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While thinking about our Kump Education Center celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) planned for this Sunday at 3 p.m., I realized that today is Dec. 7. On that day in 1941, the Japanese made the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the USA into World War II. History has a way of reminding us that we have been surprised before.
Dec. 7, 1941, is a date like Sept. 11, 2001, when Americans had to realize that we too are vulnerable. We cannot afford to sit back and watch the suffering of children dying in Gaza and the Ukraine without knowing that the same things could happen to our own children and grandchildren. We do not want to think about children here in Elkins who have no heat and food for the coming winter. An unexpected natural disaster could rob us of our secure home and stable government.
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was developed by a United Nations committee of women led by Eleanor Roosevelt (c.1946), they were helping to set standards for deciding how to relocate some forty million displaced persons after World War II. The war had decimated hundreds of cities around the world and immigrants desperately needed to find shelter, and a way to help their families survive.
Now we have more than a hundred million displaced persons in the world and refugees are clamoring at the borders of every secure nation. No nation on earth -- not even the U.S.A. -- lives up to all the ideals that were set forth in the UDHR.
The 1948 UDHR document signed in Paris, France was meant to transcend cultures and nations and proclaim the inalienable rights of all human beings. It said that every human being has dignity and the right to freedom regardless of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. All humans have the right to life, liberty, and security of person. Nobody should be held in servitude, and slave trading must be prohibited. No person shall be subjected to torture, or cruel treatment. Everyone has the right to be recognized as a human being, and all are equal before the law. The document includes rights to equality, nationality, security, favorable working conditions, asylum from persecution, and the list goes on.
Sunday, Dec. 10, 2023, marks the 75th anniversary of the United Nations commitment to a guarantee that all human beings have these rights, but there are more people now who do not have their freedoms then there were when they were promised. We are reaching a time when we all need to think about these humane concerns.
Now millions of refugees need asylum because of the unstable governments in developing nations around the world. West Virginia could benefit from working with struggling immigrants to give them the human rights they deserve. At the same time, they could help to replace the population we have been losing over the years.