This year's theme is:
"Inclusion and the right to participate in public life."
"Where we come from does not determine who we can become. What we look like places no limits on what we can achieve. We should all have the right to express ourselves, all have the right to be heard, all have the right to be what we can be: To reach for the sky and touch the stars. No matter who we are, no matter whether we are man or woman, or rich or poor:
My voice, my right. My voice counts."
—Desmond Tutu, a key figure in the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, Nobel Prize Laureate, first black Archbishop of South Africa.
videos:
Celebrate Human Rights!
Lutheran Bishop Herbert Chilstrom and his wife, Minister Corinne Chilstrom, understand the importance of marriage -- for everyone. They support their brothers and sisters in Christ, and that's why they urged fellow Minnesotans to vote against a proposed constitutional amendment to write man-woman marriage into the constitution and essentially ban gay marriage in the State. The amendment was defeated. (see the Bishop's Advent Letter to LPF members, supporters, and friends (pdf, html)
Links:
UN sites:
Human Rights (UN website)
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights - Human Rights Day 2012
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
60 human rights instruments which together constitute an international standard of human rights.
Related sites:
Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
Defence for Children International
World Day of Prayer and Action for Children
Lutheran resources:
Addressing Racism: Challenge for Peacemakers
Goodsoil
Lutheran Human Relations Association
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
Reconciling Works
ELCA:
ELCA Commission for Multicultural Ministries
Human Dignity and Human Rights
Human Rights and Family - Journal of Lutheran Ethics - February 2009 issue
Human Rights - CSR program
