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René Cassin, JW3 and Mitzvah Day stand together against food poverty

24 Nov, 2024 | Latest, Right to Food, Uncategorized

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Ahead of this weekend’s Mitzvah Day, leading communal organisations René Cassin, JW3 and Mitzvah Day have released a powerful joint statement – standing together to affirm a commitment to dignity and integrity.

The statement, which you can read in full here, was launched by René Cassin’s Community Engagement Officer Libi Sears, JW3 Foodbank Coordinator Amy Mendlesohn and Mitzvah Day CEO Stuart Diamond outside JW3. It has the endorsement of leading Jewish MP, Alex Sobel.

The statement raises the alarm about rates of poverty – and how, in stats released at the end of 2023, 4.7 million adults and 2.5 million children face food insecurity.

It continues: “As a collective of Jewish organisations invested in improving the material conditions of human lives, through engagement with human rights, food provision and facilitating opportunities for meaningful connection through social action, we are compelled to reassert dignity as an imperative, and as a hope.”

The statement speaks about how when René Cassin, the son of a Jewish merchant, co-drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights over 75 years ago, he wrote our collective legacy – working in pursuit of justice, respect and dignity.

The statement concludes: “As we stand together as a community, in the uncertainty of this current moment, in the heart of so much loss, fear and instability, this legacy is our anchor.

“Through seeking structural solutions to food poverty through The Right to Food and foregrounding collaborative work to encourage awareness of human rights, we face lives as they are lived: with faith, with hope, and everything in between.

“We strive for dignity through human rights. May this be our legacy, our hope and our success.”

This year’s Mitzvah Day will take place on and around Sunday, 24 November 2024. For more information, please visit www.mitzvahday.org.uk

Today, 10th December, is International Human Rights Day – the 76th anniversary of the signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. 

 

 

The Declaration was a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust. So, for Jews, today has a particuar significance. 

Although rooted in response to atrocity, the Declaration was forward-looking and optimistic. It spoke for the majority of people who knew a better world was possible. The fact that it’s co-author , the French-Jewish lawyer Monsieur Rene Cassin, could draft such a hopeful document so soon after 26 members of his family were murdered by the Nazis is a testament to his humanity and the power of human rights in general. 

Today, as the organisation that works in Cassin’s name, we are determined to ensure his Declaration’s vision of human rights for all is fully realised. Central to that work is a focus on so called ‘socio-economic rights’ – rights to everyday essentials like food, housing and health. This vision was best articulated in Article 25 of the Declaration: 

‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’.

Bolstering these rights would ensure everybody has access to the foundations on which to build a dignified, prosperous and meaningful life. They have been neglected for too long.

 

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