The last several days I’ve been attending the 60th session of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. It’s a fascinating experience, the halls buzzing with diplomatic types, issue experts, and leaders of non-governmental and human rights organizations. Over the course of these days I sat in on conversations on all sorts of topics: the role of women faith leaders in peace-making, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, suppression of pro-Palestinian expression, human rights implications of new and emerging technologies in the military, and briefings on the human rights situation in the Middle East and North Africa, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, the Russian Federation, and more.
The monitoring and protection of human rights around the world is a central task of the United Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the newly established United Nations in December 1948 in response to “the barbarous acts which… outraged the conscience of mankind” in World War II. It was the first time countries agreed to the fundamental rights and freedoms due to everyone, everywhere. As the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reads: “Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human beings – they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. They range from the most fundamental – the right to life – to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty.”
The safeguarding and uplifting of human rights is also the ministry of the Church. For us it goes back to the very beginning of our faith’s story, to the sixth day of the Creation narrative according to the first chapter of Genesis: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…” Imago Dei. We are made in God’s own image. There’s something inherently sacred about our very existence that therefore must be honored and respected by others, that we must also be willing to see in the other. It inevitably follows that any injustice or harm done to another that ignores or seeks to extinguish that sacred spark is a sin against God. And so the prophets consistently called out such sin and called the faithful to action. As Isaiah declared: “Remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:16-17)
Today the world is teeming with human rights abuses, some of them as close as our own neighborhoods and cities in the United States. We need not look far to see all the ways individuals and groups are being denied their basic rights, treated as ”less than”, their inherent dignity and worth as children of God trampled on by hateful rhetoric, unjust policies, and a growing climate of aggression and exclusion. We are on a slippery slope toward a place that bears no resemblance to the highest ideals we claim (and yet have never fully realized).
The struggle for human rights is an urgent one around the world and right where we live. That struggle is also a spiritual one, a moral imperative of our faith. It’s our ministry as the Church to recognize and protect what God has already granted to all of us everywhere, a holy blessing of dignity and worth that no injustice should be allowed to diminish.
(Learn more about the UCC’s work with the United Nations here.)
The Reverend Shari Prestemon began her service with the national ministries of the United Church of Christ in January 2024. As the Associate General Minister & Co-Executive for Global Ministries she has the privilege of overseeing several teams: Global Ministries, Global H.O.P.E., Public Policy & Advocacy Team (Washington, D.C.), and our staff representative to the United Nations. She previously served as pastor to local UCC congregations in Illinois and Wisconsin; the Executive Director at the UCC’s Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi; and as Conference Minister in Minnesota.
Voices of the Journey
