Celebrate the Right to Be Human (VIDEO)
Every year, December 10th marks Human Rights Day. In honor of this day I'd like to share a couple of stories with you. Last winter, I spent a week in Cambodia with our partner organization Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) where I met a young Cambodian woman named Soriya (not her real name) and her 3-year-old niece.
Soriya and her family were part of a community of over one thousand families, who worked as day laborers and street vendors in Phnom Penh. After months of harassment, security forces showed up one day, tore down her home, and transported her and the other thousand families to an empty field, 20 kilometers from the city.
Now Soriya lives in a makeshift village where her home is a tent built out of debris. There are no jobs, no schools, no sewage system, and no safe drinking water. I saw children dying of preventable diseases because they had no access to medical facilities.
But Soriya stayed strong. She was one of the people trained by LICADHO to use a video camera to document her family's eviction. She was able to film the riot police tearing down her home.
In fact, her hands were shaking so violently when filming, that the video she made is nearly unusable. Shaky or not, this video and many others like it are now providing a powerful collective record of a previously silent issue -forced evictions.
2010 Successes in Human Rights
Today we also celebrate some hard-earned successes in human rights.
Together with the National Council on Aging, WITNESS produced a video called "An Age for Justice" aimed at seeking the passage of the Elder Justice Act. It's the first comprehensive legislation that protects older Americans from abuse.
