Human Rights and Social Welfare

I have been away from my blog for a while but I realize that being a voice for others does not stop with this blog. It doesn't stop when I'm a student nor does it stop when I am in South Africa at a conference. As a student in Social Welfare, I realize it should not stop at all. I am inspired and stirred when I hear certain people speak, and in conferences like the one I am at, I see the atrocities humanity has committed in the name of self-interest, pride, policy, and economics. I see ideologies that have held people captive and have downtrodden the powerless. I see language and policies that have re-colonized those that we thought were now "free" from colonization. And to this topic, I can only be humbled that I was able to present my paper on some of that "language" and ideology at this conference - the 34th Biennial Congress of the International Association of Schools of Social Work.

I realize how human rights is such an integral part of social work and social welfare, but more than that - it should be a part of our general society and world view. However, though that should be the case, in actuality it is so little. So I am re-assessing, re-assessing how I want to spend the rest of my school years beyond what I do. Studies are important, but it is also important to be involved, to speak out, to pursue things, and to care about those who are weak, who do not have a voice, who are oppressed, who are taken advantage of. As a student of social welfare, do I really want to spend my time behind my books and theorizing in my classes or do I want to combine that with an actual carrying out of those principles and values my discipline have? I think I choose the latter because then I would be a true student of social welfare - believing in social justice and social action and carrying out those beliefs in a world that I'm such a part of.

And to my readers - whoever you may be; human rights is not just left to lawyers (and now to social workers/social welfare people) but it is something that everyone in every profession should take up. Everyone can play a part in human rights no matter their profession or their position. To me I have noticed while spending some days here in South Africa, the most basic part of human rights that we can carry out on a day-to-day basis is treating those whom society has deemed to be at a "lower" status than us with dignity and grace. I am not perfect nor are those around me, but I have seen how it can become ingrained in us -- our manner of dignity and grace towards others or the lack thereof; and I am conscious - conscious of my mistakes, my failures to do so, and my promises to do better. Won't you join me too in this human rights movement of a smaller scale, and be a voice?

Freedom to Vote

What does it mean to be free to vote? In the U.S. as presidential elections draw near, not only are there 2 party candidates, but there are also slots on the ballot where you can write in the candidate of your choice should you feel that neither of the 2 candidates are your choice for the president. But in the elections that took place in Zimbabwe, there was only 1 candidate - this after an election whose results were controversial, hidden, and ultimately disregarded. Not only that but violent incidents occurred related to the support of the current government's opposition. A country cannot be expected to rise if its people are restricted.

Amnesty International reports on the related Human Rights concerns in Zimbabwe; click here to see their report.

More from other sites:

CNN, BBC, and Human Rights Watch.

To Add to the Tragedy in China....

As if the tragedy we have seen in the news in the wake of the earthquake in China is not enough, Human Rights Watch researcher and analyst Kay Seok writes about another group of children suffering from the loss of a parent....and a group of children whose suffering has flown below the media radar.

China shares a border with North Korea and in a city in the Jilin province, there are many children who have North Korean mothers. And yet, these children cannot even be registered and given a legal identity because their mothers are North Korean refugees. If their mothers are discovered, they will be separated from their children and repatriated. If these women return to North Korean they face a lot of persecution, as if the fact that they are separated from their children is not persecution enough. There have been more attempts to crackdown on these refugees as the Beijing Olympics draw closer....

Despite China's international obligation towards refugees, as well as their law that declares that all children regardless of their legal status are entitled to nine years of free and mandatory education, schools demand evidence that children are legally registered in the country..... So parents are unable to get any services for their children as well as basic education. If they want to, the mothers have to leave...or risk getting caught and repatriated.

For more on this injustice refer to the article written by Kay Seok here.

Tragedy in China

As China mourns its victims, so too I mourn those who lost their lives in this earthquake and its aftermath.....It is too much to speak of in words.....the pictures you have seen on the news, on the internet convey more than this blog post ever could. CNN 360's podcast had a clip of the search for survivors as they dug through the rubble of a school. I could scarcely breathe.... So this blog post ends here.....as I think of those children, those victims, those families, communities, and villages that have suffered in the wake of this disaster....

BBC's news on China's mourning....

Cyclone and Related Disasters in Myanmar

I hope that you have been watching the news and seeing what has happened, and is happening, in Myanmar even as I blog. A cyclone recently devastated the country, and as if that is not enough of a disaster in and of itself, the government has been restricting, if not refusing, international aid. While they have been allowing some sort of aid in slowly and little by little, it is not enough. To add insult to injury, there are also some aid that the government has confiscated and is handing out with attached propaganda. Not only that, but today, the military junta has pressed on with the voting for a constitutional referendum - even in the midst of this disaster recovery! It is terrible that in the midst of human suffering, politics are stopping a large part of this relief - and from within the country that suffers, rather than from without!

More stories about this situation can be found on BBC's Burma Cyclone news page here.

Call on the Burmese government to take action now in distributing humanitarian aid to the victims of Cyclone Nargis by visiting the Amnesty International Action Center here.