December 10th is International Human Rights Day and December 9th recognizes the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide. Although we’re celebrating the 60th birthday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this week, human rights weren’t born 60 years ago; they were just formalized as international law.  Human rights include “non-discrimination, equality, fairness and universality, apply to everyone, everywhere and always.”

I’m taking this entire week to highlight the work of some of our amazing NGO associates who are leading efforts around the globe to prevent human rights abuses and genocides. Many of those not covered have been included in previous blogs and I invite you to takepart with them.

I’d like to kick off this week by talking about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, two notorious institutions of human rights abuses while under the helm of the US government.  Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has been leading national efforts to have the US government reverse its authorized policies that allowed for the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, a violation of the Geneva Conventions.  Their most recent report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, tells the stories of 11 former prisoners who were tortured by US forces. PHR is asking for these individuals to be compensated with reparations and for people to be held accountable.  We had the fortune of working with this organization for our film, Standard Operating Procedure. We held a national screening of the film and a discussion with the director, Errol Morris and the author of Broken Laws, Broken Lives, Farnoosh Hashemian.

This engaging discussion is available for you to view. Celebrate International Human Rights Day takepart today to join PHR’s campaign against torture.