Chicago, IL — On the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we must acknowledge that the rights the Declaration sought to enshrine remain a distant dream for many people around the world.  

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One clear example is the right to human mobility. Declaring the right to human mobility has not produced legal frameworks that enable that right, nor policies and practices that integrate migrants in the fabric of society.  

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We live in a world where migrants experience violent rights violations on a daily basis.  Displaced people and migrants are systematically denied rights on the basis of immigration status or nationality. The dominant political logic on migration, based on containment and punishment, results in violations of human rights, especially when migrants are not white.  Rather than affirming universal rights, current policies around the world create harsh and dangerous conditions that discourage individuals from migrating. This is not humane.

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Seventy-five years years later, as we celebrate the anniversary of this visionary commitment to inalienable, interdependent, and indivisible rights, we must continue fighting for the full and expansive enjoyment of economic, social, and cultural rights for all people. We must protect the brave defenders of rights, including those who put their lives on the line to demand free and fair elections, the right to vote and to be elected. Defending democracy is fighting for human rights.

Fighting against racism, discrimination, xenophobia and the narratives of fear that allow extremist forces to erode our rights is another urgent task to which we all must commit.  Narratives that promote fear, division, and hate undermine all our human rights.

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Alianza Americas, a network of more than 50 migrant-led and migrant-serving organizations, calls on every person of good faith to renew our personal and institutional commitments at all levels of society and in all parts of the world to make human rights a living reality. We must work to make the ideal of rights into a reality that allows all people to live sustainably and with dignity.The struggle for human rights is at the core of who we are and what we do.

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Alianza Americas is the premier transnational advocacy network of Latin American migrant-led organizations working in the United States, across the Americas, and globally to create an inclusive, equitable and sustainable way of life for communities across North, Central and South America.