Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This important document emphasizes the rights that all human beings have the entitled to regardless of their race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

2020 Theme:

Recover Better - Stand Up for Human Rights

The theme of this year's Human Rights Day is linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasizes the need to build back better societies by ensuring that human rights are at the heart of recovery efforts. It is important to consider that the COVID-19 pandemic affects individuals in different ways depending on the different intersections of their identities. Human rights standards must be applied to address entrenched, systematic and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination.

December 10 is an opportunity to reaffirm the importance of human rights in rebuilding the world we want and to support those people whose human rights are not respected to this day.

Stand Up for Human Rights - Stand up for QTBIPOC

As much as December 10 marks Human Rights Day, as much as it is important to fight daily to ensure that everyone's rights are respected every day. To this day, the rights of queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color are still not respected. When we consider the events that happened recently, whether it be the death of George Floyd or that of Joyce Echaquan, systemic racism is still present in our institutions and in our daily lives.

It is important that everyone be an ally, no matter their identities, with QTBIPOC communities and that we have anti-racist approaches in our projects, work, discussions, thoughts, and in everything we do. We encourage you to educate yourself about systemic racism and how we all have a role to play in dismantling it. Only together will we all be able to make a change.

How can you take part in Human Rights Day?

Learning about human rights helps develop our knowledge, skills and attitudes so that we can be better allies and defend our rights and those of others.

Here are some suggestions for simple activities to get involved:

• Visit the United Nations Human Rights Day website.
• Watch a film from the Human Rights Playlist curated by the National Film Board of Canada.
• Learn more about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
• Explore the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ Story Collection.
• Download the illustrated version of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and share it with family.
• Lear about how to be an ally to indigenous communities with this toolkit.
• Visit the Public Service Alliance of Canada to learn on how to have an anti-racist approach.