Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of Human Rights Day in Southern California | WPN World People News

To celebrate the 70th year anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Association of World Citizens (AWC), an NGO in consultative status with ECOSOC and associated with the UN DPI, launched a series of forums on human rights. One of the forums was held in City of Walnut, Los Angeles, on December 9th, 2017. That day, many Southern Californians were gathering together, to participate in the discussion of how to bring the universally protected human rights into their daily practices in their professional fields. Invited speakers are Ms. Maggie Lin and Ken Lee, both are from medical field, Noemi Nakano, a pre-school teacher, Professor John Liu, and Miss Ann Chen, a duel licensed attorney from the United States and Taiwan.

Speakers invited for the forum to share their messages on the topic of Human Rights (left to right) Kent Lee, Maggie Lin, Conner Soules, Noemi Nakano, Ann Chen, and John Liu.

The United Nations takes this year’s Human Rights Day to encourages people to stand up for equality, justice and human dignity. Maggie Lin is a registered nurse who shared her point of view on showing respect for her patients through her daily practices from working in the Intensive Care Units for 12 years. Lin defines human rights in having pride and self-dignity. While working with patients in the ICU, she made sure all patients in the unit received sponge baths every day. Twelve years later, Lin is now a Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory Nurse, and continues to do her best to assure her patients are getting not just the minimal medical treatment but are treated with respect and care. She makes sure her patients feel comfortable with her before she starts the treatment, and also personally speak to the family members to explain the situation in order to help reduce their anxiety.

Southern Californians gathered on December 9, 2017 to celebrate the 70th year anniversary of Human Rights Day in Walnut.

Ken Lee, also from the medical field, is a clinical specialist that works at the hospitals taking care of children in the emergency room and plays a role as a mentor conducting trainings for other medical personnel. In his sharing, Lee compared the Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs with the needs of a society. While Maslow’s theory proposes a hierarchy of needs for individual, Lee suggested that, “as a society, as a world, the same needs need to be met before we can all become actualized and move forward as a society and a world.”

Noemi Nakano, a pre-school teacher with a focus in the area of non-violence parenting and child development, reminded all that children have the rights to learn about the concept of human rights at a young age in order to better understand how to treat others with respect. As an educator, Nakano entrusted herself with the responsibility to teach her students how to correctly express their feelings without the fear of shame or judgment from others. She explores the concept of unconditional love and encourages everyone to practice giving unconditional love to others, even those you do not know.

Conner Soules, an investment banker, pointed out that it takes acceptance and understanding that everyone is entitled to their thoughts and emotions, and not one belief is more ‘correct’ than the other in order for one to really ensure human rights and respect in a society that is filled with people coming from different cultural backgrounds and generations.

With recent Thomas wildfire blazing through the Los Angeles and the Ventura counties, Professor John Liu takes Human Rights to the next level by exploring people’s rights to not only survival but also sustainability. In particular, how to sustain in extreme weathers in conjunction with advanced technology. He proposed a technology of moisturizing the land in dry weathers to prevent similar natural disasters and avoid worsening due to dry wind blow.

Finally, the last speaker, Ann Chen, who is a duel licensed attorney from the United States as well as Taiwan, used the Tai Ji Men tax case to illustrate how human rights and taxpayer’s human rights of fellow Taiwanese citizens are severely violated by the National Taxation Bureau. The corrupted system of not following due process is the reason why 9 out of 10 households in Taiwan have received unfair tax bills. The issuance of tax bills with fabricated amount has no way of tracing back to the original calculation, and when trying to appeal unfair tax bills, the success rate of such appeals is only 6%, according to the statistics. Chen stressed that these types of corrupted doings of government officials in the NTB should be prohibited and every country should have a mechanism to rectify mistakes that a governmental agency made.

The Declaration sets out universal values for all people and all nations. United Nations encourages everyone to familiarize with the rights and stand up for all human beings. All speakers received positive feedback from the audience. Amy Yu is a business manager and she shared that the speeches have made a profound impact and urges everyone to know and stand up for their rights. AWC invites all to participate in the Global Endorsement of the Declaration on Taxpayer's Human Rights to add their voices and translate words into actions.

Source: Association of World Citizens