Human Rights Day 2020: History, Significance and Theme

Image used for representation only.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/UNESCO)

Human Rights Day is celebrated on 10 December every year across the world to mark the date when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948.

The UDHR is a milestone document that proclaims the inalienable rights to which everyone is entitled as a human being – regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

This year’s Human Rights Day theme is Recover Better – Stand Up for Human Rights. It relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the need to build back better by ensuring human rights are central to recovery efforts.

"The COVID-19 crisis has been fuelled by deepening poverty, rising inequalities, structural and entrenched discrimination, and other gaps in human rights protection. Only measures to close these gaps and advance human rights can ensure we fully recover and build back a world that is better, more resilient, just, and sustainable," UN's website says.

"Recover better," is what Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said, when asked about her wish for 2021.

She explained that a world better recovered will be more inclusive, greener and similar to the pre-pandemic world "where everyone has their rights preserved, protected and ensured".