The price of silence: commemorating the UN Declaration of Human Rights

Amnesty International has just launched a viral ad that uses special effects to show members of the public preventing human rights abuses to mark the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this week. Sixty years after the declaration was signed, millions are still denied basic human rights. Many governments still show more interest in abusing power than respecting those they lead.

But hope exists.

The ad aims to show that individual members of the public have the ability to protect people's rights in other parts of the world. It features a series of clips of people doing ordinary things at home. Each clip then cuts to show TV footage of a situation where human rights abuses are taking place. In each case the member of the public is then digitally inserted into the TV footage to make it look like they were personally responsible for stopping the abuse.

The 90-second ad is set to the song Until the Day is Done by REM.



Update its here now.

Another video recently released by Amnesty is the "Price of Silence" [ hat tip Frogblog]. A fantastic music video, it features the UN General Assembly as well as musicians, one who was born in a Chinese labour camp, another was born in war-torn Sudan and taken from his family home when he was six years old, and sent to fight with the rebel army in Sudan’s bloody civil war. I`d encourage you to watch it.



You can also buy this track on iTunes. All proceeds go to Amnesty International.