We Are All Born Free & Equal
Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Remember that a right is a freedom of some kind; something to which you are entitled by virtue of being human. It doesn’t matter where we are born or what kind of a family we are born into. We are all born into this world and should be given the same opportunities and given a fair shot at a life well lived.
Further, this means that we have the ability to make our own choices, whether that’s choosing what college we go to, what career path we take, or who we choose as a partner to spend our life with.
When you approach life with the right as described above, it becomes pretty easy to see when the right of freedom and equality has been violated. It could be something as simple as refusing to hire someone for job because of their religious beliefs or the wage gap between men and women.
According to the 2016 Census Bureau, in the District of Columbia, the average annual pay for a woman who holds a full-time, year round job is $62,191 while average annual pay for a man who holds a full-time, year-round job is $72,230. This means that women in the District are paid 86 cents for every dollar paid to men. That an annual wage gap of $10,039. Although DC is considered one of the better states in country there is still a definite gap, which in itself is a human rights violation.
Violations of this right can also be more extreme, such as in human trafficking, where a person is bought and sold as a commodity and degraded to the value of an object rather than the value and worth of an individual as a human being.
Learn more about what you can do to help improve human rights in the DC area by joining the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (UNA-NCA)’s Human Rights Committee and help make a difference in your community. Contact us today!
This post was written by Erica Rodgers, a member of the UNA-NCA Human Rights Committee, as part of an ongoing series focused on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
