Thursday Dec. 10 is International Human Rights Day. This day commemorates the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly. Two years later in 1950, the UN passed a resolution calling on all organizations to join on Dec.10 of each year and observe that day as Human Rights Day.

This Year’s celebration of International Human Rights Day is especially significant as it is also the launch of a year-long campaign to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the two International Covenants on Human rights – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These Covenants were adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 16, 1966.

And what does this have to do with innovation? As people around the world are addressing the challenge of innovation, we need to focus as well on finding innovative ways to better promote and protect human rights. Clearly, there is much work to be done as noted by the evidence of terrible and systematic violations of human rights in many places around the world.

Like innovation, the protection of human rights is not achieved by the mere adoption of a UN resolution. We need to work on creating an “ecosystem” of human rights protection that involves many factors: adoption of UN resolutions, passage of laws in individual countries, education about human rights, reporting and enforcement of human rights, greater tolerance of cultural, religious and other diversity, use of technology to track, monitor and report on human rights violations, enhanced realization of the interrelationship between economic development and protection of human rights, greater citizen participation, promotion of better governance, closer cooperation between NGO’s, governments and industry, and much more.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://china.org.cn/opinion/eugeneclark.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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