International Human Rights Day 2020: Know Date, Significance And Theme Of This Year

Wednesday, December 9, 2020, 11:55

Every year 10 December is observed as International Human Rights Day across the world. This is the date that commemorates the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the first global declaration that talks about human rights on 10 December 1948. Two years later on the same date i.e., 10 December 1950, International Human Rights Day was celebrated for the first time.

Reason Behind Celebrating International Human Rights Day

The major reason behind celebrating this day is to help people achieve their rights in the context of social, cultural and physical rights and well-being. The day has the intention of ensuring the welfare of various people living at different levels of society. However, there are many more contributing reasons for celebrating this day. Here are some of them:

To highlight and support the efforts made by the United Nations General Assembly towards promoting human rights conditions.
To make people aware of the importance of human rights across the world.
To inspire people, especially disabled, women, underprivileged children, minorities and the poor to participate in the cause.
To highlight the major and widespread issue related to human rights

How Is International Human Rights Day Celebrated

The celebration comprises of a huge political meeting and conferences along with some cultural events which emphasise on the issues related to human rights and its violation. There are different themes that are pre-decided for celebrating this day. Such as the theme can be eradicating poverty. For that reason, poverty stands as one of the biggest obstacles in establishing a better living society. Not only this but one can find various exhibitions and protest march from the activists with the intention of spreading human rights awareness.

2020 Theme: Recover Better - Stand Up for Human Rights

This year the entire world will be celebrating the 72nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The theme for this year to celebrate International Human Rights Day is 'Recover Better - Stand Up for Human Rights'.

This year's Human Rights Day theme relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the need to build back better by ensuring Human Rights are central to recovery efforts. We will reach our common global goals only if we are able to create equal opportunities for all, address the failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination, mentions the United Nations (UN) website.

Under UN Human Rights' generic call to action "Stand Up for Human rights", we aim to engage the general public, our partners and the UN family to bolster transformative action and showcase practical and inspirational examples that can contribute to recovering better and fostering more resilient and just societies, it said.

The aim to engage the general public, our partners and the UN family to bolster transformative action and showcase practical and inspirational examples that can contribute to recovering better and fostering more resilient and just societies.

We wish you a happy International Human Rights Day!!