December 10 - Human Rights Day
So December 10th is Human Rights Day.
I wonder what it feels like to be really hungry? I know what it feels like to be at work all day and not have time or maybe no opportunity to eat - often due simply to poor planning on my part. But, then you arrive home and regretfully eat something bad for you at midnight so that you satisfy that hunger. That is not hunger. I remember once when I was in junior high I participated in the 24 hour famine to raise money for some sort of organization. The drill was that I couldn't eat for 24 hours, however you were allowed to drink water and juice. Honestly, it wasn't terribly difficult and I don't think I was ever really that hungry. In my entire lifetime I have never experienced true hunger where I had no opportunity to have or gain access to food when needed.
I wonder what it feels like to be thirsty? Sure, I've gotten myself dehydrated before for failure to drink water when I should have, but it was never because there was nothing available to drink. Yeah, I've felt thirst but never thirst when I had no idea where I might find something safe to drink. At my house, the worst we suffer is when the water cooler bottle is empty and we forget to get it refilled and are therefore forced to drink tap water - which is perfectly safe, but just doesn't 'taste' as good as the bottled stuff. No, I have never suffered from thirst.
I wonder what it feels like to have children that you can't feed and have to watch them get so thin and lethargic that they can't even muster the strength to swat a fly off of their lips. I find it difficult to watch these children on tv without wanting to cry and I don't even know their names. I can't even begin to imagine what their parents suffer.
It is an unfair world where some people can have 15 cars in their garage and other people can't find a single sip of clean water. Whenever their are extremes in society - it is a disaster, well it is certainly a disaster for those at the poverty end. Generally, where one fits into this spectrum is simply a matter of where or to whom you were born. I wish I could save the world, but I can't. I can however post what I think and wear my campaign against poverty bracelet and encourage others to participate in the protest against the world's extremes of poverty and hope that someday the world will become a better place for everyone.
United Nations Link: http://www.un.org/events/humanrights/2006/
posted by Quodlibet at 19:38
3 Comments:
Good and thoughtful posts. Certainly it challenges me to make some different choices.
In a developing country such as India, there exists an unequal equation of the "haves" and "have nots". I don't mean to put the country down but it is shameful when the Government talks about 9% economic growth and all that blah blah blah about how we are on the road to becoming a superpower while we hear about starvation deaths in remote villages and farmer suicides. I've seen this gap widening in some other countries as well. There's not enough will power among people to help and there's no political will to do something(and there never was).
Right now I am reading another book called Race Against Time by a great Canadian named Stephen Lewis. He was a UN rep for HIV/AIDS in Africa and has endless credentials under his belt. This book is a series of lectures given about the gigantic problems that plague the continent of Africa. I love that he is very honest about what is working and what is not - even honest about the problems that the UN itself has. Very interesting stuff and also very disturbing. The world is a very troubled place.
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