December is a month filled with holiday wishes, winter celebrations and gatherings with family and friends. Various traditions across the globe inspire acts of kindness and generosity at this time of year. Unfortunately, many people the world over are experiencing daily struggles to meet the most basic of human rights including food, shelter, and personal security.
December is also Human Rights Month. This year marks the 74th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as created by the United Nations Human Rights Commission. This document of 30 articles outlines the basic inalienable rights each human possesses being everywhere in the world. It was written in direct response to the atrocities suffered during the Second World War and has been translated into more than 500 languages.
This document remains as relevant to humanity today as when it was first drafted in 1948. The tenets of human rights as expressed in the UDHR continue to inspire and encourage mankind to help and take care of each other and to fiercely protect these rights for all. The full text of the 6-page document can be found here:
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
If you are unfamiliar with the UDHR, here are 2 titles you can find through the library that beautifully introduce universal human rights in picture book format:
· Every Human Has Rights: A Photographic Declaration for Kids by the United Nations which depicts the articles of the declaration through photos and poetry.
· We Are All Born Free: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pictures by Amnesty International which shows artwork to depict each article of the UDHR.
For reading materials that dive deeper into the issues surrounding human rights and the stories of refugees try these titles:
· We Are Displaced, by Malala Yousafzai, the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who depicts stories of ordinary people living through extraordinary experiences.
· The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and refugee himself, who collected the stories of other prominent refugee writers exploring what it means to leave home and find refuge in an unknown land.
For more titles, see the book list below.
In this month of joy and giving, we encourage you to think of others beyond your inner circle of family and friends and find new ways to be a helper to humanity this holiday season.
Find more information on human rights at the library:
Non-Fiction:
I am Malala by Malala Yousafzi
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations-- One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson
They Called us Enemy by George Takei
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The Newcomers: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in An American Classroom by Helen Thorpe - Traces the lives of twenty-two immigrant teens throughout the course of a year at Denver's South High School who attended a specially created English Language Acquisition class and who were helped to adapt through strategic introductions to American culture.
Night by Elie Wiesel
Fiction:
Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Visit our card catalog for more information.