Rome, December 10, 2020 – Today we celebrate the 69th World Human Rights Day desired by the UN in the wake of the latest world conflict. However, this day is part of a pandemic that “has had a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups such as frontline workers, people with disabilities, the elderly, women, girls, and minorities,” as stated in the official message issued by the Secretary-General of the Nations António Guterres. In fact, the virus has further threatened the human rights of those already on the fringes of civil society, making them often invisible, outside of media communications that have become monothematic.

As a Church, we believe more than ever in a response to the current crisis that is based on the solidarity and cooperation of the different actors present “on the world stage.” This is so that “no one is left behind!” A warning that we have heard repeatedly during these months of crisis; words that, however, run the risk of not scratching the abysses of differences that, in these decisive hours, are already excluding the majority of the “smallest and last,” and among these the millions of migrants and refugees always on the move, from the possibility of essential care that should arrive, in the same way, in the North as in the South, in the East as in the West of the planet.

“People and their rights must be at the center of responses and recovery,” continues Guterres’ message: that these are the simple but strict guidelines for all of us who build solidarity networks and believe in shared cooperation and development, but above all for those who have the primary responsibility to implement paths and strategies to get out of the current emergency.

Basel, December 10, 2020

Fr. Mauro Lazzarato, cs
Regional Superior of the Missionaries of Saint Charles – Scalabrinians
Europe-Africa Region

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