Human rights violations around the world are on the increase – in recent years we have seen the rise of high profile tyrannies, such as those of Da’esh and Boko Haram, which have indulged in atrocities on an almost medieval scale.

We have seen 5,000 Yazidi women bought and sold as sex slaves. We have seen 276 Nigerian schoolgirls from Chibok kidnapped and forced into unwilling marriages and sexual exploitation. And, tragically, this handful of widely known cases is only the tip of the iceberg.

Across the world, minority communities and indigenous peoples continue to suffer the most brutal repressions of their fundamental human rights, often with unbridled impunity and little or no support from the wider world – a world barely aware of their existence.

In Ogaden, for example, a geographically vast area covering almost one third of Ethiopia’s total territory, more than 33% of all women have been raped, often by government forces who are actually trained to use rape as a weapon. Torture in Ethiopian prisons remains ubiquitous, though unacknowledged by the government. Many Ethiopians flee persecution by government forces into refugee camps in neighbouring Kenya; however, even there they are not safe. Many have been subject to enforced disappearances and/or extra-judicial killings, even from the supposed safety of a camp set up to protect them.

In Mauritania, more than 4% of the entire population remains trapped in hereditary slavery, forced to work for free for their masters from childhood until their deaths. 90% of those slaves are women and children; this is partly because ‘masters’ believe that their ‘ownership’ of a female slave entitles them to rape her whenever they please, often resulting in pregnancies over which, again, the women themselves have no power. High profile anti-slavery activist, Biram Dah Abeid, a presidential candidate in Mauritania's 2014 election and winner of the 2013 UN Human Rights Prize, remains in prison, following his arrest during peaceful anti-slavery protests.

Politically motivated arrests know no borders. In China, a respected economics professor, Ilham Tohti, has been imprisoned and sentenced to life for advocating for basic economic, cultural and human rights for the Uyghur people.

The Crimean Tatars, having struggled to recover from the genocide imposed on them in 1944, are now facing a new disaster: Vladimir Putin’s illegal annexation of Crimea, which has led to the exile of their political leaders and activists, renewed clampdowns on their culture, and restrictions to their freedoms of speech and association.

Crimes against humanity such as these are not making the headlines they deserve. In July 2015, Barack Obama visited Ethiopia, barely mentioning human rights and referring to the country’s repressive and dictatorial regime as “democratically elected”. Is it any wonder that much of the world remains unaware of many of the atrocities taking place when even the ‘Leader of the Free World’ is willing to turn a blind eye to such abuse?

International Human Rights Day should be a day of action for all citizens - it should inspire us not just to glorify institutions like the United Nations, or our idealized respect for human rights, but to act in the present day. What acts of violence and abuse do we see around us? What can we do to denounce them and to stop them taking place?

We at UNPO will continue to struggle for non-violence, democracy, and fundamental human rights across the world. However, we cannot make progress alone. To successfully defend human rights in an increasingly fraught political landscape, we must all work together to denounce the violations that continue to occur. Some positive steps have been made, such as the awarding of Rebiya Kadeer with the Tom Lantos Prize and IRA-Mauritania by the Tulip Human Rights Award for their peaceful struggle and fearless stance against human rights violations.

However, more needs to be done, and we appeal now to the wider public, to national governments, to intergovernmental organisations and human rights institutions to be more active in speaking out against the human rights violations, hidden under a veil of secrecy that characterize our world today, to work towards eliminating the vulnerabilities of unrepresented minorities and indigenous peoples, and to work actively against those who enact horrific abuses.

In the words of the Dalai Lama, “It is not enough to be compassionate. We must act.”

Photo credit: http://nidish.unblog.fr/2009/10/24/le-revolvert-noue-knotted-gun-de-carl-frederik-reutersward-une-sculpture-symbole-de-paix-de-non-violence-et-desarmement/