Celebrated every year on 19 August, World Humanitarian Day is directed towards honoring humanitarian efforts worldwide and propagating the idea of supporting people in crisis. On this day, OCHA advocates on behalf of the entire humanitarian community.
World Humanitarian Day 2021 – Global Challenge for Climate Action
The climate emergency is wreaking havoc across the world at a scale that people on the front lines and in the humanitarian community cannot manage. Time is already running out for the world’s most vulnerable people — those who have contributed least to the global climate emergency yet are hit the hardest — and millions of others that are already losing their homes, their livelihoods, and their lives.
With most climate campaigns focused on slowing climate change and securing the planet’s future, World Humanitarian Day 2021, will highlight the immediate consequences of the climate emergency for the world’s most vulnerable people and ensure that their voices are heard, and their needs top the agenda at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November.
Therefore, everyone is invited to join #TheHumanRace, which is the global challenge for climate action in solidarity with people who need it the most; and to put the needs of climate-vulnerable people front and centre at the UN climate summit (COP26).
Stand in solidarity with the world’s most vulnerable people by using these hashtags in your social media activities #TheHumanRace #WorldHumanitarianDay
Learn more at Humanitarian Day
August 23 is UNESCO’S International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. This day pays tribute to all those who fought for freedom, and, in their name, to continue teaching about their story and the values therein. Today is meant to inspire us in the fight against all forms of servitude, racism, prejudice, racial discrimination and social injustice that are a legacy of slavery.
Learn more about this day on the UNESCO website.
In 1943, Alejandro Bernal, a native Californian, and his family moved to a house on Ash Avenue in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Fullerton. Bernal’s neighbors in this predominantly white community feared that the presence of Mexicans in their neighborhood would lower their property values.
Failing to prevent them from moving in, the white residents filed an injunction against the family, requesting their removal from the house. They relied on a clause written into the deeds of lots for sale in Fullerton neighborhoods that supported residential segregation in housing covenants. The Bernals refused to vacate their new home, and sought redress in court.
On August 24, 1943, Judge Albert A. Ross of the OC Superior Court rendered a decision in the case of Doss et al v. Bernal et al, ensuring the Bernals’ right to keep their home. In reaching his decision, Judge Ross confirmed his constitutional objection to racially restrictive covenants against Mexicans as violative of the 14th Amendment. These same legal arguments would serve as persuasive precedent in overturning racial covenants on a national level, and formed the basis for overturning the educational segregation of California’s Mexican students in Mendez v. Westminster
Women’s Equality Day is celebrated in the United States on August 26 to commemorate the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. It was first celebrated in 1973 and is proclaimed each year by the United States President.
August 26th is the anniversary of national woman suffrage. Across the seventy-two years between the first major women’s rights conference at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, thousands of people participated in marches through cities like New York and Washington DC, wrote editorials and pamphlets, gave speeches all over the nation, lobbied political organizations, and held demonstrations with the goal of achieving voting rights for women.
Women also picketed the White House with questions like, “Mr. President, what are you going to do about woman’s suffrage?” “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” This was the first time in history that a group of people picketed the White House.
Learn more at: Women’s Equality Day
August 28, 1963: Approximately 250,000 people take part in The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Martin Luther King gives the closing address in front of the Lincoln Memorial and states, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’”
September 4, 1957: Nine black students known as the “Little Rock Nine,” are blocked from integrating into Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Dwight D. Eisenhower eventually sends federal troops to escort the students, however, they continue to be harassed
The United Nation’s International Day of Charity is observed annually on 5 September. The prime purpose of the International Day of Charity is to raise awareness and provide a common platform for charity related activities all over the world for individuals, charitable, philanthropic and volunteer organizations for their own purposes on the local, national, regional and international level.
Make a difference – volunteer in your community, make a donation to your favorite charity and if you’d like to help support OC Human Relations, please click here
