Where do Universal Rights Begin?
Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.
~ Robert Ingersoll
Where do universal rights begin? As citizens, you have the power to stop discrimination, to eliminate oppression, and to bring an end to ignorance and indifference. You can choose to help end human rights violations, or you can choose to ignore them. The decision is yours. Either way, your choice will have a profound impact on the people around you.
Where do universal rights begin?
In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Chair of the United Nations Commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.