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	There is nothing more fundamentally human than the yearning to be free by Professor Tim McCarthy Salon, Carr Center for Human Rights   Stories are powerful tools for understanding there is nothing more fundamentally human than the yearning to be free.   Stories have the capacity to turn difference from a barrier to a bridge. They don’t eradicate difference, nor should they necessarily, but they can help make it seem less “scary,” less “foreign,” less unhuman.   When told well and absorbed deeply, stories have the effect of stimulating in us a recognition that people who may look nothing like us or sound nothing like us—people who lived in a time and place very distant from our own—are nonetheless like us in fundamental ways. At their best, stories can inspire us to treat others with full and equal dignity by virtue of the fact that they, too, are human. That is the power of the humanities. I believe this in my bones.   As a historian, I think it’s particularly important to think about the power of stories while honestly confronting the most grotesque examples of human violence we have available to us. Slavery is chief among them. There are few institutions that represent more glaringly the violent assault on humanity, and few cultural forms that represent that experience more powerfully than the stories of enslaved people.   “Slave narratives,” as they’re often called, teach us that there is nothing more fundamentally human than the desire to be free. Many people want to be able to vote, to earn a living wage, to marry the person they love. But before all of these human rights comes freedom.   In the United States, we’ve been working out what freedom means for a very long time, well before the birth of the nation itself. We still don’t have one working definition; we may never have one. We’re also still struggling to figure out how to abolish slavery—globally and here at home. The stories we have read this term are stories of human evil, but they are also stories about the human yearning to be free. That is what drives this course: the insistence that these two things—the stories of slavery and freedom—must be studied together.   Stories have the capacity to break things down, and stories of slavery in particular have helped to shed light on the peculiar ways we structure our lives based on socially constructed binaries of race, gender, sexuality, religion, nation and the like. Our identities are defined and our experiences are shaped, often unequally and violently, in relation to some “other” or “opposite” within the context of the socio-economic-political systems that provide context for our lives at any given moment in history. The stories we have been discussing this term help expose the fact that these binaries are more fiction than fact, even though they are very real for so many of us.   And speaking of breaking down binaries, stories of slavery and freedom also help us to see individual acts of conscience and collective acts of resistance as related rather than opposed to each other. Some people think it’s enough to be nice and charitable on an individual level, be compassionate and feel empathy, feed someone when they’re hungry, house someone when they’re homeless, and clothe someone when they’re naked.   Others think none of this is ever enough unless you’re dismantling systems of power and privilege like slavery, capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. But the stories we’ve been reading this semester teach us that social change is never an either/or proposition.   We must be compassionate people who care for one another, who protect each other’s dignity, as well as brave people who protest the things that are designed to deny it. We must be able to keep these two things in our head and heart at the same time.   We can work to disrupt and dismantle structures of oppression and inequality, our complicity in perpetuating them, and be decent people, practicing equality in our everyday lives, while we’re at it.   That said, stories of slavery and freedom create something of a paradox, a tension, for us as scholars and students, readers and citizens. On the one hand, I’m always inspired by the constant, transcendent yearning to be free. I feel like it’s impossible to hear someone talk about wanting to be free, struggling to be free, and not be moved by it in some way.   At the same time, I get angry reading these stories from the 18th and 19th centuries, these 20th and 21st century slave narratives in “To Plead Our Own Cause,” because after all these years, slavery still exists. We haven’t yet gotten it right, despite all we know.   I feel this tension right now. Despite our differences, and there are many of them, the one thing we all have in common is that we are living in this historical moment, surrounded by modern-day manifestations of the very things we have been studying historically: the construction of black people as somehow a threat to the nation; the idea that whiteness is more valuable than blackness; the need to have systems in place—slavery, segregation, lynching, police, prisons—to keep folks in their place; the fact that the state still slaughters people of color at the border and in the street by agents of the state who are armed and empowered to do just that; the tragic reality after all these years that black lives still don’t matter in America.   We live in a world where we’re constantly reminded that the past is present—the daily micro-aggressions that become macro-aggressions over time, or the fact that all these things remind too many of us of the myriad aggressions that have been overlooked time and again throughout history.   My hope is that classes like this one can help us navigate the precarious and persistent paradox of hope and anger. I know I’m not the only one struggling mightily with this right now—in this nation, or even in this room. The older I get, the more I see history repeat itself, over and over again, same old stories, it’s debilitating. There’s a temptation to fall deeply into the abyss of anger, rage, even despair, so much so that it is impossible to find hope anywhere.   But I want to leave you with this: the greatest wellspring of hope I have is all of you. The reason I love teaching is because you give me hope that we may still be able to create a world better than the one we’ve inherited. We are living in a deeply troubling and also potentially transformative moment in American and world history.   How it works itself out will depend, in great measure, on the work we all do together—but especially the work that you all do over the course of the next generation. Take whatever insights and inspiration you have gotten from this class, and go into the world and heal it. The world needs you right now.   http://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/news/when-past-present-what-slave-narratives-teach-us-about-our-greatest-human-desire http://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/news/carr-centers-human-rights-video-series Visit the related web page
	States must not turn their backs on human rights defenders by International Service for Human Rights, agencies   December, 2015   UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Michel Forst calls for better support and protection of defenders by States, funders and the general public.   “They are ‘Gandhis’ and ‘Mandelas’. They are ‘Rosa Parks’ and ‘Malalas’. They are also ordinary individuals, lawyers, women activists, community leaders, journalists, unionists and environmentalists who strive to re-claim our rights and promote our freedoms.   They are called human rights defenders, countless individuals and groups advocating for human rights, educating and raising awareness of situations around the world, and holding governments to account for their actions.   For that reason, international law clearly recognises the crucial role of rights defenders to effectively eliminate human rights violations. The UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders calls on States to support them and protect them from harm.   In spite of this, when activists fight to unmask injustice, challenges and obstacles are thrown in their path to restrict and dissuade them from persevering.   So much so that two weeks ago, on 24 November, 54 Governments refused to join 117 other UN General Assembly member States in voting to support a key resolution to recognize the role of defenders, support their work and ensure their protection.   National laws are often enacted to criminalise the human rights defenders’ work or cut their funding. They are unfairly portrayed in adverse terms to intimidate or silence them. They face enormous risks and threats as a result of the work they do, or because of who they are.   Some specific groups are often singled out for targeting. Defenders working on women’s rights, rights related to land, environment and corporate responsibility, along with indigenous rights, face ever more perilous risks and are constantly under attack.   In commemoration of the International Human Rights Defenders Day, I call on States to support and protect human rights defenders at the international, regional and national levels through building defenders-friendly alliances and adopting concrete measures to protect rights activists.   I urge Parliamentarians to be vigilant against laws that restrict civil society space, criminalise human rights activities and stifle funding for defenders.   I ask funders to give priority to human rights defenders both through un-earmarked core funding and specific project resources, in consultation with defenders themselves and through minimal red tape requirements.   I also call on civil society and rights defenders to better organise peer-support and self-protection networks and mechanisms to address current threats and risks, as well as to prevent and warn of future challenges.   And to the general public, I ask them to recognise the important role of numerous activists who ceaselessly seek to defend human rights and fundamental freedoms for the good of the whole society, and to engage their governments and parliaments to support defenders in their countries and in their foreign policy.   In our strife for freedom, equality and justice, it is imperative that we empower and protect human rights defenders – our heroes, our sentinels who fight our human rights battles. They deserve our unequivocal support.”   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/SRHRDefenders/Pages/Declaration.aspx   Nov 2015 (International Service for Human Rights)   States should support a resolution by the UN General Assembly on ''Recognizing the role of human rights defenders and the need for their protection'' and reject amendments tabled by the African Group, China and Iran, designed to weaken the text, ISHR said today in a joint letter with over 150 other NGOs.   The General Assembly is currently negotiating the above-mentioned resolution, which is scheduled to be adopted on 25 November 2015. ISHR has joined a group of over 150 human rights defenders and civil society organisations from around the world in calling on States to live up to their human rights commitments by supporting the resolution, by rejecting amendments designed to weaken it, and by taking concrete steps to protect human rights defenders.   The resolution comes on the heels of a report to the General Assembly by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, Michel Forst, who consulted this year with over 500 defenders from 111 States. The Special Rapporteur concluded that in the vast majority of States the situation for human rights defenders is deteriorating in law and in practice, and that a lack of awareness regarding their vital and legitimate work, combined with a lack of political commitment and weak institutional arrangements for their protection, is placing them, their organisations and families at elevated risk.   ‘It is deeply concerning that while defenders make vital contributions to the promotion and respect for human rights, democratic processes, securing and maintaining peace and security, and advancing sustainable development, they continue to face a range of violations and abuses by State and non-State actors. States must do more to acknowledge their role, the specific risks they face, and commit to ensuring their protection,’ said Madeleine Sinclair, ISHR Programme Manager.   ‘This resolution represents an opportunity for every Member State of the United Nations to show it is serious about supporting and protecting human rights defenders and enabling their work,’ Ms Sinclair said. ‘Unfortunately a number of States, including the African Group, China and Iran, have responded by attacking the draft resolution in the form of hostile amendments designed to weaken the text,’ she added.   The proposed amendments remove references to the legitimacy of the work of human rights defenders, delete or weaken language regarding the need for their protection, and delete whole paragraphs related to the need to combat impunity for violations and abuses against defenders and the need to ensure adequate procedural safeguards in judicial proceedings. The suggested amendments also propose to delete a call for the release of defenders detained or imprisoned in violation of international human rights law, for exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms.   In addition, the proposed amendments introduce notions that States should only support and enable their work ''as appropriate'', rather than in accordance with the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and other obligations arising under international human rights law.   ‘We call on all States to stand with human rights defenders and reject the amendments put forward to weaken and undermine the text,’ said Ms Sinclair. Visit the related web page
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