Human rights to make their mark on Colchester town centre

Essex students will highlight the importance of protecting our human rights by taking a traditional event marking Human Rights Day into Colchester town centre for the first time.

Each year, members of the Human Rights Society chalk the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights onto the steps between Squares 3 and 4 at our Colchester Campus. This year, to mark the 70th anniversary of the Declaration, the group will also chalk Red Lion Yard in Colchester on Monday 10 December. 

Dr Andrew Fagan, Co-Deputy Director of the Human Rights Centre, said: “I hope the chalking of the steps in town might encourage people to stop and think again about what they may have heard about human rights. 

“There has been a prolonged and sustained media campaign against human rights amongst some parts of the popular press, in particular, which have sought to depict human rights as either irrelevant to or even hostile to the concerns of many people in the UK. 

“I hope people will be pleasantly surprised to learn that there exist human rights to such things as healthcare and social security.”

The articles are written in chalk to symbolise the vulnerability of human rights, with the fading of the chalk acting as a reminder of the importance of protecting universal human rights. That commitment is reaffirmed each year by a new group of students.