speech on world human rights

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How Eleanor Roosevelt Pushed for a Universal Declaration of Human Rights

By: Becky Little

Updated: July 13, 2023 | Original: December 8, 2020

“The future must see the broadening of human rights throughout the world,” Eleanor Roosevelt told a crowd in September 1948 at the Sorbonne in Paris. “People who have glimpsed freedom will never be content until they have secured it for themselves… People who continue to be denied the respect to which they are entitled as human beings will not acquiesce forever in such denial.”

Roosevelt was there to speak about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , a document whose drafting she’d overseen at the newly-formed United Nations . The U.N. adopted the document that year on December 10, a date now commemorated as Human Rights Day.

The rights enumerated in the declaration were controversial among the U.N.’s member nations, and remain so today. It proclaimed, among other rights, that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.” The former First Lady fought hard to make the declaration comprehensive and later wrote that she considered it “my most important task” during her years at the U.N.

Preventing War by Supporting Human Rights

The 51 countries that founded the U.N. did so in October 1945, just a couple of months after the end of World War II . In the wake of two world wars and the first nuclear bomb attacks , and in the midst of a global refugee crisis, many feared that a more destructive World War III was right around the corner. The U.N. was founded at a time when people like Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to avoid such a disaster and address human rights as a way of preventing war.

President Harry Truman appointed Roosevelt to the U.S. delegation to the U.N. at the end of 1945. By then, she was well-known in the U.S. and abroad. As First Lady during Franklin D. Roosevelt ’s administration from 1933 to 1945, she championed poverty alleviation, access to education and civil rights, and traveled to the European and Pacific front lines of World War II. In April 1946, she became chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and took on the task of drafting a human rights declaration for the world.

Roosevelt’s ideas about human rights and the need to work toward global peace were heavily influenced by her experiences during the two world wars. On the home front, she served food to World War I soldiers and “took the lead in making the federal government address shell-shocked sailors who were trapped in straight jackets in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in D.C.,” says Allida Black, a scholar at UVA’s Miller Center for Public Affairs and editor emeritus of GWU’s Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project .

She saw firsthand the death and devastation in Europe caused by the First and Second World Wars and continued to witness it during her U.N. appointment. In a column published in February 1946, she wrote about her visit to the Zeilsheim displaced persons camp in Germany. After meeting Jewish people who had survived the Holocaust , she reflected : “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”

Crafting a Declaration for All People

Creating the Universal Declaration for Human Rights was no easy task, given that nations like the U.S. and the Soviet Union couldn’t agree on what human rights were. Working on it required winning over people who disliked and disagreed with her like Republican John Foster Dulles, a U.S. delegate to the U.N. General Assembly who had protested the Democratic First Lady’s appointment. Roosevelt appealed to his Catholicism to get his support for including economic and social rights—which many U.S. conservatives disparaged as “communist”—in the declaration. And it worked.

“So the most hawkish Republican teams up with Eleanor Roosevelt to go to Harry Truman and the secretary of State to say, ‘We must have economic and social rights in this document; people must have access to food, they must have access to shelter, they must have access to education,’” Black says. “Imagine that.”

Hansa Mehta, a U.N. delegate from the newly-independent country of India and the only other woman on the Commission on Human Rights, also played a significant role in shaping the declaration. She is the one who suggested changing the declaration’s original language in the first article from “All men are born free and equal” to “All human beings are born free and equal,” says Blanche Wiesen Cook , a professor of history and women’s studies at CUNY and author of a three - volume biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Even though the declaration wasn’t a binding, enforceable treaty, it served as a model for legislation in many countries. After its adoption, Roosevelt continued to promote and speak about the declaration and the importance of human rights.

“She was very proud of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and she thought that it would be quickly followed by binding covenants,” Cook says. “But she died in 1962 and the covenants weren’t even ready then, and the U.S. didn’t sign the civil and political rights covenant until George Herbert Walker Bush ratified it when the Soviet Union collapsed .”

The United States has not yet ratified the treaty’s economic and social rights covenant .

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6 Human Rights Speeches That Changed The World

Words are powerful things. Put in the hands of skilful orators they have the ability to inspire, heal and rally vast swathes of people. And what could be more worth rallying for than the inherent dignity and equal rights of ‘ all members of the human family’ (AKA, our human rights) ? 

These six speakers advocate for equality, freedom, and dignity. But above all, what connects them is their belief in the power of free speech, and that their own voice can make a difference – and they did.

• Hundreds of inspirational human rights quotes

1. Eleanor Roosevelt, The Struggle for Human Rights, 1948

Let’s start off with the first lady of human rights – Eleanor Roosevelt with her famous 1948 speech ‘The Struggle for Human Rights’

We must not be confused about what freedom is. Basic human rights are simple and easily understood: freedom of speech and a free press; freedom of religion and worship; freedom of assembly and the right of petition; the right of men to be secure in their homes and free from unreasonable search and seizure and from arbitrary arrest and punishment.

Check her out in action here:

2. Martin Luther King, I Have A Dream, 1963

Moving on to one of the most recognisable speeches of the 20 th Century – Martin Luther King Jnr in 1963 ‘I Have A Dream.’

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

His delivery brings his words off the page:

3. Emmeline Pankhurst, Freedom or Death, 1913

Great speeches have a habit of connecting to times of strife. The struggle for women’s suffrage is littered with powerful speeches denouncing inequality – here is one of the most famous from Emmeline Pankhurst in 1913, ‘Freedom or Death,’

Human life for us is sacred, but we say if any life is to be sacrificed it shall be ours; we won’t do it ourselves, but we will put the enemy in the position where they will have to choose between giving us freedom or giving us death.

If you want to listen to it, check out this reading of it:

4. Harold Macmillan, The Wind of Change, 1960

Sometimes the location of a speech underlines its impact. Here Harold Macmillan is addressing the South African Parliament about racial discrimination and slavery in his 1960 ‘The Wind of Change’ speech.

The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.

Check out Harold in full flow here:

5. Nelson Mandela, I Am Prepared To Die, 1964

Four years later in 1964 in the same country, Nelson Mandela was on trial on charges of sabotage and made the following speech from the dock:

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Here is Mr Mandela using the court room as his megaphone:

6. Elie Wiesel, The Perils of Indifference

We’ll end with a personal favourite. Here is Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor addressing President Clinton in 1999 talking about ‘The Perils of Indifference.’

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees — not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Watch the full 20 minutes here:

These are just a small selection of powerful speeches, which speeches would you put in your top ten?

• Check out our guest post on ‘Free Speech and Why it Matters’ 
• For more on freedom of expression and why it matters, read our Explainer here. 
• To read about why we should continue to fight for our freedoms, read RightsInfo’s director’s opinion post, ‘ Evil Progresses Cunningly ‘. 

Harold Macmillan image ©  Chetham’s Library , and Wikimedia used under Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic Licence.

About the author.

Anna Dannreuther is a barrister at Field Court Chambers practising in public, employment, and commercial law. She is a trans ally and has worked extensively on human rights issues, including at the European Court of Human Rights and with NGO partners.

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• Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 ( General Assembly resolution 217 A ) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages . The UDHR is widely recognized as having inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties, applied today on a permanent basis at global and regional levels (all containing references to it in their preambles). 

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,

The General Assembly,

Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. 

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.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

• Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
• No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
• Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
• Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
• This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
• Everyone has the right to a nationality.
• No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
• Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
• Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
• No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
• No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
• Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
• Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
• The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

• Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
• Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
• Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
• Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

• Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
• Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
• Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
• Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
• Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
• Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

• Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
• In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
• These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

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Women Who Shaped the Declaration

Women delegates from various countries played a key role in getting women’s rights included in the Declaration. Hansa Mehta of India (standing above Eleanor Roosevelt) is widely credited with changing the phrase "All men are born free and equal" to "All human beings are born free and equal" in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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Speech: ‘Be the light that brings hope and that accelerates progress towards an equal, sustainable, and peaceful future’

Opening remarks delivered by un women executive director sima bahous at the un official commemoration of international women’s day, 8 march 2024, un headquarters.

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[As delivered.]

I will begin on this International Women’s Day with a moment of reflection for all the women and girls killed in wars and conflicts that are not of their making.

Wars and conflicts are eroding the achievements of decades of investments in gender equality and women’s empowerment. From the Middle East, to Haiti, to Sudan, Myanmar, the Sahel, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the world, women pay the biggest price of conflicts.

Conflict is inherently violent, but for women and girls ever more so, including in sexual and gender-based ways. This is intolerable. No woman or girl anywhere, ever, should experience sexual violence or any form of violence. UN Women, alongside everyone here, condemns it unequivocally.

The need for peace has never been more urgent. We salute women everywhere who strive to bring peace every day, who are human rights activists, who are human rights defenders, who lead and fight for change.

This year’s International Women’s Day sees a world hobbled by confrontation, fragmentation, fear, and, most of all, inequality.

Persistent poverty gaps continue to exist worldwide, and women bear an increasingly heavy burden. One in every ten women in the world lives in extreme poverty. Poverty has a female face.

Men own 105 trillion dollars [USD] more wealth than women. They dominate the corridors of power.

And the pushback against gender equality is well resourced and powerful, fuelled by anti-gender movements, de-democratization, restricted civic space, a breakdown of trust between people and state, and regressive policies and legislation.

We all feel this pushback acutely. Our values and principles have never been as challenged as they are today.

I thank all of you for lending your energies to this struggle, to the cause of women’s rights and gender equality, and I thank you all for joining us in pushing forward against the pushback.

This year’s International Women’s Day calls us all to invest in women and girls and to accelerate progress.

It is only by investing in women and girls that we will meet the challenges we face, be they economic-, conflict- or climate-related.

Investing in women and girls is indisputably the best pathway to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals , to peace and security.

When more women are economically empowered, economies grow.

Where women are equally represented in government, governance thrives.

Where women are free to live their lives without the perpetual threat of violence, families flourish, and businesses benefit.

Where women have a bigger say in peace processes, peace is found sooner and is more durable.

But in spite of these clear facts, we continue to stubbornly invest in weapons more than we invest in women and girls.

We continue to say gender equality can be postponed for “later”, as we watch the world fall further off track, and even “later” is postponed.

In the coming months and year, we have a collective opportunity to recommit ourselves to gender equality. The Summit of the Future presents an opportunity to centrally place gender equality across discussions on development, financing, technology, and peace and security. The thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action next year has the potential to be a watershed moment for increased and accelerated action to make truth of the promises made 29 years ago. I welcome the Secretary-General’s announcement of the Gender Equality Acceleration Plan. Please count on UN Women as your partners in this.

The International Women’s Day this year has a call. And this call is clear and compelling. For every woman and girl, we ask that we finally make the best investment we can: financing gender equality and unlocking its dividends for all. More than 100 million women and girls could be lifted out of poverty if governments prioritized education, healthcare, fair and equal wages, and expanded social benefits. We know that when women raise their voices it is for equality, for their rights and for the rights of others, for peace and justice for all. They fight to leave a better world behind them for all the people and for our shared planet.

On International Women’s Day we elevate their voice. We elevate their cause, and our cause. We commit to affording it the resources it deserves and demands.

Allow me before I end to echo the call of the Secretary-General, the President of the General Assembly, the Chair of the Commission on the Status of Women: We need a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza now. More than 9000 women have been killed in Gaza, and this must stop. We cannot return to a path to peace without justice for all survivors of this conflict—and I say all survivors of this conflict—and without an end to the indiscriminate violence in Gaza.

I began my remarks today with a moment of reflection. I end my remarks with a call for all of us to be the light that brings hope and that accelerates progress towards an equal, sustainable, and peaceful future. For all people. For every woman and for every girl, everywhere. I know that together, it is within our reach.

I thank you.

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Transcript: Read Biden’s Remarks at a Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony

Here is the president’s complete speech, which lasted about 16 minutes.

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• May 7, 2024

President Biden delivered these remarks on Tuesday at the Capitol for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Days of Remembrance.

Thank you, Stu, for that introduction, for your leadership of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. You’re a true scholar and statesman and a dear friend. Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, members of Congress and especially the survivors of the Holocaust. If my mother were here, she’d look at you and say, “God love you all. God love you all.”

Abe Foxman and all of the survivors who embody absolute courage and dignity and grace are here as well. During these sacred days of remembrance, we grieve. We give voice to the six million Jews who were systematically targeted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. We honor the memory of victims, the pain of survivors, the bravery of heroes who stood up to Hitler’s unspeakable evil. And we recommit to heading and heeding the lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history, to revitalize and realize the responsibility of never again.

Never again, simply translated for me, means never forget. Never forget. Never forgetting means we must keep telling the story, must keep teaching the truth, must keep teaching our children and our grandchildren. The truth is, we are at risk of people not knowing the truth. That’s why growing up, my dad taught me and my siblings about the horrors of the Shoah at our family dinner table. That’s why I visited Yad Vashem with my family as a senator, as vice president, as president. And that’s why I took my grandchildren to Dachau, so they could see and bear witness to the perils of indifference, the complicity of silence, in the face of evil they knew was happening.

Germany 1933, Hitler and his Nazi Party’s rise to power by rekindling one of the oldest forms of prejudice and hate: antisemitism. His role didn’t begin with mass murder; it started slowly across economic, political, social and cultural life. Propaganda demonizing Jews. Boycotts of Jewish businesses. Synagogues defaced with swastikas. Harassment of Jews in the street and the schools, antisemitic demonstrations, pogroms, organized riots. With the indifference of the world, Hitler knew he could expand his reign of terror by eliminating Jews from Germany, to annihilate Jews across Europe through genocide, the Nazis called the final solution. Concentration camps, gas chambers, mass shootings. By the time the war ended, six million Jews — one of every three Jews in the entire world — were murdered.

This ancient hatred of Jews didn’t begin with the Holocaust. It didn’t end with the Holocaust either. Or after — even after our victory in World War II. This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world and requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness. That hatred was brought to life on October 7th of 2023. On the sacred Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed the deadliest day of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Driven by ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the Earth, over 1,200 innocent people, babies, parents, grandparents, slaughtered in a kibbutz, massacred at a music festival, brutally raped, mutilated and sexually assaulted.

Thousands more carrying wounds, bullets and shrapnel from a memory of that terrible day they endured. Hundreds taken hostage, including survivors of the Shoah. Now here we are, not 75 years later, but just seven and half months later and people are already forgetting. They are already forgetting. That Hamas unleashed this terror. It was Hamas that brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten nor have you. And we will not forget.

As Jews around the world still cope with the atrocity and the trauma of that day and its aftermath, we have seen a ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world. Vicious propaganda on social media. Jews forced to keep their — hide their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their shirts. On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class. Antisemitism, antisemitic posters, slogans, calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.

Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th, including Hamas’s appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews. It’s absolutely despicable, and it must stop. Silence and denial can hide much, but it can erase nothing. Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they cannot be married — buried — no matter how hard people try.

In my view, a major lesson of the Holocaust is, as mentioned earlier, it is not — was not — inevitable. We know hate never goes away; it only hides. Given a little oxygen, it comes out from under the rocks. We also know what stops hate. One thing: All of us. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sachs described antisemitism as a virus that has survived and mutated over time. Together, we cannot continue to let that happen. We have to remember our basic principle as a nation.

We have an obligation, an obligation to learn the lessons of history so we don’t surrender our future to the horrors of the past. We must give hate no safe harbor against anyone. Anyone. From the very founding, our very founding, Jewish Americans represented only about 2 percent of the U.S. population and helped lead the cause of freedom for everyone in our nation. From that experience, we know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every minority and the very foundation of our democracy.

It’s in moments like this we have to put these principles that we’re talking about into action. I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the world. In America, we respect and protect the fundamental right to free speech. To debate, disagree, to protest peacefully, make our voices heard. I understand, that’s America. But there is no place on any campus in America — any place in America — for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind. Whether against Jews or anyone else. Violent attacks, destroying property is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. And we are not a lawless country. We’re a civil society. We uphold the rule of law, and no one should have to hide or be brave just to be themselves.

The Jewish community, I want you to know: I see your fear, your hurt, your pain. Let me reassure you, as your president, you’re not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will. And my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, security of Israel, and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad even when we disagree.

My administration is working around the clock to free remaining hostages. Just so we have freed hostages already. And we will not rest until we bring them all home. My administration, with our second gentleman’s leadership, has launched our nation’s first national strategy to counter antisemitism that’s mobilizing the full force of the federal government to protect Jewish community, but we know it’s not the work of government alone or Jews alone.

That’s why I’m calling on all Americans to stand united against antisemitism and hate in all its forms. My dear friend, he became a friend, the late Elie Wiesel said, quote: “One person of integrity can make a difference.” We have to remember that now more than ever. Here in the Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol, among the towering statues of history, is a bronze bust of Raoul Wallenberg. Born in Sweden, as a Lutheran, he was a businessman and a diplomat. While stationed in Hungary during World War II, he used diplomatic cover to hide and rescue about 100,000 Jews over a six-month period.

Among them was a 16-year-old Jewish boy who escaped a Nazi labor camp. After the war ended, that boy received a scholarship from the Hillel Foundation to study in America. He came to New York City penniless but determined to turn his pain into purpose, along with his wife, also a Holocaust survivor. He became a renowned economist and foreign policy thinker, eventually making his way to this very Capitol on the staff of a first-term senator.

That Jewish refugee was Tom Lantos, and that senator was me. Tom and his wife, Annette, and their family became dear friends to me and my family. Tom would go on to become the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, where he became a leading voice on civil rights and human rights around the world. Tom never met Raoul, who was taken prisoner by the Soviets, never to be heard from again. But through Tom’s efforts, Raoul’s bust is here in the Capitol. He was also given honorary U.S. citizenship, only the second person ever after Winston Churchill.

The Holocaust Museum here in Washington is located on a roll — road — in Raoul’s name. The story of the power of a single person to put aside our differences, to see our common humanity, to stand up to hate and its ancient story of resilience from immense pain, persecution, to find hope, purpose and meaning in life we try to live and share with one another. That story endures.

Let me close with this. I know these days of remembrance fall on difficult times. We all do well to remember these days also fall during the month we celebrate Jewish American heritage. A heritage that stretches from our earliest days to enrich every single part of American life today. Great American — great Jewish American — Tom Lantos used the phrase the veneer of civilization is paper-thin. We are its guardians, and we can never rest.

My fellow Americans, we must, we must be those guardians. We must never rest. We must rise against hate, meet across the divide, see our common humanity. And God bless the victims and survivors of the Shoah. May the resilient hearts, courageous spirit and eternal flame of faith of the Jewish people shine their light on America and all around the world. Praise God. Thank you all.

Biden’s speech at the Holocaust remembrance ceremony, annotated

By Zachary B. Wolf and Annette Choi , CNN

Published May 7, 2024

President Joe Biden talked about the documented increase of antisemitism in the United States during the annual US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Days of Remembrance ceremony at the US Capitol building. Every recent president has made remarks at least once at the event, but Biden’s remarks came as pro-Palestinian protests have disrupted classes and commencements at multiple US universities . At times, rhetoric at those protests has veered into antisemitism, offended Jewish students and sparked a fierce debate about free speech.

Biden talked in-depth about the Hamas terror attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the Israeli hostages that remain in captivity . He did not mention Israel’s heavy-handed response, which has not only destroyed much of Gaza and cost tens of thousands of lives but has also driven a wedge between Biden and many progressives, particularly on college campuses. See below for what he said , along with context from CNN.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, Stu Eizenstat, for that introduction, for your leadership of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . You are a true scholar and statesman and a dear friend.

Speaker Johnson , Leader Jeffries, members of Congress and especially the survivors of the Holocaust. If my mother were here, she’d look at you and say, “God love you all. God love you all.”

Abe Foxman and all other survivors who embody absolute courage and dignity and grace are here as well.

During these sacred days of remembrance we grieve, we give voice to the 6 million Jews who were systematically targeted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. We honor the memory of victims, the pain of survivors, the bravery of heroes who stood up to Hitler's unspeakable evil. And we recommit to heading and heeding the lessons that one of the darkest chapters in human history to revitalize and realize the responsibility of never again.

The Days of Remembrance commemoration has been an annual event since 1982. Every US president since Bill Clinton has spoken at least once at a remembrance event.

House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke shortly before Biden and tried to compare the situation on college campuses today with that on college campuses in Germany in the 1930s.

Never again, simply translated for me, means never forget, never forget. Never forgetting means we must must keep telling the story, we must keep teaching the truth, we must keep teaching our children and our grandchildren. And the truth is we are at risk of people not knowing the truth.

That's why, growing up, my dad taught me and my siblings about the horrors of the Shoah at our family dinner table.

Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

That's why I visited Yad Vashem with my family as a senator, as vice president and as president. And that's why I took my grandchildren to Dachau , so they could see and bear witness to the perils of indifference, the complicity of silence in the face of evil that they knew was happening.

Biden visited Yad Vashem , Israel’s Holocaust remembrance site, in 2022 as president.

As vice president, he toured the Nazi concentration camp outside Munich in 2015 with his granddaughter during a trip for an annual security conference.

Germany, 1933, Hitler and his Nazi party rise to power by rekindling one of the world's oldest forms of prejudice and hate — antisemitism.

His rule didn't begin with mass murder. It started slowly across economic, political, social and cultural life — propaganda demonizing Jews, boycotts of Jewish businesses, synagogues defaced with swastikas, harassment of Jews in the street and in the schools, antisemitic demonstrations, pogroms, organized riots.

With the indifference of the world, Hitler knew he could expand his reign of terror by eliminating Jews from Germany, to annihilate Jews across Europe through genocide the Nazis called the final solution. Concentration camps, gas chambers, mass shootings. By the time the war ended, 6 million Jews, one out of every three Jews in the entire world, were murdered.

This ancient hatred of Jews didn't begin with the Holocaust. It didn't end with the Holocaust either, or after, even after our victory in World War II. This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world and requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness.

The Holocaust survivor Irene Butter wrote for CNN Opinion in 2021 about Adolf Hitler’s rise and echoes of Nazism in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

That hatred was brought to life on October 7th in 2023. On the sacred Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed the deadliest day of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Read mo re about Hamas .

Driven by ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people off the face of the Earth, over 1,200 innocent people — babies, parents, grandparents — slaughtered in their kibbutz, massacred at a music festival, brutally raped, mutilated and sexually assaulted .

Evidence of sexual violence has been documented. Here’s the account of one Israeli woman who has spoken publicly about her experience.

Thousands more carrying wounds, bullets and shrapnel from the memory of that terrible day they endured. Hundreds taken hostage, including survivors of the Shoah.

Now here we are, not 75 years later but just seven-and-a-half months later and people are already forgetting, are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror. That it was Hamas that brutalized Israelis. It was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages. I have not forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget.

On May 7, 1945, the German High Command agreed to an unconditional surrender in World War II, 79 years ago.

And as Jews around the world still cope with the atrocities and trauma of that day and its aftermath, we've seen a ferocious surge of anti s emitism in America and around the world.

In late October, FBI Director Christopher Wray said reports of antisemitism in the US were reaching “ historic ” levels.

Vicious propaganda on social media, Jews forced to keep their — hide their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their shirts.

On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class . Antisemitism, antisemitic posters , slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world's only Jewish state.

Many Jewish students have described feeling intimidated and attacked on campuses. Others have said they support the protests , citing the situation in Gaza.

Last month, the dean of the University of California Berkeley Law School described antisemitic posters that targeted him.

Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th, including Hamas' appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews. It's absolutely despicable and it must stop.

Silence. Silence and denial can hide much but it can erase nothing.

Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous they cannot be married – buried, no matter how hard people try.

In my view, a major lesson of the Holocaust is, as mentioned earlier, is it not, was not inevitable.

We know hate never goes away. It only hides. And given a little oxygen, it comes out from under the rocks.

We also know what stops hate. One thing: All of us. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described antisemitism as a virus that has survived and mutated over time.

Together, we cannot continue to let that happen. We have to remember our basic principle as a nation. We have an obligation. We have an obligation to learn the lessons of history so we don't surrender our future to the horrors of the past. We must give hate no safe harbor against anyone. Anyone.

From the very founding, our very founding, Jewish Americans , who represented only about 2% of the US population , have helped lead the cause of freedom for everyone in our nation. From that experience we know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every minority and the very foundation of our democracy.

As of 2020, Jewish Americans made up about 2.4% of the US population, according to the Pew Research Center , or about 5.8 million people.

So moments like this we have to put these principles that we're talking about into action.

I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the world .

In America we respect and protect the fundamental right to free speech, to debate and disagree, to protest peacefully and make our voices heard . I understand. That's America.

The complaint of many protesters is that Israel’s response to the terror attack has claimed more than 30,000 lives and destroyed much of Gaza .

But there is no place on any campus in America, any place in America, for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.

Whether against Jews or anyone else, violent attacks, destroying property is not peaceful protest. It's against the law and we are not a lawless country. We're a civil society. We uphold the rule of law and no one should have to hide or be brave just to be themselves.

To the Jewish community, I want you to know I see your fear, your hurt and your pain.

Let me reassure you as your president, you're not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will.

And my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad, even when we disagree.

My administration is working around the clock to free remaining hostages, just as we have freed hostages already, and will not rest until we bring them all home.

My administration, with our second gentleman's leadership, has launched our nation's first national strategy to counter antisemitism. That's mobilizing the full force of the federal government to protect Jewish communities.

But we know this is not the work of government alone or Jews alone. That's why I’m calling on all Americans to stand united against antisemitism and hate in all its forms.

My dear friend — and he became a friend — the late Elie Wiesel said, quote, “One person of integrity can make a difference.”

Elie Wiesel , the Holocaust survivor, writer and activist, died in 2016.

We have to remember that, now more than ever.

Here in Emancipation Hall in the US Capitol, among the towering statues of history is a bronze bust of Raoul Wallenberg . Born in Sweden as a Lutheran, he was a businessman and a diplomat. While stationed in Hungary during World War II, he used diplomatic cover to hide and rescue about 100,000 Jews over a six-month period.

Read more about Wallenberg , the Holocaust hero and Swedish diplomat who was formally declared dead in 2016, 71 years after he vanished.

Among them was a 16-year-old Jewish boy who escaped a Nazi labor camp. After the war ended, that boy received a scholarship from the Hillel Foundation to study in America. He came to New York City penniless but determined to turn his pain into purpose. Along with his wife, also a Holocaust survivor, he became a renowned economist and foreign policy thinker, eventually making his way to this very Capitol on the staff of a first-term senator.

That Jewish refugee was Tom Lantos and that senator was me. Tom and his wife and Annette and their family became dear friends to me and my family. Tom would go on to become the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, where he became a leading voice on civil rights and human rights around the world. Tom never met Raoul, who was taken prisoner by the Soviets, never to be heard from again.

Read more about Lantos , the longtime congressman and Holocaust survivor who died in 2008. Lantos worked for Biden early in his career.

But through Tom's efforts, Raoul’s bust is here in the Capitol. He was also given honorary US citizenship, only the second person ever after Winston Churchill. The Holocaust Museum here in Washington is located in a road in Raoul’s name.

The story of the power of a single person to put aside our differences, to see our common humanity, to stand up to hate and its ancient story of resilience from immense pain, persecution, to find hope, purpose and meaning in life, we try to live and share with one another. That story endures.

Let me close with this. I know these days of remembrance fall on difficult times. We all do well to remember these days also fall during the month we celebrate Jewish American heritage, a heritage that stretches from our earliest days to enrich every single part of American life today.

There are important topics Biden did not address. He referenced the October 7 attacks on Israel but not Israel’s controversial response, which has drawn furious protests. He failed to mention Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign has killed so many, and which has led the World Food Programme to warn of a “full-blown famine .”

A great American — a great Jewish American named Tom Lantos — used the phrase “the veneer of civilization is paper thin.” We are its guardians, and we can never rest.

My fellow Americans, we must, we must be those guardians. We must never rest. We must rise Against hate, meet across the divide, see our common humanity. And God bless the victims and survivors of the Shoah.

May the resilient hearts, the courageous spirit and the eternal flame of faith of the Jewish people forever shine their light on America and around the world, pray God.

Thank you all.

A demonstrator raises a sign that says, "Human rights are women's rights" at the Women's March in Los Angeles in 2018. Though the concept had long been controversial, the United Nations declared that women's rights are human rights in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

• HISTORY & CULTURE

'Women's Rights are Human Rights,' 25 years on

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech at a UN conference propelled this idea into the mainstream after centuries of society sidelining gender equality as “women’s issues.”

When Hillary Rodham Clinton approached the podium at a United Nations conference on women in September 1995 in Beijing, she faced an uncertain audience. Only a few people had read the speech, which was a well-guarded secret even to high-ranking members of the president’s cabinet. “Nobody knew what to expect,” recalls Melanne Verveer , the then first lady’s chief of staff, who later served as the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues when Clinton became secretary of state.

Twenty-five years later, a single phrase from Clinton’s speech has entered mainstream parlance: “Women’s rights are human rights.” The concept wasn’t new. But the excitement and energy that Clinton’s speech generated at the Fourth World Conference on Women helped elevate the idea to one that fuels modern feminism and international efforts to achieve gender parity.

Women’s rights advocates have long argued that gender equality should be a human right—but were thwarted for years by those who claimed their rights were subordinate to those of men. During the infancy of the American feminist movement of the 1830s, abolitionists and women’s rights advocates tussled over whether it was more important to seek freedom for enslaved people or equality for women. As women pushed for their rights to vote, access educational opportunities, and own property, male abolitionists like Theodore Weld urged them to wait, arguing that they should first fight for the abolition of slavery as a matter of human rights.

Some women, such as educator Catharine Beecher , argued that women deserved rights because of their morality—as they were uniquely positioned to edify and enlighten men—not their humanity. She cautioned that their roles in public life should not extend into equality in the home. In response, abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Angelina Grimké wrote , “I recognize no rights but human rights,” noting that a society that didn’t give women power or a political voice violated their innate human rights. She was just one of a group of women who invoked the idea throughout the 19 th century. (Grimké later went on to marry Weld, who was her mentor.)

In the 1970s, the idea resurfaced as so-called second-wave feminists, who believed women should have access to full societal and legal rights, attempted to put women’s rights on the international agenda. In many countries, there was no consensus that women had a right to equal partnership in marriage, power over their finances, an equal education, or a life free of sexual assault or harassment. Between 1975 and 1995, the United Nations convened four landmark Conferences on Women that made gender parity a global priority. ( Here are the best and worst countries to be a woman. )

The first conference, held in Mexico City in 1975, recognized women’s equality. Eighty-nine of the 133 nations that participated adopted a framework to help women gain equal access to all facets of society; several western nations abstained , and the United States opposed the framework. In 1980, a follow-up conference in Copenhagen called for stronger protections for women, with an emphasis on property ownership, child custody, and a restructuring of inheritance laws. A third in Nairobi in 1985 called attention to violence against women. But though these conferences brought women’s issues to the international stage, each one fell short because of a lack of consensus and failure to implement the adopted platforms. By 1995, global women’s leaders had agreed it was time to create an action plan to guarantee equality for women.

For Hungry Minds

Slated for Beijing in September 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women took place in an atmosphere of intense international condemnation of the host nation’s treatment of its own citizens. Human rights groups and governments criticized China’s history of political imprisonment, torture, detention, and denial of religious freedom. The nation’s one-child policy , which put family planning decisions under state control, came under particular fire.

Women watch Hillary Rodham Clinton speak to the abuse against women at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Her call for women's rights to be considered human rights has since become mainstream.

News that Clinton would attend and speak at the meeting prompted an American outcry. “There were serious efforts not to make [the speech] happen,” Verveer recalls. “You had a cacophony of voices that were trying to keep this from being meaningful or successful.” The first lady faced outrage from human rights advocates who objected to the China visit on principle, conservative politicians who disapproved of her outspoken feminism, and people who worried the speech could threaten the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China.

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“I wanted to push the envelope as far as I could for girls and women,” Clinton said in a virtual public event hosted on September 10 by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security , of which Verveer is the executive director. ( A century after women’s suffrage in the U.S., the fight for equality isn’t over. )

On September 5, 1995, the second day of the conference, Clinton took the podium in front of representatives from all over the world. As Clinton spoke, Verveer watched the delegates’ faces closely. The speech cited a “litany of violations against women,” including rape, female genital mutilation, dowry burnings, and domestic violence—which Clinton labeled as human rights violations. She excoriated those who forcibly sterilized women and condemned those who restricted civil liberties, a jab at China, which restricted news coverage of the event.

The room was “filled with women who were in the trenches of those issues,” says Verveer. “The audience was completely pulled into their struggle.” The mostly female delegation applauded and cheered during the 20-minute speech, sometimes even pounding their fists on the tables to underscore their approval.

“The reaction was extraordinary,” Verveer says. On September 15, the phrase “women’s rights are human rights” was unanimously adopted as part of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action , which defined 12 areas—including education, health, economic participation, and the environment—in need of urgent international action. The document still governs the global agenda for women’s issues and is credited with helping narrow the education gap, improve maternal health, and reduce violence against women. ( Around the world, women are taking charge of their futures. )

Fourth World Conference on Women participants (from left) Benedita Da Silva of Brazil, Vuyiswa Bongile Keyi of Canada, and Silvia Salley of the United States cheer at the conclusion of the "Women of Color" press briefing where they stated that racism was not adequately addressed in the declaration.

Today, the idea that human rights and women’s rights are synonymous is considered mainstream. “I have rarely seen a single message carry such [an] important meaning and have such a durable life,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said at the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security event commemorating the anniversary.

But the work of gender equality is not yet done—and 25 years after Beijing, women still face systemic inequities and gaps in terms of safety, economic and political mobility, and more. “Girls need to know that they stand on the shoulders of other people who struggled to gain the rights they enjoy today,” says Verveer. “They need to play a role in ensuring the work goes on. There has been progress, but there is a long journey ahead.”

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Hillary Clinton “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” Speech at 1995 Women’s Conference Beijing Transcript

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a speech at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women on September 5, 1995 in Beijing, China. Read the full transcript of her speech remarks here.

Transcribe Your Own Content Try Rev and save time transcribing, captioning, and subtitling.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 00:20 ) Thank you very much, Gertrude Mongella, for your dedicated work that has brought us to this point. Distinguished delegates and guests, I would like to thank the Secretary General for inviting me to be part of this important United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. This is truly a celebration, a celebration of the contributions women make in every aspect of life, in the home, on the job, in the community, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens, and leaders. It is also a coming together much the way women come together every day in every country. We come together in fields and factories, in village markets and supermarkets, in living rooms and board rooms, whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about our aspirations and concerns.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 01:41 ) Time and again our talk turns to our children and our families. However different we may appear, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We share a common future and we are here to find common ground so that we may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world, and in so doing bring new strength and stability to families as well. By gathering in Beijing we are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in our lives, the lives of women and their families, access to education, healthcare, jobs, and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights, and to participate fully in the political life of our countries.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 02:42 ) There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe. Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou, the homemakers and nurses, the teachers and lawyers, the policymakers, and women who run their own businesses. It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples everywhere to listen, look, and face the world’s most pressing problems. Wasn’t it, after all, after the women’s conference in Nairobi 10 years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 03:39 ) Earlier today I participated in a World Health Organization forum. In that forum we talked about ways that government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working to address the health problems of women and girls. Tomorrow I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There the discussion will focus on local and highly successful programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their own lives and the lives of their families. What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations do as well. That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on this planet, does have a stake in the discussion that takes place here.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 04:56 ) Over the past 25 years I have worked persistently on issues relating to women, children, and families. Over the past two and a half years I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in my own country and around the world. I have met new mothers in Indonesia who come together regularly in their village to discuss nutrition, family planning, and baby care. I have met working parents in Denmark who talk about the comfort they feel in knowing that their children can be cared for in safe and nurturing afterschool centers.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 05:33 ) I have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid and are now helping to build a new democracy. I have met with the leading women of my own hemisphere, who are working every day to promote literacy and better healthcare for children in their countries. I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are taking out small loans to buy milk cows, or rickshaws, or thread, in order to create a livelihood for themselves and their families. I have met the doctors and nurses in Belarus and Ukraine who are trying to keep children alive in the aftermath of Chernobyl.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 06:14 ) The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard. Women comprise more than half the world’s population, 70% of the world’s poor, and two thirds of those who are not taught to read and write. We are the primary caretakers for most of the world’s children and elderly, yet much of the work we do is not valued. Not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture, not by government leaders. At this very moment as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 07:09 ) Women also are dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated. They are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation. They are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers. They are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the bank lending offices, and banned from the ballot box. Those of us who have the opportunity to be here, have the responsibility to speak for those who could not. As an American, I want to speak for women in my own country. Women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can’t afford healthcare or childcare, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 07:59 ) I want to speak up for mothers who are fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air, and clean airwaves. For older women, some of them widows, who find that after raising their families their skills and life experiences are not valued in the marketplace. For women who are working all night as nurses, hotel clerks, or fast-food chefs, so that they can be at home during the day with their children. And for women everywhere who simply don’t have time to do everything they are called upon to do each and every day. Speaking to you today I speak for them just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school or see a doctor or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 08:57 ) The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and outside the home, usually by necessity. We need to understand there is no one formula for how women should lead our lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her own God-given potential. But we must recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected. Our goals for this conference to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies cannot be fully achieved unless all governments, here and around the world, accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 10:00 ) The international community has long acknowledged, and recently reaffirmed at Vienna, that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security, to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear. No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse, or torture. Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even now in the late 20th century the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world’s refugees, and when women are excluded from the political process they become even more vulnerable to abuse.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 11:20 ) I believe that now on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break the silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing and for the world to hear that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights. These abuses have continued because for too long the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today there are those who are trying to silence our words. But the voices of this conference and of the women at Huairou must be heard loudly and clearly. It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution for human greed, and the kinds of reasons that are used to justify this practice should no longer be tolerated.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 13:01 ) It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire, and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities, and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives. It is a violation of human rights. When young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading practice of genital mutilation. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 14:46 ) If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all. And among those rights are the right to speak freely and the right to be heard. Women must enjoy the right to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure. It is indefensible that many women in nongovernmental organizations who wish to participate in this conference have not been able to attend or have been prohibited from fully taking part. Let me be clear, freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 16:23 ) In my country we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of women’s suffrage. It took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote. It took 72 years of organized struggle before that happened on the part of many courageous women and men. It was one of America’s most divisive philosophical wars, but it was a bloodless war. Suffrage was achieved without a shot being fired. But we have also been reminded in V-J Day observances last weekend of the good that comes when men and women join together to combat the forces of tyranny and to build a better world. We have seen peace prevail in most places for a half century. We have avoided another world war. But we have not solved older, deeply rooted problems that continue to diminish the potential of half the world’s population.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 17:35 ) Now it is the time to act on behalf of women everywhere. If we take bold steps to better the lives of women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too. Families rely on mothers and wives for emotional support and care. Families rely on women for labor in the home. And increasingly everywhere, families rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children and care for other relatives. As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace everywhere in the world, as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled, subjected to violence in and outside their homes, the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: ( 18:41 ) Let this conference be our, and the world’s, call to action. Let us heed that call so we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future. That is the work before you. That is the work before all of us who have a vision of the world we want to see for our children and our grandchildren. The time is now. We must move beyond rhetoric. We must move beyond recognition of problems to working together to have the common efforts to build that common ground we hope to see. God’s blessings on you, your work, and all who will benefit from it. Godspeed, and thank you very much.

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The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

Remarks by President   Biden at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance   Ceremony

U.S. Capitol Washington, D.C.

11:52 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  (Applause.)  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Please.  

Thank you, Stu Eizenstat, for that introduction, for your leadership of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  You’re a true scholar, a statesman, and a — a dear friend.

Speaker Johnson, Leader Jeffries, members of Congress, and, especially, the survivors of the Holocaust.  If my mother were here, she would look at you and say, “God love you all.  God love you all.”

Abe Foxman and all other survivors who embody absolute courage and dignity and grace are here as well. 

During these sacred Days of Remembrance, we grieve.  We give voice to the 6 million Jews who were systematically targeted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War Two.  We honor the memory of victims, the pain of survivors, the bravery of heroes who stood up to Hitler’s unspeakable evil.  And we recommit to heading and heeding the lessons that [of] one of the darkest chapters in human history, to revitalize and realize the responsibility of “never again.”

Never again, simply translated for me, means “never forget.”  Never forget.  Never forgetting means we must keep telling the story.  We must keep teaching the truth.  We must keep teaching our children and our grandchildren.  

And the truth is we are at risk of people not knowing the truth.  

That’s why, growing up, my dad taught me and my siblings about the horrors of the Shoah at our family dinner table.  That’s why I visited Yad Vashem with my family as a senator, as vice president, and as president.  And that’s why I took my grandchildren to Dachau, so they could see and bear witness to the perils of indifference, the complicity of silence in the face of evil that they knew was happening. 

Germany, 1933.  Hitler and his Nazi party rise to power by rekindling one of the world’s oldest forms of prejudice and hate: antisemitism.  His rule didn’t begin with mass murder.  It started slowly across economic, political, social, and cultural life: propaganda demonizing Jews; boycotts of Jewish businesses; synagogues defaced with swastikas; harassment of Jews in the street and in the schools; antisemitic demonstrations, pogroms, organized riots.  

With the indifference of the world, Hitler knew he could expand his reign of terror by eliminating Jews from Germany, to annihilate Jews across Europe through genocide the Nazi’s called the “Final Solution” — concentration camps, gas chambers, mass shootings.  

By the time the war ended, 6 million Jews — one out of every three Jews in the entire world — were murdered.  

This ancient hatred of Jews didn’t begin with the Holocaust; it didn’t end with the Holocaust, either, or after — or even after our victory in World War Two.  This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world, and it requires our continued vigilance and outspokenness.    

That hatred was brought to life on October 7th in 2023.  On a sacred Jewish holiday, the terrorist group Hamas unleashed the deadliest day of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.  

Driven by ancient desire to wipeout the Jewish people off the face of the Earth, over 1,200 innocent people — babies, parents, grandparents — slaughtered in their kibbutz, massacred at a musical festival, brutally raped, mutilated, and sexually assaulted.  Thousands more carrying wounds, bullets, and shrapnel from the memory of that terrible day they endured.  Hundreds taken hostage, including survivors of the Shoah.  

Now, here we are, not 75 years later but just seven and a half months later, and people are already forgetting.  They’re already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror, that it was Hamas that brutalized Israelis, that it was Hamas who took and continues to hold hostages.  I have not forgotten, nor have you, and we will not forget.  (Applause.)    

And as Jews around the world still cope with the atrocities and trauma of that day and its aftermath, we’ve seen a ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world: vicious propaganda on social media, Jews forced to keep their — hide their kippahs under baseball hats, tuck their Jewish stars into their shirts.  

On college campuses, Jewish students blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class.  

Antisemitism — antisemitic posters, slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish State.  

Too many people denying, downplaying, rationalizing, ignoring the horrors of the Holocaust and October 7th, including Hamas’s appalling use of sexual violence to torture and terrorize Jews.  

It’s absolutely despicable, and it must stop.  

Silence — (applause) — silence and denial can hide much, but it can erase nothing.  Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they cannot be muri- — buried, no matter how hard people try.  

In my view, a major lesson of the Holocaust is, as mentioned earlier, it’s not — was not inevitable.  We know hate never goes away; it only hides.  And given a little oxygen, it comes out from under the rocks.  

But we also know what stops hate.  One thing: all of us.  

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described antisemitism as a virus that has survived and mutated over time.  Together, we cannot continue to let that happen.  

We have to remember our basic principles as a nation.  We have an obligation — we have an obligation to learn the lessons of history so we don’t surrender our future to the horrors of the past.  We must give hate no safe harbor against anyone — anyone.  

From the very founding — our very founding, Jewish Americans, who represent only about 2 percent of the U.S. population, have helped lead the cause of freedom for everyone in our nation.  From that experience, we know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every minority and the very foundation of our democracy.  

So, in moments like this, we have to put these principles that we’re talking about into action.  

I understand people have strong beliefs and deep convictions about the world.  In America, we respect and protect the fundamental right to free speech, to debate and disagree, to protest peacefully and make our voices heard.  

I understand.  That’s America.  

But there is no place on any campus in America — any place in America — for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind — (applause) — whether against Jews or anyone else.  

Violent attacks, destroying property is not peaceful protest.  It’s against the law.  And we are not a lawless country.  We’re a civil society.  We uphold the rule of law.  

And no one should have to hide or be brave just to be themselves.  (Applause.)

To the Jewish community, I want you to know I see your fear, your hurt, and your pain.  

Let me reassure you, as your President, you are not alone.  You belong.  You always have, and you always will.  

And my commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad, even when we disagree.  (Applause.)

My administration is working around the clock to free remaining hostages, just as we have freed hostages already, and we will not rest until we bring them all home.  (Applause.) 

My administration, with our Second Gentleman’s leadership, has launched our nation’s first National Sec- — Strategy to Counter Antisemitism that’s mobilizing the full force of the federal government to protect Jewish communities.

But — but we know this is not the work of government alone or Jews alone.  That’s why I’m calling on all Americans to stand united against antisemitism and hate in all its forms.  

My dear friend, and he became a friend, the late Elie Wiesel, said, quote, “One person of integrity can make a difference.”  We have to remember that now more than ever.   

Here in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol, among the towering statues of history, is a bronze bust of Raoul Wallenberg.  Born in Sweden as a Lutheran, he was a businessman and a diplomat.  While stationed in Hungary during World War Two, he used diplomatic cover to hide and rescue about 100,000 Jews over a six-month period.  

Among them was a 16-year-old Jewish boy who escaped a Nazi labor camp.  After the war ended, that boy received a scholarship from the Hillel Foundation to study in America.  He came to New York City penniless but determined to turn his pain into purpose, along with his wife, also a Holocaust survivor.  He became a renowned economist and foreign policy thinker, eventually making his way to this very Capitol on the staff of a first-term senator.  

That Jewish refugee was Tom Lantos, and that senator was me.  

Tom and his wife, Annette, and their family became dear friends to me and my family.  Tom would go on to become the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to Congress, where he became a leading voice on civil rights and human rights around the world.  

Tom never met Raoul, who was taken prisoner by the Soviets, never to be heard from again.  But through Tom’s efforts, Raoul’s bust is here in the Capitol.  

He was also given honorary U.S. citizenship — only the second person ever, after Winston Churchill.  

And the Holocaust Museum here in Washington is located on a roal- — a road in Raoul’s name.  

The story of the power of a single person to put aside our differences, to see our common humanity, to stand up to hate.  And it’s an ancient story of resilience from immense pain, persecution to find hope, purpose, and meaning in life we try to live and share with one another.  That story endures.

Let me close with this.  I know these Days of Remembrance fall on difficult times.  But we all do well to remember these days also fall during the month we celebrate Jewish American heritage — a heritage that stretches from our earliest days to enrich every single part of American life today.  

Great American — great Jewish American named Tom Lantos used the phrase, “The veneer of civilization is paper thin.  We are its guardians, and we can never rest.”

My fellow Americans, we must — we must be those guardians.  We must never rest.  We must rise against hate, meet across the divide, see our common humanity.  

And God bless the victims and survivors of the Shoah.  

May the resilient hearts, the courageous spirit, and the eternal flame of faith of the Jewish people forever shine their light on America and around the world, pray God.

Thank you all.  (Applause.)

12:06 P.M. EDT

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• Speech on Human Rights Day

Speech on Human Rights Day for Students

Every human being is deserving of the right to live in a safe place and earn a living. Even then in today’s global climate, many people are threatened to be robbed of their homes and basic rights. And in this pursuit, to inflict pain through various means one never feels safe. And for the very reason of injustices like this Human Rights Day is observed to allow these people the power to seek opportunities they are deserving of without feeling threatened. Human Rights Day speech can be given in different ways. This article entails a Long Speech on Human Rights Day and a Short Human Rights Day Speech.

Long Human Rights Day Speech

This format of a long 5-minute speech can be useful for students in grades 8-12 as they can discuss in detail the importance of this day and convey the message.

Good Morning, everyone, I am here to speak on a very crucial topic that is gaining even more attention today than ever before Human Rights and Human Rights Day. 73 years ago in 1948 on December 10th UN (United Nations), General Assembly adopted the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights). The proper implementation was not until they passed the official invitation to all the States and interested organisations after the approval of the Assembly in 1950. Since then, this day is annually commemorated for the celebration of Human Rights.

Today the world that we live in is divided by so many opinions and discriminations against gender, race, caste, and religion. The ones who are at the brunt of the receiving end of this harshness are the innocent children. Every child and human being deserves equal treatment in any room they enter regardless of their ethnicity and colour or gender.

Since we don’t live in an ideal world, the human rights of these discriminated people are under threat and they are only struggling and in doing so many have lost their lives as well. So to safeguard their interests and review the complaints of Human Rights Violation, the NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) is a body in India. It functions with similar objectives and aims to accomplish these missions like institutions for Human Rights in the world. It is a recommendatory body of constitution formed with the conformity of Principles of Paris. It acts according to the guidelines passed by the Government for the PHRA (Protection of Human Rights Act).

The main objective is to end human rights violations where some people are deprived of basic requirements like food, shelter, education, hygiene, and a safe place to grow and create opportunities for growth. This is a step in the direction to maintain peace and sanity in this ever-growing greedy and violent world. And it takes part in the Global Event wherein people celebrate the goodness in differences of the human beings and people who make an effort and an extra step to fight for this right also get awarded. It is a 5-yearly tradition that they award the United Nations Peace Prize in the Field of Human Rights and the Nobel Peace Prize. One such brave recipient of this award is Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who stood up against the Taliban who were depriving young children, especially girls of education. And during her fight, she managed to survive a gunshot and is still taking over the world and raising funds for educating girls.

Her efforts and achievements are truly noteworthy and deserving of all the praises and awards. Whenever we encounter any such violation of human rights in our lives, let’s be inspired enough to take a step to end this and celebrate the rights to be in peace and harmony.

Short Speech on Human Rights Day

This form of a Short Human Rights Day Speech is helpful for students in grades 4-7 to convey the importance of this day in brief.

Good morning everyone, I Abc (mention your name) feel honoured to be here today and talk about Human Rights Day. We are very fortunate to have a home, a roof over our heads, food, and are able to come to school safely. These are basic human rights and every being is deserving of this. But in so many places around the world people are robbed of their right to shelter, food, and even education, the most concerning being the safety of girls.

The United Nations is a body that has taken the responsibility to safeguard the rights of the victims of this violation on 10th December 1948, 73 years ago the UN General Assembly approved Article 423 (V) and declared the celebration of Human Rights Day. It was in 1950 that the invitation was officially extended to other States and organisations whose values and aims matched the objectives of UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

Bringing harmony and peace into the world by observing and trying to eliminate the problems and complaints received from people who are facing the brutalities of violation of Human Rights. This day is celebrated worldwide to commemorate the proclamation made by the UN in 1948 on December 10.

The Indian Government confers the Protection of Human Rights Act (PHRA) and under the conformity of Principles of Paris, NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) is formed.

It’s important to be aware of the state in our country and take a step to fight against what’s wrong so human rights are intact and served right for the purpose.

10 Line Speech on Human Rights Day

This is a 2-minute Speech on Human Rights helpful to convey the idea and meaning to students in grades 1-3.

Human Rights Day is observed and celebrated on 10th December every year worldwide.

It is on this day in the year 1948, the United Nations acknowledged and proclaimed in their General Assembly to observe the celebration of human rights.

Other states and interested organisations who also work for safeguarding human rights and ending the violations were extended the invitations.

And the work actively started in the year 1950.

The Indian body that works extensively in this regard with the United Nations is  NHRC (National Human Rights Commission).

It was formed following the Principles of Paris.

NHRC also abides by the ideologies of the Protection of Human Rights Act (PHRA) stated by the Government of India.

The primary objective is to keep safe from discrimination with regards to any type of differences like race, religion, caste, and creed.

The rights are basic and universal like the right to life, free from discrimination, torture, slavery, and degrading treatment.

Any type of violation is a harm and threat to humankind and each step taken in the direction to protect these rights is in the interest of peace which is the need of the hour.

FAQs on Speech on Human Rights Day

1. What is the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”?

The “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” is an international document adopted by the UN assembly on the date of December 10, 1948, as Resolution 217 during its third session. The document entails the basic rights and freedoms of all human beings. At that time, from the 58 members present at the United Nations at the time, 48 voted in favour, none voted against it, eight abstained, and two did not vote. The declaration consists of a complete 30 articles explaining in detail the "basic rights and fundamental freedoms" of human beings.

2. What are the basic human rights provided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? 

There are a total of 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which included the "basic rights and fundamental freedoms" of a human being. A simplified version of these rights, which are included in these 30 articles are given below: 

All human beings are born Free and Equal, everyone has the right to be treated in the same way.

Don’t discriminate against any human beings, whatever our differences.

Everybody has the right to live in freedom and safety.

Having or making slaves is not accepted.

Nobody has the right to hurt or torture anybody.

All the rights written in the declaration should be respected everywhere.

Everybody should be treated equally before the law.

Nobody can put a person in jail or detain him/her without any good reason. Neither one can send the person away from his/her country.

You should be able to ask the law and law agencies to help if any of your human rights are threatened.

The person under trial has the right to have a free and fair public trial. The judges of the trial should not tell anyone what to do or not.

Everyone should respect this statement “Proven till guilty”. A person under trial is not a criminal until he/she is proven to be guilty of a wrong deed.

Everyone has their right to privacy, one can’t interfere with the other person’s privacy, nobody can bother you or your family without good reason.

A person can live wherever he/she wants to in their country and travel to wherever they want to.

If a person’s country can’t provide a safe place to live, then the person can seek asylum in other countries.

We also have the right to belong to a country and have a Nationality.

3. When is Human Rights Day celebrated?

Human Rights Day is celebrated on the occasion of the adoption of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” by the UN assembly as Resolution 217 during its third session on the date of December 10, 1948. This “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” entails the fundamental rights of human beings who live on the planet. This document “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” is translated into more than 500 languages, hence holding the Guinness World Record for the most translated document throughout the world.

4. Why is 10th December celebrated as Human Rights Day?

Human Rights Day is celebrated on 10 December annually across the world to celebrate the adoption of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” by the UN assembly as Resolution 217. 48 out of 58 countries that were present at the United Nations, voted in favour of this document named “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.

It is celebrated in order to acknowledge this “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” as to acknowledge the rights that are provided to every human being living on mother earth. To discuss the issues which harm these basic rights of human beings in any or sense anywhere around the globe.

5. What is the theme for Human Rights Day 2021 and 2020?

The theme of Human Rights Day 2021 was “equality”. As in today's world, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. The Human Rights Day of 2021, is to discuss how to deal with inequality.

In the year 2020, the theme of Human Rights Day was "Recover Better - Stand Up for Human Rights". The year 2020 was the year of COVID-19 and hence, the Human Rights Day theme was how to recover from the pandemic.

Speech on Human Rights in simple and easy words

Table of Contents

Speech on Human Rights: The concept of Human Rights holds great significance in our lives, especially in today’s time when the exploitation of human beings is increasing day by day. The exploitation has been reported more than ever. To understand the basic rights of a human, it becomes necessary for the teachers to let students get themselves abreast of them. So here we give you both short speeches on Human Rights as well as long speeches on human rights to learn about human rights and the various categories under it. The content that we provide is comprehensive and can help students to learn all about basic rights to live life with dignity. We can confidently say that our content of the speeches on Human Rights are relevant to the topics and are a good reference point for all the learners.

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Long and Short Speech on Human Rights­­­­­­­

Speech on human rights­­­­­­­ – 1.

Hon’ble Principal, Vice Principal, My Fell­­­­­­ow Colleagues and Dear Students – Good Morning to everyone present here!­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

I would like to utilize this opportunity to share my views on human rights and their relevance in today’s world.

All people on Earth have these rights, which work for everyone, no matter who they are or where they’re from, and they exist to safeguard against harm and violations.

Let us first understand what exactly Human rights entail. Broadly speaking, human rights are such rights which each individual becomes entitled to by virtue of his birth and nationality. These rights are considered to be indispensable for any human being irrespective of his/her nationality, race, religion, language, etc. Different countries have their own set of legislatively backed human rights which its citizens are entitled to but the basic theme across is the same – to provide each of its citizens equal rights and not to discriminate among them.

The concept of Human rights has been constantly evolving over the period of time. There have been some basic tenets in the way human societies functioned which recognized the importance of giving each individual access to certain rights. The society recognizes these rights of the individual and respects them.

The earliest civilizations tried codifying the rights as part of the law. Hammurabi’s law was one of the first recorded mentions of the rights of individuals. However, these rights across the societies varied for different individuals. Although the basic concept has been that all citizens are equal, the definition of citizens vastly varied and there were many people who would fall beyond the gambit of citizens and hence do not have a statutory backing to their human rights. Over the period of time, the efforts of various social reformers and activists across different time periods have been to bring in more people into this concept of being citizens.

The international law and theories which started taking shape around 19 th century have attempted towards defining the human rights which are rights each individual is entitled to irrespective of the race, religion or culture. The qualification of being an individual defined here is in larger sense unlike the definition of citizens in the earlier societies. The efforts towards abolishing slavery, fights for equal rights to women, universal adult franchise are few of the efforts that ensured the discrimination of whom to be recognized as being eligible to have rights have been reduced and every individual by virtue of being born as human being is entitled to human rights.

In today’s world, most of the countries recognize human rights and make it a part of their constitutional provisions. The countries which have not yet recognized the basic equality of all its citizens are trying to bring in changes in and provide safeguards for all the citizens to be enfranchised of the rights. These countries face the challenge of deep rooted stigma and discrimination carried down from many centuries. Implementing and practicing at the ground level still remains a problem. Individuals and in many cases large groups of individuals are denied their basic human rights. The main reason for it is the lack of awareness of what they are entitled to.

Human rights are universal and everyone needs to be educated on these and understand that no matter where they are born and who they are, by virtue of being born as humans some rights automatically become a part and parcel of their life in a social set up.

Speech on Human Rights­­­­­­­ – 2

Good Morning Everyone!

Today, please allow me to utilize this opportunity and talk on a very important topic on which each one of us should have a fair knowledge and that is Speech Human rights!

Human rights belong to everyone, no matter who they are. These rights cover life, freedom, and more, for all people, regardless of differences

The concept of Human rights as how we define now is of a recent origin in context of the long Human history. Modern thinkers and commentators attribute human rights to be a product of the French revolution in the 18 th century where the values of liberty, equality and fraternity stood as the central theme for the whole struggle. However the human yearning for basic rights of all the individuals has been a fundamental aspect all through the course of human history. It is this understanding of the basic nature of human rights that we all need to be able to comprehend and realize its meaning, purpose and of course importance in the present times.

The various revolutions and movements which took place in the modern history like French Revolution, American Revolution, the various freedom movements against colonialist rule, anti-slavery movement, women rights movements, etc all have a common theme running through them. It is to recognize the basic right of each individual to lead a life of equality and freedom. These movements helped shape the modern concept of Human rights. There have been many charters, declarations, statements etc which have been drafted and implemented by various authorities around the world to put into effect Human rights to each of its citizens.

United Nations Organization (UNO) has recognized the importance of Human rights by declaring December 10 th as World Human Rights day. This has been adopted since the year 1948. The rights can be included as part of the Human rights varies from each country to country. Modern states across the world have given prominence to this concept of Human rights by providing the citizens with rights which are backed up by the constitution and legislation. India, through its constitution provides its citizens set of fundamental rights. All the citizens in India have equal right to enjoy these fundamental rights and have a right to appeal when any of these fundamental rights are violated. Some Human rights like “Right to live” have a global acceptance and can be exercised in any country within the legal statuettes.

The main idea which I intend to communicate is the need for each one of us to understand the importance of Human rights. The need has a duality to it. The first reason we need to understand about Human rights is for self. As citizens of a nation, it is of primary importance that we have an understanding of the rights that we are entitled to. This would help us to exercise the rights and fight against any exploitation. This understanding helps to serve a larger purpose as well. It is to recognize the rights of other citizens or in a larger context the rights of other human beings and ensure that we do not infringe on them.

This understanding to fight for self and value others claim form the basis for practicing human rights in its true sense.

Speech on Human Rights – 3

Dear Friends – Warm Greetings to all of you! I hope this day finds you in the best of spirit.

Today, I am going to address a very crucial aspect of human life, i.e. Speech on Human Rights. Human rights are defined as those set of rights which are fundamental to human existence. Since they have a universal appeal, people from all over the world are entitled to it. Thus, these rights other than having a universal and fundamental dimension carry a global appeal as well. These rights enable a man to live under no fear or threat. Universalization of human rights without any discrimination is a mark of civilized society. These rights are framed while keeping in mind fundamental human demands and needs. Thus, human rights have found its place in the constitution of every nation.

And, it is the responsibility of very nation to secure human rights for its citizens and give them the liberty to perform actions within their interest, which cause no threat to the integrity of others. As these rights carry a universal appeal, human rights and problems associated with them have become a cause of global concern. In fact, the UN has adopted Human Rights Charter and has asked various governments to not only give them a due place in their constitutional body, but also ensure their enforcement. It was on the 10 th of December in the year 1948 that UN came up with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the contemporary times, a growing concern has been observed towards safeguarding human rights.

The issues related with human rights differ from society to society whereas the entitlement of social, economic, civil as well as political rights of the people differ from one nation to the other as per the laws governing those rights of the people belonging to a specific country. For instance, the UN has taken much interest in doing way with the discrimination caused against women. Other than that, racial discrimination also forms a major cause of concern under human rights violation. Despite the fact that Black people are a majority in South Africa, they do not enjoy political or social rights as much as white people do, who continue to dominate black people. Nevertheless, this practice of racism has been abolished by the UN and a resolution too has been passed in this regard.

Therefore, it becomes the utmost duty of every nation to form such laws and create such conditions where human rights of the citizens can be protected. Our country, India, has a democratic set up where its citizens are entitled to enjoy basic human rights, in addition to the freedom of expression. These rights are defined as Fundamental Rights, which needless to say form a significant part of the Indian Constitution.

Our Indian Constitution assures six fundamental rights, which are:

• Right to Freedom
• Right to Equality
• Right to choose Religion
• Right against Exploitation
• Right to Constitutional Remedies
• Cultural and Educational Rights

These human rights are founded on the doctrine of human solidarity, support, growth and access of everyone to the common legacy of humankind.

Speech on Human Rights – 4

Hon’ble Principal, Vice Principal, Teachers and My Dear Students – Good Morning to one and all!

I, Priyanka Vashisht from Standard-IX (C), wish to deliver a speech on Human Rights. As Social Science is my favorite subject the best topic that I could think of for this speech ceremony is Human Rights and more so because it’s a vital part of human existence. Why vital because we do not live in isolation, but in a democratic set up where everyone has certain roles and responsibilities to deliver. Besides, each one of us is also entitled to certain rights so that we can enjoy our status as human beings.

In a civilized society, rights play an extremely critical role in the overall growth of human personality. The individual rights are referred to as conditions under which an individual is able to attain his goals or ideals by enjoying the privileges that come with a minimum set of rights. If I were to define human rights, I would define it in the words of Harold Joseph Laski, who said “Rights, in fact, are those conditions of social life without which no man can seek, in general, to be himself at his best”. To put it in simpler terms, rights are the fundamental necessities for a man to lead a good life, which are acknowledged under the state’s legal code.

Human rights are universal in nature having a legal and moral framework, which aim towards safeguarding the interest of the people from rigorous legal, political and social abuses. Following are the human rights examples:

• Freedom of Movement
• Right to Expression
• Right to Freedom of Religion
• Right to associate with a Political Party
• Right to a Fair Trial when accused of a crime
• Right not to be Tortured

In addition, there are certain social and economic rights as well. Let’s take a look:

• Right to Education
• Right to Work
• Right to have a good living standard
• Right to have an equal pay for equal work
• Right to leisure and rest

These rights have moral grounds and have found a place in law at both national as well as international levels. They are primarily addressed to the governments for their observance and enforcement. The chief source of the modern-day thought behind human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948). The human rights philosophy attends to such questions as the existence, nature, content, universality and validation of human rights.

However, despite these clearly formulated set of human rights, multiple cases of human rights breach at different places of this world have been observed. I firmly believe that in such a situation an everlasting state of prosperity cannot prevail in a nation where its natives cannot enjoy human rights which are so integral to their existence.

Now, I would request my other fellow students to join me on stage and say a few words in this regard. Thank You!

Check out some Trending Speech Topics for Students and Kids

Speech on Human Rights FAQs

How do you start a speech about human rights.

Begin with a strong statement or a touching story related to human rights to grab your audience's attention.

What is the best human rights speech?

The best human rights speech is one that is passionate, well-researched, and inspires people to take action for justice and equality.

What are the 7 main human rights?

The 7 main human rights include life, liberty, equality, dignity, justice, education, and freedom of expression.

What are human rights speeches?

Human rights speeches are talks or presentations that address issues related to basic freedoms and fairness in society.

The best human rights speech is one that touches hearts, educates, and motivates positive change.

You can start a human rights speech with a compelling story, a shocking fact, or a thought-provoking question to engage your audience.

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UN expert attacks ‘exploitative’ world economy in fight to save planet

Outgoing special rapporteur David Boyd says ‘there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand how grave this is’

The race to save the planet is being impeded by a global economy that is contingent on the exploitation of people and nature, according to the UN’s outgoing leading environment and human rights expert.

David Boyd, who served as UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment from 2018 to April 2024, told the Guardian that states failing to take meaningful climate action and regulating polluting industries could soon face a slew of lawsuits.

Boyd said: “I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes. But this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature. And unless we change that fundamental system, then we’re just re-shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.”

The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment was finally recognised as a fundamental human right by the United Nations in 2021-22. Some countries, notably the US, the world’s worst historic polluter, argue that UN resolutions are legally influential but not binding. The right to a healthy environment is also enshrined into law by 161 countries with the UK, US and Russia among notable exceptions.

Boyd, a Canadian environmental law professor, said: “Human rights come with legally enforceable obligations on the side of states, so I believe that this absolutely should be a game-changer – and that’s why states have resisted it for so long.

“By bringing human rights into the equation, we now have institutions, processes and courts that can say to governments this isn’t an option for you to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions and phase out fossil fuels. These are obligations which include regulating businesses, to make sure that businesses respect the climate, the environment and human rights.

Over the course of his six-year mandate, Boyd met thousands of people directly affected by rising sea levels, extreme heat, plastic waste, toxic air, and dwindling food and water supplies, while undertaking fact-finding missions to Fiji, Norway, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Portugal, Slovenia, Chile, Botswana and Maldives.

“I’ve met so many people along the way in really difficult situations that I wake up in the night and see their faces,” he said.

Boyd’s final mission was to the Maldives in April, the lowest lying country on the planet, where he witnessed numerous atolls submerged under water. He said: “These islands are just like jewels scattered across the Indian Ocean, and yet for anyone who understands the science of climate change, it’s just a heartbreaking place to visit because of sea level rise, storm surges, coastal erosion, acidification, rising ocean temperatures and heatwaves.

“The future is really daunting for people in the Maldives … the climate emergency is an existential threat that overshadows all the other issues.”

Scientists have warned that about 80% of the archipelago could be uninhabitable by 2050, and totally submerged underwater by the end of the century. But the Maldives, like many other countries, also has a major plastics problem, as the fossil fuel and chemical industries continue to flood the global market with single-use packaging. About 300 tons of trash are dumped each day on Thilafushi, an island created as landfill. Still, the Maldives, like many other climate vulnerable states, depend on fossil fuels – mostly diesel powered power plants – for energy.

Boyd said: “Powerful interconnected business and political elites – the diesel mafia – are still becoming wealthy from the existing system. Dislodging this requires a huge grassroots movement using tools like human rights and public protest and every other tool in the arsenal of change-makers.”

On his first trip as special rapporteur to Fiji, Boyd met with community members from Vunidogoloa, a coastal village left uninhabitable by rising sea water, who were forced to relocate to higher ground. Last year in Botswana, he met with Indigenous people from the Kalahari desert no longer able to handle the worsening heat and water scarcity.

He said: “I think there’s millions of invisible climate migrants today, and unless we get a handle on this problem and do so quickly, that’s going to look like a trickle before the flood.”

Over the past 30 years, the world has pinned its hopes on international treaties - particularly the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris accords – to curtail global heating. Yet they do not include mechanisms for holding states accountable to their commitments, and despite some progress, greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to rise and climate breakdown is accelerating.

Last year, fossil fuel subsidies hit $7tn – a rise of $2tn since the Cop 26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, when governments agreed to phase out “inefficient” fossil-fuel subsidies to help fight global heating.

Boyd said: “The failure to take a human rights based approach to the climate crisis – and the biodiversity crisis and the air pollution crisis – has absolutely been the achilles heel of those efforts for decades.

“I expect in the next three or four years, we will see court cases being brought challenging fossil fuel subsidies in some petro-states … These countries have said time and time again at the G7, at the G20, that they’re phasing out fossil-fuel subsidies. It’s time to hold them to their commitment. And I believe that human rights law is the vehicle that can do that.

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“In a world beset by a climate emergency, fossil-fuel subsidies violate states’ fundamental, legally binding human rights obligations.”

It’s not just taxpayer subsidies propping up polluting industries and delaying climate action. The same multinationals are involved in negotiating – or at least influencing – climate policy, with a record number of fossil-fuel lobbyists given access to the UN Cop28 climate talks last year.

Boyd said: “There’s no place in the climate negotiations for fossil-fuel companies. There is no place in the plastic negotiations for plastic manufacturers. It just absolutely boggles my mind that anybody thinks they have a legitimate seat at the table.

“It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same. The plastics industry has done the same. The pesticide industry has done the same.”

In his final interview before handing over the special rapporteur mandate, Boyd said he struggles to makes sense of the world’s collective indifference to the suffering being caused by preventable environmental harms.

Boyd said he vividly recalls meeting Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, whose nine-year-old daughter Ella died after an asthma attack in London in 2013 – and later became the first person in the world to have air pollution cited as a cause of death. An estimated 7 million people worldwide die prematurely from air pollution each year.

“I’ll never forget Rosamund, just the sheer suffering she endured with the loss of her beautiful daughter … over 40 million people have died of air pollution since I became special rapporteur in 2018, yet I just can’t get people to care.

“I can’t get people to bat an eyelash. It’s like there’s something wrong with our brains that we can’t understand just how grave this situation is.”

“I think the right to a healthy environment is actually the foundation that we require to enjoy all other human rights. If we don’t have a living, healthy planet Earth, then all the other rights are just words on paper.”

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2 trending: joe biden is selling out israel to the antisemitic mob, 3 trending: did federal agencies plant classified documents to frame trump, 4 trending: apple’s ipad ad boasts of replacing the real with the fake, meta relies on ‘human rights norms’ to censor protected speech, board member admits.

A Meta Oversight Board member dismisses ‘First Amendment jurisprudence,’ even as the FBI restarts its social media censorship machine.

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A member of the Meta Oversight Board said in a recent livestream that Meta places “international human rights norms” above the First Amendment when it considers free speech issues. This admission is especially concerning considering a recent revelation that the FBI and CISA have renewed collaboration with social media companies to censor posts they label “disinformation.”

“As Meta became more global, it realized what an outlier the United States was, and could not simply default back to U.S. First Amendment jurisprudence,” said Kenji Yoshino, a member of the Meta Oversight Board, an independent entity that advises the platform. “Our baseline here is not the U.S. Constitution and free speech, but rather international human rights norms.”

Meta’s Censorship in Theory

Yoshino, a board member for the left-wing William J. Brennan Center for Justice, made this comment in a livestream with fellow Meta Oversight Board member and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Michael McConnell. The National Constitution Center hosted the online panel on April 29, and its CEO Jeffrey Rosen moderated the discussion about ways Meta shapes content during elections.

Meta originally sought to follow the First Amendment, Yoshino said. But as Meta expanded across the world, he noted, it shifted its content policies beyond the First Amendment.

McConnell disagreed with Yoshino’s reasoning and said the more important distinction is the First Amendment’s application to private entities. But he admitted he agrees with Meta’s ability to censor content. “Even within the United States, private companies are free to not convey speech that they disagree with over their platforms,” he said.

Meta has always prohibited some content like obscenity from the very beginning, according to McConnell. The Wall Street Journal, however, reported last year that Meta-owned Instagram connected vast networks of pedophiles, and its algorithms promoted child sexual content.

Meta’s censorship does not always originate from the company. Sometimes, the American government pressures Meta to shape content.

“We’re talking about governments all over the world — but the United States government is not immune either. But there are times when they are using — misusing — their power over the companies to avert criticism,” McConnell said.

Meta’s Censorship in Practice

The House Judiciary Committee released a report on May 1 that detailed the role of social media, including Meta, in censoring Americans for the administration of President Joe Biden. Meta worked with White House officials to censor conservatives concerned about the Covid-19 vaccine, including Tucker Carlson, Tomi Lahren, and The Daily Wire.

Facebook told Biden officials in a 2021 meeting that the company was “actively pushing to remove” the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of Covid-policy critics like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published by the left-wing Center for Countering Digital Hate — the overseas dark-money group that tried to demonetize The Federalist in 2020.

But apparently that was not enough for former White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty. “Some partners give us lots of information, some partners tell us to f-ck right off,” he said. “My dream is for FB to play ball.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned this government pressure in emails on July 16, 2021. “The WH put pressure on us to censor the lab leak theory,” Zuckerberg wrote.

Last July, Republican House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan wrote Zuckerberg with concerns the government was using Meta to silence political opponents. The House Judiciary Committee first subpoenaed Meta about this last February.

“We have obtained evidence that the federal government has coerced or colluded with technology, social media, and other companies to moderate content online,” Jordan wrote . “These examples reinforce the Committee’s serious concerns about whether the Executive Branch is engaging in censorship by proxy — using surrogates to censor, suppress, or discourage speech in a manner that the government is unable to do itself.”

The Intercept reported in 2022 that Meta was working with the Department of Homeland Security to target “disinformation” and had launched a portal — still online — where federal officials could report content for censorship.

Meddling in Elections

“We’re coming together today for the elections priority, and under that bucket, we have a weather eye out for a number of issues,” Yoshino said. “But predominant among those are things like misinformation during elections, the suppression of dissident political voices would be another big one, and finally, violence and incitement.”

Meta should know about suppressing dissident political voices, considering its online censorship policies and election interference.

Flaherty emailed Facebook officials in 2021 demanding more censorship of individuals opposing Biden’s Covid measures, according to the House Judiciary report . He accused Facebook of helping “increase skepticism” in the 2020 election and demanded “assurances … that you are not doing the same thing again here.”

Facebook officials said they understood, the report said.

Meta currently has more than 40,000 people working on election “safety and security” worldwide, according to its website . Meta removes all content it thinks will “directly contribute to interference with the functioning of political processes,” the company’s website reads.

Moreover, Zuckerberg funneled $350 million to election offices through the left-wing Center for Tech and Civic Life in 2020, boosting turnout in Democrat jurisdictions. Groups with close ties to CTCL accessed absentee ballots in places like Wisconsin.

At the same time, Meta worked with the federal government to silence “disinformation,” censoring ads for former President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and removing a video where he called children “almost immune” from Covid-19 — though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later found children were at far lower risk from the virus than others.

When the New York Post published the Hunter Biden laptop story on Oct. 14, 2020 — revealing Joe Biden’s involvement in Hunter’s shady business dealings just before the general election — the FBI told social media companies to censor it as a “hack and leak” operation, even though it knew the story was true all along.

Meta’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story at the FBI’s request likely shifted the outcome of the 2020 election, as 79 percent of Americans thought in 2022, according to a Tipp Insights poll .

Meta Oversight Board Member Pamela San Martín said in January that Meta plans to go beyond its 2020 election interference. “Even though we’re addressing the problems that arose in prior elections as a starting point,” she said at the time, “it is not enough.”

Foreign Pressure to Censor Opponents

America’s government joins with that of China, which also pressured Meta to remove content critical of the regime, according to McConnell.

“There are governments — China is one of them — that put tremendous effort into getting criticism of the government eliminated from world discussion,” McConnell said. “And they bring pressure in various ways, and we try to be alert to that and be a guard against it.”

Meta, however, has been colluding with Vietnam’s communist government to stifle opposition, according to The Washington Post.

Still, the European Union — like China — thinks Meta is not going far enough. It launched an investigation on April 30 into Meta’s handling of so-called “disinformation” ahead of European Parliament elections.

The European Commission said it suspects Meta of not complying with the body’s “Digital Services Act,” which made “misinformation” and “disinformation” illegal last year. Meta had pledged in February to counter these in European elections.

Yoshino said Meta has been trying to “balance out these different values” in areas like elections. “If the baseline is international human rights norms,” Yoshino said, “oftentimes that calculus comes out differently than it would if the baseline were U.S. First Amendment norms.”

So much for free speech and the First Amendment.

• Center for Countering Digital Hate
• First Amendment
• Hunter Biden laptop
• Kenji Yoshino
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Meta Oversight Board
• Michael McConnell
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
• Tucker Carlson

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We need debate on sensible limits on free speech.

When president Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the 1941 State of the Union address he spoke of four essential human freedoms people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy. The very first of these was freedom of speech and expression.

Free speech was listed first because it is the bedrock of democracy. Salman Rushdie famously described it as “the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself”.

But it is not absolute. Exercising the right to free speech carries with it special duties and responsibilities. Determining precisely where that line should be drawn is an issue about which reasonable people can, and do, disagree.

The current legal dispute between the eSafety Commissioner and X Corp brings these issues into sharp focus.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has issued a removal notice requiring X Corp to take all reasonable steps to ensure the removal of the video showing the violent stabbing attack against Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel while he was giving a sermon in his church in western Sydney two weeks ago.

The Federal Court has granted an interim injunction that requires the video to be removed until a further court hearing on May 10.

The material in question here is a video showing a violent attack that has led to a 16-year-old being charged with committing a terrorist act. Australian law rightly restricts online content that shows or encourages terrorism, other forms of extreme violence, or child sexual abuse. Even X Corp itself has previously acknowledged this is the right approach. After the live-streaming of the horrific Christchurch mosque terrorist shootings in 2019, New Zealand and France brought together world leaders and CEOs of tech companies to adopt the Christchurch Call – a commitment to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.

X Corp (then Twitter) signed the Christchurch Call in 2019 and still remains a listed supporter, with the French President announcing in December 2022 that Elon Musk had confirmed to him personally that X Corp’s participation in the Christchurch Call would not be affected by its change in ownership.

It isn’t enough for tech companies to make public promises about removing terrorist and violent extremist content online. They need to translate those promises into action – and be held accountable if they fail to do so. Global tech companies also need to understand they are not above the law. Australia has the sovereign right to apply its own laws within its own borders. If companies are not willing to respect the rule of law in Australia, they should not be allowed to do business in this country.

What remains a question for the Federal Court next month is how these obligations in Australia apply in other countries. All countries should be cautious before attempting to legislate extraterritorially, especially around issues of free speech where different countries have different approaches. What is viewed as freedom of expression in one country may not be viewed as such in another, with censorship laws being vastly different across the world.

We should always be careful when considering the remit of Australian laws overseas and the broader impact on free speech, but this does not mean we should remove online safety laws altogether. The work the eSafety Commissioner is doing to remove online child sexual abuse material, protect kids from cyber bullying, and take action against revenge porn is critical.

Australia was the first country to introduce an eSafety Commissioner and we should be proud of our global leadership in this space. Calls to abolish the eSafety Commissioner are shortsighted and will not only increase online risks for Australians but will leave the tech companies to operate in Australia with little or no accountability.

The limits on free speech should be few and far between. Recent events have shown the need for a sensible conversation about where (and how) those limits should be drawn in online spaces in Australia.

Lorraine Finlay is Human Rights Commissioner.

Lorraine Finlay, Australian Human Rights Commissioner

Tunisia detains a prominent activist for migrants' rights

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Israel orders residents from more east Rafah areas to evacuate

Israel on Saturday called on residents from more areas of Rafah in the Gaza Strip to evacuate and head to the "expanded humanitarian area" in Al-Mawasi, according to a post on social media site X by the military's Arabic spokesperson.