… born free
and equal in dignity and rights

On 10 December 1948, 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. At that time, humanity was still horrified by the horror of National Socialism and its industrialised murder.

Today we say Holocaust, we say Auschwitz and we say never again. But before the extermination of human beings, there was contempt for humanity, there was marginalisation, there was denunciation, there was the „lack of imagination of the heart“, as the philosopher Karl Jaspers once called it.

Resist the beginnings.

And so the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with the sentence: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

The Human Rights Foundation would therefore like to help those who, in their often difficult countries, even under inhuman regimes, stand up for precisely this with great courage: That people are respected in their rights.

The 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be found here  at the UN.

The video was made at the Berlin International Literature Festival. Arab poets met American short story writers, South Korean poets met their Russian colleagues, South African novelists met a new generation of Albanian writers.

Article 1: Nina Hoss – GermanArticle 2: David Grossman – Hebrew    Article 3: Ai Weiwei – Chinese    Article 4: Patti Smith – English    Article 5: Viktor Yerofeyev – Russian    Article 6: Elnathan John – Hausa    Article 7: Nils Landgren – Swedish    Article 8: Petina Gappah – Sonah    Article 9: Goce Smilevski – Macedonian    Article 10: Herta Müller – Romanian    Article 11: Eva Mattes – German    Article 12: Elfriede Jelinek – German    Article 13: Priya Basil – English Article 14: David Van Reybrouck – Dutch    Article 15: Wolf Biermann – German    Article 16: Samiullah Rasouli – Dari    Article 17: Jeffrey Yang – English    Article 18: Nora Giannori – Italien    Article 19: Vivienne Westwood – English  Article 20: Can Dündar – Turkish    Article 21: Martina Gedeck – German    Article 22: Haris Vlavianos – Greek    Article 23: Pankaj Mishra – Hindi    Article 24: Karla Park – German    Article 25: Fadhil Al Azzawi -Arabic    Article 26: Nabihah Iqbal – English    Article 27: Simon Rattle – English    Article 28: Lina Meruane – Spanish    Article 29: Tom Wlaschiha – German    Article 30: Raphaëlle Efoui Delplanque – French