Participation

What is a Human Rights Story?

To have your human rights recognised is to receive equal justice, equal opportunity and dignity without discrimination. Well known rights include the right not to be subjected to torture; the right to freedom of expression and opinion; the right to education. All these rights are outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which has spawned many Conventions including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention Against Torture.

We believe that human rights have a special place in our moral and legal systems and that they focus on special issues, specifically that of state responsibility including the actions of the institutions it controls. For example, if someone tortures me, then this is not a human rights abuse but a criminal act. However, if the state orders, encourages or ignores this torture, then it is failing in its human rights obligations and is committing a human rights abuse. This is important to take in to account when responding to the remit of Everyone Has the Right and choosing what stories you want to explore. It could be that you write about clear human rights abuses e.g.; the inhumane treatment suffered by asylum seekers; children denied education and forced to work from an early age and the impact that these abuses have on the people who experience them. Or it could be that you take a situation that examines human rights from different or unusual perspectives e.g a recent iceandfire play examined how mass vaccination programmes could be used to explore Article 29 of the UDHR, ‘Everyone has duties to the community’ and the balance between rights and responsibilities.

It may be that you examine the concept of human rights and create a piece that explores what it means to have them and whether they have achieved their purpose. We acknowledge that human rights need to be questioned and we understand that they are not just a uniform good but nuanced and layered.

Our overarching aim with this scheme is to nurture and encourage excellent writers who make human rights real and relevant to people’s lives by humanising these often complex and contentious issues. We are aware that this can often be perceived as ‘worthy’ or ‘earnest’ and we are keen to encourage work that takes a fresh and dynamic approach to the idea of a ‘human rights story’, creating surprising and entertaining theatre.

 

 

“Such is the complexity of ‘the subject of human rights’ that it is arguably better served by a theatre that reflects that complexity than by one that seeks to resolve it.” Rae, P., Theatre and Human Rights, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

You can  read Steve Waters’ article on the Guardian Theatre Blog about how human rights can be used in drama.