840 million people are chronically undernourished worldwide. Nearly 11 million children die each year before the age of five. Over 75 million children (of which more than half are girls) have no access to primary education. It is estimated that more than one billion people from 6.6 billion world's population lack access to adequate drinking water sources, and that more than 800 million people in developing countries are illiterate, malnourished and without access to basic health services.
After a period of relative neglect, recently more attention has been given to economic, social and cultural rights, both in global development efforts, as well as in national efforts by individual states, that included these rights into their national and legal systems. However, the mere fact that a sixth of the population in developing countries goes to bed hungry every day, that one-fifth has no chance to meet basic human needs because they lack access to clean drinking water and food, and that a quarter live in extreme poverty, the focus of attention and greater commitment to an effective exercise of human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights, is simply an EMERGENCY!
With the new campaign Fairy tales we want to achieve a higher level of awareness and understanding that the basis for a decent life, such as clean drinking water, food, access to education and opportunity for decent work is a fundamental human right, written in international instruments of human rights, voluntarily adopted and signed by majority of countries. By doing this, they committed to respect, protect and implement all human rights, both economic, social and cultural as well as civil and political rights of ALL citizens of this world.
With the campaign slogan "Some write fairy tales, some live them and some don’t even know them" we want to:
- highlight the role and importance of international human rights system as the only universally accepted system of values and legally binding norms and standards, that should guide global development efforts to achieve a more just and sustainable development. Rights are written...
- highlight the achievements and successes of the global movement for human rights achieved in the last century. However, at the same time we want to point out, that these successes and efforts remain in the shadow of the fact that human rights remain fully accessible only to a minority of the world's population, also because of the measures and actions of developed countries. Some live them…
- stress that serious and repeated violations of human rights, including fundamental rights such as access to clean drinking water, food and health services, are a part of everyday life of many people, especially in developing countries. They don’t even know human rights…
With the slogan we focus on the question is a decent life for all citizens of the world at the time of relative abundance only a fairy tale?
With the campaign we want to call upon a serious reflection on the current state of the world, determined by the rising level of poverty in all societies, big gap between developed and developing countries and between the privileged and excluded individuals and groups, by numerous diseases, forced migration and exploitation of social groups, environmental disasters etc. These are not only global challenges, encouraged by the society and the people themselves, but for the most part repeated violations of fundamental human rights.
The campaign therefore calls for actions that don’t arise only from the requirement to preserve human dignity, but also from legally binding commitments written in international instruments of human rights.
We also want to stress the role of
Last but not least, this is a campaign, with which we want to activate, stimulate and invite all individuals to get involved and raise their voices and do their utmost that human rights are not just fairy tales!
