me, is what it means to take responsibility for human rights. I realize that it seems utopian to actually complete the rings of the chain in the world as it is, but it is the only way to secure world peace.

Taking responsibility for the rights of others begins with loving all humanity and respecting them for their humanity. If we remember that all human beings are equal, free and valuable, maybe human beings will at last love and respect each other.

The second of the chain of human rights includes satisfying fundamental needs. These fundamental needs must be met to achieve each of the human rights. To provide fundamental rights, the sanctity of human life must be guaranteed. This means not killing, not torturing, not endangering life and so on. Guaranteeing life, adequate food, clothing, shelter, health service, clean water and air is important. Opportunities for developing human rights must be provided.

Accepting such a responsibility is not enough; we must also carry this responsibility into action, because theory is nothing without deeds. Nowadays, the awareness of human rights and practice in line with this kind of idea does not yet exist. This is because of the gap between principles and actual practice. Reaching this higher awareness, the concept of rights and duties emerges.

Human rights come with responsibilities. If I don’t fulfill my duties, your rights can’t come into existence, and vice versa. Therefore, to take responsibility for the human rights of others means to fulfill our reciprocal duties.