Looking for Juan
July 5 – 19, 2019
Artists’ Night: July 5
UP College of Fine Arts
UP Diliman, Quezon City
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity,” Nelson Mandela once said.
And yet, ironically, we find ourselves today in times when the very value of human rights is sometimes questioned, its place in the hierarchy of societal needs often in doubt. Does the need for security and order trump due process rights? At what age is a person to be considered an adult and subject to the hard and harsh penalties that laws impose for transgressions? Who judges and says what is right when judicial systems fail us?
In the crossfire, it is the Child who suffers most. It is the Child who is orphaned. It is the Child who is most easily caught and forced to bear unjust penalties. It is the Child who loses his or her childhood when families are separated, or when parents are summarily arrested, or worse.
Still, it is the Child who remains our universal symbol of hope. Of rebirth. Of renewal.
Though he or she may be young and small, the Child is intelligent, valuable, and full of promise. The Child is naturally imbued with dignity and inherent rights.
The Child’s potential will flower if and only if he or she is allowed to grow with genuine freedom and abandon.
Thus, while as it is sometimes tempting to cast human rights aside in the name of other societal goals, our hope and future depends on our commitment to skip the easier path and instead affirm and remember that all human rights, especially children’s rights, matter.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights treaty which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health, and cultural rights of children. It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, and ratified by the Philippines a year later. It is the first legally binding international convention to affirm human rights for all children.
“Pagmulat,” is a call to open one’s eyes – to awaken to a renewed understanding that, despite all the challenges and uncertainties, the vision and principles enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child are worthy touchstones that we must all aspire to learn, imbibe, protect and celebrate.
*** PAGMULAT opens on July 5, 2019 (Friday), 4pm at the UP College of Fine Arts in Diliman, QC.
