THERE ARE 30 UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS, WHICH ONE DOES OUR SOCIETY NEED THE MOST, AND WHY?
Imagine a world where you can’t even see the skies for one day, imagine a life where all you do is controlled by another. Is this life or death?
From my own point of view, what our society needs the most is the human rights stipulation number one, which say, “We are all free and equal”. We are born free. We have our own thoughts and ideas. We should be treated in the same way.
This I deem most necessary and essential in the society of today because “freedom and equality”, encompasses most, if not all of the other human rights stipulations put together because freedom is encouragement, freedom is liberty, freedom is choice. And with equality, we are rest assured that the banks of, “freedom from discrimination, segregation, from torture, from slavery, from unfair and unlawful detainment, to move, to use law, and most importantly, freedom to fair treatment by fair courts, isn’t distressed yet.
In contrast to the above, if we are not free, we are slaves. And as slaves, we are in bondage and if we are in bondage, out existence here on earth, lie in the hands of another.
Take for example, South Africa. From the deadly period of 1652 to 1990, neither the word nor the meaning of freedom and equality had a place in their dictionary. With the Dutch colonialism, apartheid and segregation was the order of the day. And with this, there was no respect for human life, no freedom to move, as it was restricted by pass laws, no respect for privacy, no respect for the rights of workers, nor were the rights to social security granted them. The grave meant freedom to the blacks. It meant shelter. It meant home. Irrespective of the fact that the blacks hadn’t access to neither good schools nor a healthy medical care, thoughts, ideas and feelings weren’t respected. Their existence meant “overcrowding” to their treacherous colonial masters as their lives was sapped bit by bit as seen in the June 16, 1976 unlawful massacre of 176 Soweto students, whose cry for justice was heard with a bang, and also, the March 21st, 1960 Sharpeville Massacre of 69 black demonstrators, whose screams were met with a slap.
In conclusion, in the absence of freedom and equality, revolt takes the place of dialogue and annihilation exemplifies the deadly outcome as seen in the revolt of July 23, 1993, a massacre at the Saint James Church which left 11 killed and 58 wounded.
In addition, freedom and equality symbolizes originality, professionalism and family. It encompasses every ingredient that brings about peace, which leads to co-existence, which ultimately brings about trust.
In contrast to this, take my home land, Nigeria for example, we live in one community, but yet worlds apart. By we had fought to gain our freedom from our collective enemies, “the British”, whom we considered as, “a barricade to our growth and development” only to get entangled in our own struggle to attain power as singles, to suppress and condemn. With this factor in-bound, family meant enemy.
In addition, due to favoritism shown by one region to only her own clan, regionalism thus, defined our individual professionalism which forced our expertise to deny her properties.
In the absence of this oneness, greater harm befalls a country and the world at large. The right to democracy is lost, and so is the right to off-load one’s burden through the medium of speech. For example, Nigeria and its tripod theory of power, otherwise known as power sharing, the June 23rd 1993 unlawful annulment of the Abiola Vs Tofa election and their banishment from the political arena, and the resultant massacre of hundreds of Lagosians whose demonstration for democracy was met bloody autocracy.
Without freedom and equality, power is one-sided. Without freedom and equality, there is always a quest for supremacy. Without freedom and equality, there must always be WAR, as demonstrated in the spot light of the 1939-1945 world war II, with a total of death casualty of 61,000,000, the Nigerian Civil war of 1967-1970 which almost divided the country, the Haitian revolution of August 23rd, 1791, the Chinese Revolution of 1911 to 1949, the Taiping revolution of 1851 to 1864 and so on.
This world of today is made up of people of different race, ethnicity and background. Thus, we need freedom and, equality, in terms of religion as this happens to be the sole perpetuator of conflicts, inter-religious conflicts, wars and destruction, most especially between the Christians and the Muslims. We need to recognize that Allah is God, and so is Jesus Christ, for no religion is supreme over the other.
In summary to this, with inequality, there is always bound to be, “collateral damages”.
In conclusion, if we must make the world a better place, a global village, we must embrace freedom and support equality in order to give peace a golden opportunity to prove its worth.