“Write for Rights” on International Human Rights Day

December 10th has been declared “Human Rights Day.” Although human rights must be recognized every day, having a day in the year to draw attention to issues of human rights can be a way to promote discussion and action.

Amnesty International’s Write for Rights campaign is one way to get language learners involved. Writing exercises on topics chosen by the learners could be submitted through letters or social media.

Human rights are key topics as part of peace education. From a language perspective, linguistic rights are some of the least recognized in the world and discrimination based on language, loss of heritage languages, and power imbalances based on language access are only some of the human rights issues related to language.

Perhaps this could be a point of discussion or action in your classroom.