The Face of Human Rights

There is a remarkable paucity of pictorial material to draw on when discussing human rights and the way they are respected or infringed, yet we are deluged everyday in every medium with images that openly show violence. The result is a surfeit of cynicism.

The Face of Human Rights presents no such exotic cruelty; rather, the photographs it gathers together capture injustice and evoke real feelings, inviting the reader to participate in an emotionally and intellectually sincere manner. Images of normality in a peaceful world complete the picture and, though they risk losing the reader too tuned into spectacle, they are worth the risk.

The Face of Human Rights takes a novel approach to a critical topic, interspersing a visual interpretation of individual legal aspects with textual collages from historical and current human rights discussions. It offers facts and figures, and acknowledges the efforts governmental and non-governmental organizations are making to defend human rights and stamp out their infringement. This publication is intended to help an international public to understand the complex demands, connections, and obstacles involved in a just and fair life together for all human beings.

300,000 children under the age of 18 serve in government forces or armed rebel groups / there is no country in the world where women’s wages are equal to those of men / the U.S. government confirms that over 200 inmates have been wrongly convicted since 1973 / average life expectancy in the world is now 66 years, 20 years more than in 1960 / 1.3 billion people still lack access to safe water and 2.3 billion to sanitation / the adult literacy rate worldwide has increased by more than one-third since 1970, but 70% of illiterates are women / over a quarter of the world’s people do not get enough food / approximately one in every five black Americans is jailed at some time during their life