Press Clippings 6

2002 Human Rights Day speech extracts

By Matthew Albert

Firstly I want to wish everyone a happy human rights day since I am not completely sure how one does acknowledge such a day. The fact that such an occasion exists is both good and bad.

It is wonderful that we can come together and meditate together about what human rights are and what they can and do mean to us in such a safe and secure country such as our own.

It is a great pity however that we still have need to focus attention on so many breaches over the Universal Declaration still after 54 years of its existence.

I wish that next year, 55 years after its creation, we see no need to assign a special day to remind us of human rights.

So a strange wish, Happy human rights day, I hope that next year none of us will see need to come to a gathering to remind us of human rights.

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We do SAIL because we feel like we are providing our students with a key to the door of Australian society. We greet them and welcome them and most importantly assist them as they come to know about their new country and try to settle in it.

We are very mindful that we are mentoring a new generation of Australians, not just refugees. Our admiration for the Sudanese community is boundless. They have overcome turmoil and embraced healing. They don't act like victims. And most importantly, they have dreams and aspirations for themselves.

We are very fortunate in Australia to be free, for the most part, of any significant human rights violations. For this reason we all feel like we fall outside the sphere of healing that is possible for human rights, how can we effectively heal something that happens so far away.

I would be the first to admit to feeling like I'd done my bit simply by sitting at home in my cosy lounge room and watching the news and shaking my head at appropriate times and making comments like 'isn't that terrible' 'aren't we lucky'.

It seems to me that we too easily fall into the mistaken belief that human rights are there, away from us, in far off lands, Sudan, Iran, Israel or we confine them to history, the 'then', the Nazi Holocaust, the Revolution in Iran. If SAIL has taught me just one thing it is this.

Human rights are an issue that can be solved in part right here is Australia and they can be solved by starting work now. The message from SAIL is simple. Human rights are not there and then, they are here and now.

SAIL embodies that most wonderful of United Nations doctrines- Think global, act local. Indeed, in the tumultuous world in which we live the greatest human rights abuses seem to be at the hand of people who have this think global act local phrase mixed up.

A certain world leader who shall remain nameless except for the fact that he is not a distant relative of a shrub type plant, seems all to willing to act global and think local. For human rights, this is often the most irresponsible and harmful way to act.

On a grand scale, we set up and maintain the SAIL program in keeping with this directive. We do this in the hope and expectation that if, through no fault of our own, we were made to leave our country, our family, our house or our community that we too would be cared for and educated in the place that received us.

The Human Rights Declaration says and we try to put it in practice that, regardless of background, everyone should be cared for when they are vulnerable and we try to apply this to students and tutors alike.

I think that it is our obligation not only to be aware of human rights abuses but also to work to separate the word abuse from human rights. It is too rare that we talk about human rights as a tool for achieving positive results and too often that human rights are discussed only in terms of abuse.

SAIL, to me and the 200 odd people who attend each week, is a model for making human rights active and positive, instructive and inspiring.

I end where I began. On this human rights day, I wish that the small efforts like those at SAIL sporn great changes. I hope that the healing overtakes the turmoil.

I hope that next year we will have no need to remind ourselves of the importance of human rights. And my final hope, is that each and every one of us, will work in our own small way towards achieving this goal.

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