Stories on Human Rights

“Stories on Human Rights” was made to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is made up of over 22 short movies. Each movie addresses a topic in human rights. At the beginning of each short movie, the topic of human rights it was addressing would appear on the screen. The six themes human rights themes addressed are culture, development, dignity and justice, environment, gender, and participation. Some of the short movies were straight to the point and some of them were very abstract. They were all very different. They also showed a lot of different cultures and places. The first one took place in Africa, another in the Middle East, and another in Asia.

One of the short movies that stood out was “The Voice”. This movies theme is development. It is unclear what country it takes place in but it seems to be an eastern European country – maybe Russia. There is a young couple that has gone through a yearlong process of trying to adopt a baby. They get to the orphanage and show all of the paper work that they need to. The baby is shown to them and the woman gets to hold it. Then, the woman in charge says there’s a paper missing. The couple is confused since they have clearly gone through everything quite thoroughly. The woman says she can fix it for $2,000. The couple can’t come up with the money right away so they can’t have the baby until they do. The woman in charge is clearly taking advantage of the couple since they are in a vulnerable position. The story is sad but unfortunately what happened in the movie is what happens in real life, even today, in many eastern European countries.