Thirteen actions you can take for Human Rights Day (and every day)

Elizabeth McIsaac
President, Maytree

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a powerful document — in its attention to the dignity of all people and its insistence on the indivisibility and interdependence of our rights. Since the Second World War, this document has stood for the inalienable rights we all have as human beings, from social and economic rights like the right to housing and food, to civil and political rights like the right to vote or the right to exercise free speech. Everyone should read it!And did you know? John Peters Humphrey, a Canadian, was one of the authors of the first draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Emily Paradis
Research Consultant and Maytree Fellow

Originally coined by French theorist Henri Lefebvre, the idea of the Right to the City has been taken up by movements working for social, environmental, racial, and gender justice in cities. Canada’s large cities are generating enormous prosperity — but they are also growing increasingly unequal, segregated, and polarized. More and more people are pushed to the margins, excluded from the opportunities and benefits of urban life.

The Right to the City reclaims the right of everyone to share equitably in our cities’ resources and joys. The Right to the City is something we all build together, through everyday actions big and small.

Francisco Rico-Martinez
Co-Director, FCJ Refugee Centre

Article 14 of the Declaration states that “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” However, this right is being violated with the enforcement of the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement, in effect since December 2004.

With the Safe Third Country Agreement, the United States and Canada declare each other “safe” for refugees, meaning that refugee claimants entering Canada from the United States are often turned away at the US-Canada border, putting thousands in danger.

Deena Ladd
Co-Founder and Coordinator, Workers’ Action Centre

Thousands of racialized women come to Canada every year to take care of Canadian families. By law, they are tied to their employers which makes it impossible for them to leave a bad job or get a new job when elderly employers pass away. Every day, women are facing low wages and abuse. Care workers are separated from their own families, often for 5 to 10 years, before they are able to apply for reunification. Even then, many families are denied.

Currently over 20,000 women are waiting to have their applications reviewed, and now the entire program is set to expire in 2019. This means that thousands of care workers may become undocumented.

Renu Mandhane
Former Chief Commissioner, Ontario Human Rights Commission

Collecting human rights-based data in your organization can help you identify or verify problems, and highlight otherwise “invisible” systemic discrimination. But collecting data on its own is not a solution. You need to act on it, and that’s how collecting data can help you build trust. It becomes a tool for learning what is and isn’t working, and for charting your progress towards solutions. It can help you identify a starting point, and analyze whether steps you have taken are helping or hindering efforts to eliminate discrimination.

Lisa Wolff
Director, Policy and Research, UNICEF Canada

Children’s rights are human rights for children. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a treaty that recognizes specific rights for children. Human rights are basic standards to which every person is entitled, to survive and develop in dignity. The provision and protection of children’s Convention rights is the primary responsibility of governments at all levels, and realizing the promise of the Convention is an ongoing, progressive commitment. So this Human Rights Day, we invite you to share the Convention with the young people in your life – because only by knowing our rights can we make sure they are being respected and protected.

Bruce Porter
Executive Director of the Social Rights Advocacy Centre and Maytree fellow

In its National Housing Strategy, the federal government committed to legislation that will recognize the right to housing. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes socio-economic rights such as housing and food as fundamental human rights, central to dignity and equality and requiring, like other human rights, access to hearings before a competent tribunal. Canadian governments and courts, however, have left those who are homeless or hungry without access to hearings into these rights.

Check out the draft legislation proposed by a coalition of civil society organizations and individuals and support their call for access to hearings into systemic issues before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. This legislation could be the beginning of a historic reclaiming of the unified vision of rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but only if we insist on it.

Ana Bailão
Former Toronto City Councillor, Ward 9 – Davenport

Housing is not only about a roof over your head, but also about the dignity, safety, and opportunity it can provide for everyone in our society. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right to housing as part of a right to an adequate standard of living. It is important for us as decision makers to know that you support the principle that housing is a human right.

Joy Connelly
Housing Consultant and Advocate

Your warm greeting can remind someone on the street that they belong. Your vigorous support for a new shelter, supportive or affordable housing in your neighbourhood enables them to claim the right to live in the neighbourhood of their choice without discrimination. This is a right set out in the section addressing “Discriminatory NIMBYism” in the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Policy on Human Rights and Rental Housing and affirmed in the Toronto Housing Charter.

Cheyanne Ratnam
Founding Member of the Ontario Children’s Advocacy Coalition, First Voice Advocate, and Community Animator

When the Ombudsman’s Office takes on provisions from the Child Advocate’s Office, we must work to strengthen this change. We (the Ontario Children’s Advocacy Coalition) would recommend the following:

• Develop a designated unit where young people can realize their participatory rights meaningfully
• Be inclusive of all mandates previously overseen by the Ontario Child Advocate (First Nations, Provincial and Demonstration Schools, Persons with (dis)abilities, Youth Justice, young people accessing Children’s Mental Health services, and Child Welfare)
• Incorporate outreach and rights education for children/young people, and staff
• Hire professionals with lived expertise and consult with First Voice Advocate organizations such as the Ontario Children’s Advocacy Coalition

It is imperative that children must know their rights in order to realize them, as well as pinpoint when said rights are being breached. It is also crucial to have a separate unit for their nuanced and unique needs where they can be active participants in issues that affect them, within a unit which understands engagement with young people.

Anna Kim
Agincourt Community Services Association Civic Projects Coordinator & Scarborough Civic Action Network Coordinator

My work is about civic inclusion and enabling people to have a say in the decisions that impact their lives. A truly meaningful democracy requires practices and pathways that enable people to realize their human rights and have a voice in political processes. This is acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights itself through Article 28: “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.”

This could mean holding public consultations in a local community space while providing childcare, or partnering with institutions such as schools, libraries, and non-profits that connect with people on an everyday basis to hold civic education workshops or town halls in multiple languages. Thinking about how we can better foster civic inclusion can help us to think about how human rights are realized in our everyday lives.

Geordie Dent
Executive Director, Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations

To learn about your rights as a tenant in Toronto, you don’t have sift through hundreds of pages! You can download a copy of FMTA’s Tenant Survival Manual today.

Tenants often don’t have good understanding of their rights. Many believe landlords can do whatever they want, without understanding that there are hundreds of pages of federal, provincial, and city laws that protect tenants. Because of this, many tenants often end up paying money they don’t owe, living in conditions that are not up to standard, and moving out when they don’t have to.

Remember: housing rights are human rights!

Annie Kidder
Executive Director, People for Education

Canadians are living in a time of profound economic, social, and technological transformation. As society’s needs evolve, public education must also adapt, so that young people today are fully prepared for the world they will encounter tomorrow. All students — no matter what their family income, their parents’ education, or where they live — should have a right to a public education that teaches them the up-to-date skills and competencies they need to thrive and succeed, and to contribute to a fair and prosperous society.