LIFT encourages all who want to work towards the enforcement of the human rights framework to:

Involve communities and local governments in human rights education and advocacy and in building capacity to fulfill rights to housing, health, education and public services.

Educate Parliamentarians and elected representatives on their duty to uphold human rights and invoke national sovereignty in matters concerning domestic human rights.

Advocate for measures to ensure that international trade agreements and other actions taken by the state are bound by commitments made by governments to human rights, environmental protection, human security, and sustainable social and economic development.

Propose constitutional or legislative reform to protect the primacy of human rights.

Increase participation of those most effected in the process of claiming human rights and remedies and defend them from retribution.

Engage in national processes to monitor compliance with domestic and International human rights obligations and prepare civil society submissions to the treaty body of the UN.

Collaborate on developing indicators to measure human rights compliance and progress, such as time use, health and quality of life data.

Engage communities and organizations in participatory research and evaluation; to document and report the impact of economic agreements and decisions on human rights conditions; to inform the public, governments and human rights commissions.

Establish human rights standards and mechanisms appropriate to different environmental and cultural contexts for holding governments and institutions accountable.

By knowing, claiming and demanding enforcement of existing human rights, people everywhere can engage in a powerful local to global process to create a better world of peace and sustainable prosperity.

In the words of Nelson Mandela:

We must “develop a new political culture based on human rights”

So to launch a dialogue towards evolutionary strategies, there are a few questions I think are worth seeking answers to…can we change the system from the inside, or is it better to separate as far as possible from the current crumbling framework and model new more sustainable ways to live, is it possible to do both? Or is it enough to create ways to maintain connections between those who take new paths and those who remain embedded…in a way it’s about balancing the struggle against what is wrong, with the energy required to create examples of what is right. I believe that both approaches are vitally needed, at the same time in my experience far too much time is spent in civil society admiring problems and not enough on how to fix them. And those who find ways to live outside the matrix tend to remain largely invisible to those who need the hope their examples provide…

Human rights are a potentially powerful tool in the struggle for a better world, there are many ways to use them; as guidance for how we live in community, as principles to apply in the struggle for better government, as a connecting force between diverse movements worldwide, as legal mechanisms to force reform….I wonder if the message to use them or lose them is effective, or do we need to first help more people understand why they are so crucial to human evolution?

How in a society where people’s time use has been hijacked by an unsustainable economy, do we gather enough momentum and support to achieve a critical mass willing and able to accept the massive changes we will all have to make in order for our children and future descendants to thrive. I believe online communications is part of it yet we must find ways to connect in person, to exchange not only ideas but energy and actions in a way that can be sustained over time….it’s a huge challenge,  one we must rise to if we are to overcome the forces of greed and the endless evil that greed generates…

So now at last, I am joining the blog conversation and entering cyberspace as an active participant. I have hesitated for years, though many people have pushed me to do it. Now I feel the time is right and I can hopefully rise to the challenge. I have long felt a need to share much more of what I am learning from my human rights work and life as it unfolds, but was hindered by circumstance and illness.

As a human rights activist and educator, I hope to use this medium to converse with people in cyberspace about how to make the world a better place. Over 30 years I have gathered a lot of information from around the world, from people’s movements to governments and the UN. In this blog I will be encouraging readers to go see for themselves a world of facts laws and processes that are very important to our ability to change the world for the better that are unknown to most people in Canada and North America.

My purpose is to inspire people to look deeper and wider into the state of the world we all face, challenge common assumptions, ask hard questions, and act on what they discover from exploring the ideas and opportunities generated in the process of engaging in this “blog”.

I intend write no less than once a week but I am very busy and a bit shy yet, and I may struggle at first with how best to communicate in this new way. I do hope people will give me feedback, to help me get into the flow.

best,
jo

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