AFHR harnesses and gives voice to the creative energies of artists and activists in the cause of raising human rights awareness around the world. Working with like-minded groups and individuals, AFHR creates campaigns embracing film, music, visual arts and literature which are designed to inspire, educate and ultimately be a call to action that touches hearts and minds which is where truly, all meaningful change begins.
Visual Arts are perhaps one of the oldest forms of Man’s creative expression. Long before film, CD’s, DVDs, radios and televisions, artists expressed themselves visually. Artists in the Renaissance gave us paintings, etchings, sculptures and visions that brought in a new Age of Enlightenment. Artists for Human Rights, knowing the power of the visual artist from painters to sculptors to photographers, brings together these artists and ignites them in the name of basic human rights.
Already this has exploded into an internationally touring human rights art exhibit seen in New York, Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Florence, Italy. Artists creating pieces inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have captivated audiences around the world. With their message of peace, tolerance and human rights, Artists for Human Rights Visual Artists is at the precipice of a new renaissance, a renaissance of human rights.
Artists for Human Rights (AFHR) continues to raise awareness through our Art and Advocacy series featuring leading artists using their art to bring awareness of pressing human rights issues. Our guest lecturers include award-winning photographers, sculptors, painters, and multi-media artists whose impactful work is etched in our consciousness pushing us to stand up for human rights and demand change.
Artists have the ability to touch society so profoundly that positive change can come about as a direct result. Our greatest thinkers throughout history have always been the greatest advocates of human rights because they know so well how vital it is that the individual’s freedom of self expression is protected. Therefore I have formed Artists for Human Rights to give voice and bring about greater awareness among all peoples of the world of all of our human rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Because artists have the ability to elevate the culture, we as artists, uniting to make known the human rights of all peoples of the world, can bring about greater peace and tolerance.
– Anne Archer
Founder, Artists for Human Rights
UDHR proclaimed by the UN in 1948
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. View the list of the thirty basic human rights outlined in this milestone document.
AFHR welcomes all peoples of the world to join us – the only prerequisite – support and affirmation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We work with like-minded individuals from all walks of life, all disciplines, races, creeds and nationalities and allied organizations to bring the full force of artistic expression to bear in the human rights arena. As a united front, our intention is to enlighten and elevate the culture by raising our voices together thus bringing about increased sanity and tolerance in our troubled world.
There are more than 40 million people enslaved in the world today – that’s double the amount of people taken from Africa during. the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade.
According to federal government data, over 70 percent of people are held in privately-run immigrant prisons.
More than 72 million children of primary education age are not in school and 759 million adults are illiterate and do not have the awareness necessary to improve both their living conditions and those of their children.
“Where after after all, do universal human rights begin? small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works . . . unless these right have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted cirizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”