Human Rights Day 2000 brought commemoration from around the world, with Seventh-day Adventist participation in programs in New York and Geneva.

Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, spoke live by satellite from Santiago, Chile, to a 400-strong audience at UN headquarters. Robinson, a former prime minister of Ireland, was in Santiago for the regional preparatory meetings for the UN Conference on Racism to be held in South Africa later this year.

“The recently concluded regional meeting in Strasbourg showed that Europe is facing up to racism more honestly than in the past, and there is the same willingness here in the Americas and Caribbean,” said Robinson. “There is a strong sense of need to link issues of gender and race, discrimination, women and youth.”

Asked how the Conference on Racism would be of practical help, Robinson replied that one significant issue was “how values of diversity and respect can be implemented.”

“We want to reach out to schools and ministries of education so that they can get involved in conscious thinking on the agenda of tolerance, openness, values, and the worth of every individual.”

Attending the December 7 meeting in New York, Jonathan Gallagher, United Nations liaison director for the Adventist Church, affirmed the emphasis on education and human rights.

“As a Church, we have long argued for the importance of every human being and the vital need to protect human rights, especially such fundamentals as religious liberty and freedom of conscience,” says Gallagher. “We also are totally committed to education, with more than 1 million students in our schools worldwide, emphasizing moral and ethical principles as part of our curricula. While Human Rights Day is just a yearly observance, we are trying to put into practice throughout our organization the spiritual values on which respect for human rights are based. We support all such attempts to improve the quality of life for every inhabitant of this planet, and commit ourselves again to defending and helping the poor, the oppressed, and the suffering.”