70th Anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights

After attending the Africa Peace Symposium in October 2018 speaking about Human Rights it was indeed a pleasure, as Deputy Lieutenant to the County of Greater Manchester representing Her Majesty The Queen, to welcome Kate Gilmore, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights to the City of Manchester. The event took place in St Peter's House, a University of Manchester building for students from across all the Universities in Manchester and Salford.
The event was part of the United Nations Human Rights Office for the High Commissioner's activities to mark the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Each event is shining a light on Human Rights and calling for people to Stand up for the declaration's enduring principals.
Manchester was chosen as a City to host this event because of the way in which we, as a city of people, are 'Shining a Light on Social Cohesion'.  We not only talk about it as a buzz phrase but actually do it in practice. 
In practice CARISMA's experience in shining the light on social cohesion has been by 'doing' public community engagement in tackling gun crime and enabling conflict resolution. We advocated for peace.  Whether this meant peace in the school playground, in the streets, neighbourhood, colleges, workplace or community. We galvanised people together to create a ground swell - a concerted citizen effort to come together and rid our streets of the gun and gang violence that was blighting our communities and neighbourhoods. This concerted galvanised effort has brought about a 92% reduction in gun and gang crime across Greater Manchester.  We all have a 'human right' to live in a peaceful safe environment, no matter where we hail from.
We boast of multicultural Manchester and, therefore, should respect that.As a DL I see many people choose to reside in the UK and Manchester (Article 15).  The articles were adopted in 1948 as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and established the equal dignity and worth of every person.  If that be so, let me get political for a second. Why does our Government still sell arms globally to countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc, countries which clearly abuse Human Rights?  Article 3 states: "everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." This is not simply an Enlightenment reflex, but a profound reaction to what went on in the concentration camps. So why do we have people committing knife crime and it being seen as a norm in social practice. We can look at Articles 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him - where does Joint Enterprise it into this? The principles of the UN Declaration of HR are as relevant now as they were 70 years ago.  
We are very honoured to host his even in our City of Manchester and shine a light on how we are standing up for Human Rights in Manchester and trying to build social cohesion.

Finally, in the words of Desmond Tutu: "I am a prisoner of hope. We are more connected than ever before, we have more knowledge and there are solutions if we work together."