Our Rights, Our Freedoms, Always
A look at rights and freedoms through the camera lens

Can you picture freedom? What does free speech look like? Can you photograph the right to adequate housing? These are the challenges we face when we illustrate the rights and freedoms that underpin the International Covenant on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ― the treaties that shape contemporary understanding of human rights.

The two Covenants were adopted more than 50 years ago ― on December 16, 1966 ― by the United Nations General Assembly. To celebrate them, the United Nations has launched an initiative that highlights the timelessness of rights and freedoms and the work still required to secure and ensure them for all peoples of the world.  Celebrating its own 50^th anniversary, Lehman College is the ideal setting to present this rumination on the meaning of human rights today. Fittingly,  our campus served as the original home of the United Nations Security Council in 1946 (then Hunter College), and was described in the media as “the diplomatic center of the universe.”

The 1966 Covenants have brought about positive changes. Governments have paid reparations to people whose rights were infringed. Attention has been drawn to prisoners of conscience, some freed because of the pressure exerted by organizations like the United Nations. Yet challenges remain. To name but a few: failure to respect the right to privacy in the digital age, hate speech against religious and racial minorities, revocation of rights in the name of national security, and the failure of governments to adequately provide for health, education, employment, and economic security.

Here we look at pictures made by photojournalists ―photographs that depict myriad freedoms and suggest many interpretations. Through photojournalism we can juxtapose timeless rights and freedoms with pressing current events. The photographs illustrate and confirm for people what they may already know but tend to forget: they have rights and freedoms, inalienable and inherent ― now, and always.

This exhibition was curated by Maria Mann, Director of International Relations at the European Press Agency. Founded in 1985, the European Press Agency has photographers working worldwide documenting human rights issues, and it houses an important global archives of more than 4 million images.