After 77 years… Sanaa redefines world human rights day
SANAA, Dec.10 (YPA) – In a scene showing completely different from the festive character that usually accompanies the events of World Human Rights Day, is observed by the international community every year on 10 December, Sanaa chose to commemorate the seventy-seventh anniversary of the global event through a rhetorical event that carried an explicit criticism of the international system and the record of the major countries in the Arab region.
The event organized by the Sanaa-based Ministry of justice and Human Rights came, according to its organizers, as a station for accountability, not celebration,” and an occasion to highlight the realities Yemen and the Arab and Islamic region have been experiencing over the past decades, where there is a clear contrast between the ideal human rights texts and the bloody reality on the ground.
A different context… A celebration that turns the occasion into a global trial
Sanaa presented itself through this event as a different model of how to commemorate the occasion, where it focused on what it called the biggest gaps between principles and reality, reviewing evidence from Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, where, according to the speakers, the peoples of the region are subjected to the most heinous violations at the hands of those who are supposed to be the Guardians of human rights values.
Acting prime minister of the Sanaa government, Mohammed Moftah, stressed that the “international system promotes treaties that it does not adhere to,” and that those behind the World Human Rights Day are the same who practice widespread violations in the region,” referring to Western countries and the Israeli occupation.
Miftah drew a link between the year 1948, when the declaration was issued, and the historical crime witnessed in the same year, which international legitimacy was granted to the establishment of the Zionist entity on the land of the Palestinian people, considering this the first explicit international denunciation of the concept of human dignity.
Yemen is one of the biggest witnesses of violations
In his speech, Miftah reiterated that Yemen has been living for eleven years under the weight of aggression and siege, and the accompanying crimes targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, in addition to the cases of prisoners, which he described as an open wound that the aggressors deliberately disrupt its solution, pointing to the similarity between the conditions of Yemeni prisoners in Saudi-led coalition’s prisons and the conditions of Palestinian prisoners in occupation prisons.
He also considered that the Israeli crimes in Gaza, supported by the Western powers, provide additional evidence of the fall of the world Day in practice,” especially with the formation of the largest air and sea bridge to support the occupation with weapons.
Condemnation of double standards
For his part, Deputy Minister of justice and Human Rights Judge Ibrahim al-Shami explained that Yemen did not celebrate the occasion as a holiday, but rather as a “pause to hold the world accountable” for its silence on what civilians have been subjected to for more than a decade.
He pointed out that Yemen has turned into a laboratory for internationally banned weapons and an arena for systematic violations without accountability.
Al-Shami said that the international system is experienced an existential crisis of credibility, considering that the event today comes to confirm that Sanaa is aligned with human right in all of Palestine.
Meanwhile, head of the National Commission for Human Rights, Ali Tayseer, stressed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born in a colonial context, where the countries that ratified it practiced at the same time occupying peoples and violating their sovereignty.
Tayseer recalled that the year 1948 also witnessed the greatest historical crime represented by the UN’s recognition of the establishment of the Zionist occupation at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people.
As for the head of the Ain Humanitarian Center, Ahmed Abu Hamra, added that the human rights system did not act to defend Yemenis, but only when it comes to political pressure on the opponents of the United States, asking about the meaning of celebrating this Human Rights Day, while the genocide in Gaza is being committed openly and under international cover.
Sanaa: towards a new concept of human rights
The words have been unanimous that what is happening today in Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria reveals the fragility of the international system and its loss of neutrality, calling for the rewriting of a new international human rights law away from American and European domination, based on the principles of justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.
Finally, the event sent a message that Sanaa wanted to provide a different approach to the concept of human rights, based on reality and field evidence at the expense of the celebratory speech, and calls for a global action that puts an end to the crimes committed against civilians in Yemen, Palestine and the rest of the region, and restores the values that the Universal Declaration supposedly came to protect.
AA