Youth for Human Rights International distributes a special version of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, called What are Human Rights? and designed to appeal to children.

Although the future well-being of our societies will depend largely on the extent to which governments and individuals honour and apply human rights, very little education in this field is given to those who will need it most: our children. To correct this omission, Youth for Human Rights International (YHRI) was founded in 2001.

YHRI teaches youth around the globe about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, helping them to become valuable advocates for tolerance and peace. One of YHRI’s first actions was to sponsor an international youth contest on the subject of human rights. Children from 12 countries participated and the top three entrants won trips to the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. In March 2002, Youth for Human Rights released its first major publication, a special version of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, called What are Human Rights? and designed to appeal to children. The booklet has proved very successful in helping kids understand their basic rights and why they are important for everyone. YHRI also has begun to join in the Church’s annual marathons and multathlons for human rights, distributing copies of the youth booklet to thousands of children and bringing youth summits to communities across the globe.

In March 2003, the first South African chapter of YHRI opened in Durban at a ceremony presided over by the city’s deputy mayor. Those participating, in addition to the Church of Scientology South Africa, included scores of police officers, human rights attorneys, representatives of nongovernmental organisations, and children from fifteen local schools. The first phase of YHRI’s human rights campaign in South Africa is to educate children, as well as adults, on how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, which claims thousands of young lives annually.

YHRI has also opened a chapter in Moron, one of the larger cities in Argentina, where leading representatives of the city government, including the mayor, announced the winners of a national art contest for children that YHRI had organised on the theme of human rights. Following the event, YHRI’s educational materials on human rights were placed in the hands of all children in the city’s ninety schools and the teaching of human rights was officially added to the curriculum.

YHRI’s actions have been praised by human rights advocates, legislators, teachers, police and humanitarians, many of whom work with YHRI to encourage young people to learn about human rights.

Raising Awareness of Mental Health Abuses

The European Court of Human Rights has held that the state may not adjudicate on the legitimacy of religious beliefs or the means to express them. Here Scientologists hold a vigil for religious freedom.

Psychiatry is another field where there is a lack of accurate information available to the public. The Declaration grants the right to be protected from cruel treatment, a category that includes ECT, the use of mind- altering drugs and arbitrary incarceration. That these practices continue, even under constraints imposed due to the reform work of CCHR and others, indicates that many government officials and politicians, as well as members of the public, remain unaware of how much damage they cause.

To fill this need for information, the Church and the Citizens Commission on Human Rights have for many years disseminated factual information about the harmful influence of these practices on individuals and society. In the 1980s, CCHR began publishing a series of information letters on subjects such as child drugging and ECT. In 1994, CCHR stepped up its actions in the field by embarking on its largest-ever worldwide public awareness campaign. In addition to its own website at www.cchr.org, CCHR has released two books and 13 publications in up to 17 languages, each exploring how psychiatric abuses have affected religion, education, morality, art, the justice system, ethnic minorities, children, the elderly and many other fields. In recent years, CCHR has distributed more than eight million publications of various kinds in countries that span the globe from Japan to the Czech Republic, from Israel to the United States — all of them meticulously documented in showing the impact of destructive psychiatric practices on our society as a whole.

“On the day when we can fully trust each other, there will be peace on Earth.” – L. Ron Hubbard

As a further educational tool, in 2003 CCHR launched a travelling exhibit which chronicles in graphic and compelling detail how over the centuries, continuing until today, those deemed mentally inferior have been brutalised and exploited in the name of “treatment.” The publications and the exhibit, which travels around the world, have generated an avalanche of support for reforms in the mental health field.

It is not only the human rights advocate that recognises the depth of CCHR’s commitment to public information and education on issues few others have entered; educators do so as well. Author Beverly Eakman, co-founder of the U.S. National Education Consortium, comments that “CCHR is the only organization that is playing hardball against psychiatric fraud and abuse. It was the first to seriously spearhead a movement against it. It has steadfastly insisted on the individual’s constitutional rights to freedom of conscience.... I salute CCHR for its incredible persistence.”