World Human Rights Day 2020

Every year on the 10^th of December the world observes World Human Rights Day, the date that in 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year at Global Action we are thinking about everyone around the globe feeling the impacts of Coronavirus, and how it has affected access to rights for many individuals and groups.

One of these groups is refugees and displaced people. They face many obstacles to gain access to shelter, healthcare and education for example – basic rights we take for granted. These are issues our school teams have been able to explore in depth through visits to organisations such the UNHCR and Medicine Sans Frontiers in Geneva, and meeting with refugees living in North India. We look forward to engaging more students (and teachers!) with these topics once we can travel again.

Home has become a place we are all too familiar with recently, but for the approximate 25 million refugees in the world staying home is not an option. With the closing of international borders and many countries making cuts to aid budgets, coronavirus has had a unique impact of the world’s refugee population. The following blog from Vennage.com gives some fantastic thought-provoking visuals of the data to highlight the impact of coronavirus on the refugee crisis.