Each individual plays a role in either contributing to or breaking down racial prejudice and intolerant attitudes. This is the message of the Let’s Fight Racism poster campaign, which was launched by the United Nations Information Centre for the Caribbean Area (UNIC) during its Human Rights Day commemoration in Port-of-Spain on December 8. The campaign uses images of persons of different ethnicities to challenge the viewer’s perceptions and assumptions about other people, based on their appearance. The viewer is asked to consider what they actually see in each image and that the person being looked at might represent “more than meets the eye.”
These images can be viewed at the “Let’s Fight Racism” campaign site. The aim of the campaign is to promote understanding about how stereotypes, which often underlie perceptions and initial judgements of others, can perpetuate racial prejudice and intolerance. Further, the campaign seeks to encourage each person to take responsibility for confronting such personal prejudices, to take action for ending their own prejudicial behaviour and to encourage tolerance in others. The National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS) is the UNIC’s collaborator in the campaign, which will continue until December 2012.
NALIS will distribute campaign posters to libraries throughout Trinidad and Tobago and also will host talks and discussion sessions led by UNIC staff at some branches. At the Launch, acting executive director of NALIS, Lucia Phillip, confirmed the authority’s commitment to ensuring the widest possible reach of the campaign through NALIS’s extensive network of libraries. Also at the launch, UNIC officer-in-charge and United Nations security adviser in Port of Spain, Catherine Gilbert, addressed the theme of this year’s Human Rights Day commemoration, which is the recognition and celebration of all human rights defenders.
This year, these included the peaceful protesters in cities throughout the world who, she said, “reminded us that no progress has any value without human progress.” Many of these people lived in countries that were performing well economically but in which “human rights monitors were pointing to inequality, discrimination, lack of participation, political repression and the denial of many economic and social rights.” she said. Gilbert lauded the work of those and lesser known activists and called for a renewed commitment to the personal action necessary to uphold and protect human rights.
