What image opened your eyes to human rights? This is a question that we posed here on the Hub, online (YouTube and Facebook, primarily) and with our friends and video for change network in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10.
Hello and welcome to the Hub. We want to send a huge thanks to Xeni Jardin and team at BoingBoing for their work to highlight WITNESS and the power of video to advance human rights on BoingBoing over the past three days in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
Facebook has proven to be a powerful online organizing tool for a variety of causes in a wide range of places, from Bogota and Cairo to Durban and Washington DC. Last week I attended a youth summit designed by Howcast, an amazing online portal that has thousands of how-to videos, that focused on the power of Facebook and online tools to advance change*.
For years, B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has been harnessing the power of video in it's work to "document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel." B'Tselem in Hebrew literally means "in the image of," and is also used as a synonym for human dignity.
Update: November 14, 2008:
Esam Mudeer, blogger and one of the Saudi hunger strike organizers,
reports on the group's Facebook page that the Saudi government has blocked his blog because of his participation in the hunger strike.
From the get-go, mobile phones helped dispersed communities and networks connect faster than ever before - even helped keep languages alive. Increasingly, they're a multipurpose tool to help organize everything from parties and funerals to mass mobilizations and even overthrow a government.
Do you know what XDR-TB is? James Nachtwey has spent a year working to ensure you do.
This week's Urgent Action comes from Human Rights First's Human Rights Defenders program with a focus on online activists within Egypt, which they note is "continuing its assault on free expression, jailing internet activists and journalists under broad and unjust laws."
