We are all human and we all have rights, but is this true? What often slips our minds, or is not even known to begin with, is the fact that the Convention on the Rights of Children isn’t even ratified here in America nor in Somalia.
The Human Rights Club (HRC) is spreading the word around Carson High about how this can affect us the most because we are children and we aren’t even aware of what is going on with our rights.
Merri Weir, teacher and HRC’s sponsor, said, “Our main focus is on the children--children at war, children’s access to clean water, these kinds of things.”
Basically, what this club has done so far to get the Rights of Children ratified is go up to students at Carson High, explain the situation, and ask them to sign a petition that will be sent to Barbara Boxer and Hilary Clinton urging them to ratify the Rights of Children, especially because 193 counties have already ratified this treaty.
HRC also had a “Die-In” on Friday, November 20, 2009. The die-in was a visual representation of all the children who have died, suffered, or are suffering because their rights have been denied. What the members of the Human Rights Club have done is make signs that indicate that they are children and what their outcome was due to having no rights.
Their signs ranged from sayings like, “I died from a lack of shelter” to “I died due to a high infant mortality rate.” These signs grabbed the attention of many of our fellow students at Carson High and turned out to be a success.
The whole point of this die-in was to get students to stop and wonder what was going on, that’s just what it did.
“I think students either don’t realt around the world but locally. It’s about working towards the common good,” said Weir. “Not having the rights for children sends a message to the world that it is a meaning less document. If the U.S. doesn’t ratify it, then what is its purpose? We set the tone for all the things people can get away with.”
Samantha Streitfeld, sophomore and member of HRC, said, “I thought the idea of a die-in at school caught people’s attention and hopefully made them more aware of how some of our fellow children are suffering and what we can do to change it.”
Human Rights Club has been a club for six years, and they have contributed to many organizations that help people around the world-helping communities that have been destroyed by natural disasters, providing water buffalos for four to five villages in Taiwan, providing pigs for China, and even raising money to send a child soldier from Columbia to Washington D.C. to testify for a world wide ban of children soldiers.
Though it may seem impossible to do, HRC has done a great job helping and providing many things to different countries whether it may have taken a day or even a whole year to accomplish.
“People join clubs to see things happen right away, but for Human Rights Club, we might not see the benefit of what they are doing a year down the road. The best thing we can do is to get people aware and be a part of it,” said Weir.
HRC meetings are held every Tuesday during lunch in H4. Their key message is that all of us are here in this world together and are connected, and what we should do is think globally, act locally, and spread awareness to the community.