December 9, 2008

NEW YORK CITY – As the world greets the sixtieth International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10), increasing waves of forced human migrations are being cited by international humanitarian agency Church World Service as a major violation of human rights in the twenty-first century.

CWS Executive Director and CEO John L. McCullough says the increase in large groups of people being forced from their homelands and dispersed "is by and large the result of human actions, whether due to conflict or climate change."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are more than 25 million people displaced worldwide and that 13 million of them are displaced within the borders of their own countries.

CWS cites several factors contributing to large numbers of people being forced to leave their lands, from climate change-related disruptions in normal weather patterns that destroy crops to shrinking water resources that force entire communities to abandon areas that can no longer sustain life.

Other factors that cause migrations are conflicts and intensive commercial agriculture practices that deplete soil or that increasingly encourage the use of farm land for biofuel agriculture – land that formerly was used by indigenous peoples and poor rural farmers to grow food for their families and communities.

McCullough acknowledged, however, that some countries are now beginning to come to the fore in countering runaway monoculture and biofuel agriculture, in response to environmental and small farmer and rural food security concerns, but he says "much more needs to be done quickly."

The emphasis this Human Rights Day, he adds, should be on the need for governments to strike the right balance between commercial needs and human needs. "Even as countries tend to their need to develop economically, they also must also take care to prevent the acceleration of forced human migrations by protecting the basic right of people to food, water and security.

"The vision of ending poverty by the year 2015 is rapidly dissipating. If the international community does not find the resolve to act with a sense of urgency and fundamental fairness we will once again see levels of human despair that mirrors the post World War II era, and that should be frightening for all of us."

During their combined Nov. 11- 13 General Assembly, CWS and the National Council of Churches approved a resolution, http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/DocServer/A_Renewed_National_Religious_Call_-_2008fnl.pdf?docID=863, calling on all member churches to observe the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://un.org/Overview/rights.html on Sunday Dec.14 and to renew their commitment as Christians to the advancement of human rights.

In a letter, http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/DocServer/CWS-NCConHumanRightsDeclaration.pdf?docID=861, to church leaders, McCullough and Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of NCC, acknowledged that the declaration has been criticized for "being too western" and "too focused on individual rights," but urged churches "not to overlook what an astonishing achievement" the Declaration is with its "affirmation of human dignity and of harmonious relationships among people."

International Human Rights Week is December 10 - 17.

Church World Service