On Wednesday evening, Graham Minter from Amnesty International gave a thought-provoking presentation to the Junior Kingdon Society on human rights. Amnesty International is a non-profit organisation that campaigns for all humans to appreciate others’ rights and to end unfair treatment of others around the world. Caitlin Calverley (Second Form) recounts the evening’s events below:

“Our first discussion of the evening was about the history of human rights and how divisive the topic can be. We started off by trying to define human rights. I was surprised to find that our human rights, as defined by the UN, consist of 30 guaranteed rights; the list even included copyright!

The discussion was then extended to the various personalities currently popular in the news, such as Malala Yusefzai and Greta Thunberg, who each champion various rights. Malala is asking for the rights of girls to be educated and Greta is asking for us to take our planet’s future seriously. The group did not realise that these young girls are both standing up for one of the 30 human rights.

We also discussed Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who is being held captive in Iran. This is a breach of her right to a fair trial, her right to freedom, her right to marriage and family and her right to be innocent until proven guilty. I was surprised by the number of human rights being violated.

We closed with a fascinating discussion on how our School can help people around the world, whose human rights are being ignored and how we all must make small changes to benefit our environment. Simple changes, like reducing the amount of wasted food at lunch, would go some way to raising our consciousness of the human right to food for all. We discussed the fact that if we do not make some of these changes quickly, future generations will not enjoy the most fundamental right, the freedom to live.

I would like to thank Mr Jones and Mr Grindlay for organising and facilitating such an interesting Kingdon Society event, and Graham for presenting this important topic so skilfully and with such expertise.”

What a brilliant overview of the evening Caitlin, thank you.