5 Broken Cameras
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A documentary filmed by Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer with no previous experience in video production who bought a camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, Gibreel. That same year, the people from Emad's village Bill'in (in the West Bank) discover that the security barrier route will cut through their farmlands and that the neighboring Israeli settlement of Modi'in-Ilit plans to expand onto disputed land. This is when Emad decides to start filming every Friday the peaceful protests of the Bil'in villagers.

Emad tells us the story of the occupation and the life of his four sons who grew up in the same village but have extremely different life experiences even at a young age. His first child was able to go swimming in the sea in the summer, the eyes of his last son have only seen conflict.

At times the documentary can seem controversial as we see that Emad's kids are always by his side. They experience violence and are exposed to danger daily. But throughout the film, you realize that sadly the Palestinians will face this harsh reality even if they just stay at home.

Isle of Flowers (Ilha das Flores)
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A film created by Jorge Furtado in 1989 in Brazil. The film visualizes a problem in society relating it to the life of a tomato from the moment it is harvested to the moment it is bought at a supermarket. The life of the tomato ends on the isle of flowers, an island full of trash. The pigs are fed with organic waste from this island and poor women and children take what is not suitable for pigs.

The film criticizes society in an ironic way. It shows how the tomato is traveling thru a chain where human beings with money grow and purchase the tomato. Then it is fed to pigs which are not human beings and only after the pigs ate, their leftovers are given to human beings without money. This implies that in our society people without money are less valued than pigs.

​​Uprising depicts the growing unrests in Egypt that culminated in the Arab Spring. It focuses on events that preceded the protests and shows that the Arab Spring wasn’t spontaneous, but evolved during the oppressive rule of Hosni Mubarak, who kept the country under emergency law for thirty years.

Director Frederik Stanton blends his material with what the protestors filmed effortlessly.
What began as a peaceful protest ended in a brutal suppression by the police – after only 18 days more than 800 people were dead and 6.000 injured.

The turning point was the decision by the military to protect the protesters, which ultimately led to the resignation of Mubarak.
Egypt has since faced difficulties establishing a stable government and meeting the protestor’s requests. Mubarak was succeeded by Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who then again was forced to resign by the military coup that was led by Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Al-Sisi, in military-fashion reimposed authoritarian security structures. To make matters worse, he doesn’t flinch away from persecuting intellectuals, artists, human rights activists and basically everyone who openly criticizes him. People who question his authoritarian rule on Facebook are arrested, with no prospect of a fair trial, since the system of checks and balances has failed in Egypt.

This oppression has left many people tired and powerless and the trauma that has spread over the people overshadows the resistance and strength that surprised the rest of the world in 2011. When asked to describe how Egyptians feel 10 years after the revolution one journalist responded that today no one is safe in Egypt and security is pure chance.
Exhausted from the revolution, the people are so hopeless that they are suppressing the arising of hope.
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When Stanton saw in the news what was happening in Egypt in 2011 he started randomly calling and emailing protestors who had posted their contacts on Facebook to help with the organization of the revolution. The people he spoke to gave him the contacts to other people he could contact and that is how he gathered the diverse group of people you can see in his documentary.

​WHEN YOU DON´T EXIST

“When you don‘t exist” is a short film by Amnesty International and it was created in 2012 for their campaign for the human rights of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers in Europe and at its borders.

The film shows what it feels like to be a migrant or refugee coming from a war zone in the middle east or a poverty-stricken country in Africa.
Negative attitudes to asylum-seekers and migrants are widespread.

European countries are stepping up measures to control migration. This can cause serious human rights violations. People on the move have their rights violated, often out of the public eye.

​Kony 2012

‘Kony 2012’ is a documentary made by the founders of the organisation ‘Invisible Children’. It focuses on Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony and how he abducted children, turned them into child soldiers or sex slaves and forever deprived them of their childhood.

The film was part of one of the fastest spreading online campaign to date, with more than 65 Mio views in 6 days. The film is not uncontroversial, with critics saying it simplifies the situation in Uganda, manipulates the viewer and had the purpose to win advocators for a US-American military operation. 

However, it drew massive attention to child kidnapping and the crimes of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which ultimately lead to Kony being indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes. But, to this day, nobody knows his whereabouts and authorities still hunt for him.

Just a few days ago it was reported, that 150 men stormed a school in Nigeria with machine-guns and kidnapped hundreds of students. Since then no one has heard from them.

​It’s a fact, that children are most vulnerable in times of crisis. Often, they are instrumentalised like in Uganda under the Lord’s Resistance Army. The kidnapping of these students is again an infuriating reminder that our fundamental Human Right to education is not as universal as we like to believe. ​

  Most Shocking Second a Day Video

'Most Shocking Second a Day Video' was created by 'Save the Children' in 2014. The alternative title of this short film is 'If London were Syria'.
The film tells the fictional story of a girl, who lives in London. It shows different videoclips of her throughout the year, starting from her birthday. During this year a political conflict in London escalates, which is why the girl and her family have to leave their home and flee from London.

The story of the film is based on the real experiences of Syrian children and was created to make the target group, which is mostly the European middle class, feel empathy towards the suffering of Syrian children by setting the civil war in an accustomed environment - London.

For children in Syria who were struggling before this COVID-19 pandemic, things have only gotten worse. After almost ten years of conflict, 4.6 million children in Syria are now malnourished. As the pandemic continues, Syrian refugee families will be pushed even further into poverty, and child labor will increase. Now, it's estimated that 2.1 million Syrian children are out of school.

There are currently 6.6 million people internally displaced in Syria and 5.6 million Syrian refugees with no place to call home. ​

                                                              Movie 1

On Her Shoulders
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‘On Her Shoulders’ is a documentary from 2018 and follows Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nadia Murad on her three-month tour of Berlin, New York and Canada speaking to politicians and world leaders raising awareness on the atrocities of ISIS.

In 2014, Murad was 19 years old, when ISIS stormed Kocho (Iraq) and killed 600 men and kidnapped young women and girls and held them as sex slaves. She managed to escape slavery three months later.
While using women’s bodies as a weapon of war is as old as humankind, systematic rape is contrary to popular belief an invention of the twentieth century. This weapon is especially used in conflicts involving ethnic ‘cleansing’.

In many cultures, a raped woman is expelled from society. If the rape victim is married, she has to fear being excluded from her family life. If she is single, she loses her status as a worthy spouse.
The aim of sexual violence is not only to satisfy sexual desires on a primitive level, but more than that, to destroy the enemy completely in the long-term, by attacking family structures and the chain of reproduction.
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Murad’s story became globally known, when she spoke to the UN Security Council in 2015 and urged the members to fight human trafficking and the weaponization of the female body. In 2017 the Security Council created an investigative team to collect evidence of ISIS’s crimes aiming at bringing them to the International Criminal Court and bring justice to the victims of the genocide against the Yezidi community.

                                                               Movie 2
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REWILD

REWILD is a short film created by Splash and Burn and the Spanish artist ESCIF in 2019. It was filmed in the rainforest on the Indonesian island Sumatra and it draws attention to the ecological devastation provoked by palm oil farming in Southeast Asia.
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Sumatra’s forest shrunk by 40% in the past two decades and has been replaced by palm oil, paper pulp, and rubber plantations. In 2015 a big part of the forest in Indonesia was burned to clear the land for oil palms. Air pollution from fires in Indonesia that year - some natural, some not - contributed to at least 12,000 premature deaths. Nearly half of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from cutting or burning forests.

In the short film the artist ESCIF and Splash and Burn carved a rewind symbol into a palm oil plantation in Sumatra to recover awareness and respect for the earth. It was made possible by the Sumatran Orangutan Society, on a new forest restoration site. After clearing the palms, diverse vegetation has been replanted.

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HUMAN A documentary directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

What is it that makes us human? The filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years interviewing more than 2,000 women and men in 60 countries who share part of their life experiences.

​Emotions and feelings are common to all humans but our different life experiences determine how we interpret them. Through the stories of people from all around the world, we can see how concepts like love, hate, happiness, or fear are interpreted in so many different ways depending on our gender, social classes, and culture. Who and how can we love? We don’t all have the freedom to just love. Why do we hate? Is it innate to all humans? Some people have experienced hate their whole life and don’t know what is love. If you hate can you be happy? Many people find happiness in money, some lost their faith in happiness because of money. Some have found happiness from being alive and some can’t be happy because they're exhausted from life.

Do we all fear losing our lives? What is fear for someone who has struggled their whole life? We as humans are complex and driven by our emotions we can be our biggest threat. That is why we need Human Rights to protect us from each other. We need to remember what makes us human.

The 10th of December marks the International Day of Human Rights.
Even though more than 70 years have passed since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we face violations of these rights daily.
From the 14th until the 18th of December, we will present two documentaries related to Human Rights each day – one feature film and one short film.
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We will decide the winner of this festival with your votes.
At the end of each post, you will find the link to rate the films.
The voting polls will close on the 31st of December, which gives you extra time to view the movies over the holidays. We will announce the winner of the Praxis Human Rights Film Festival at the beginning of January.
May the best win!

First, we have to understand what a developing country is. A developing country is a country  where there is a lot of poverty, hunger, and a low level of education. These countries have a rather  young population and people living there don’t get as old as people in industrialized countries.  This is mostly due to bad health systems in developing countries. Most of the developing  countries are in Asia or Africa.
 
It seems like the developing countries have the best conditions for COVID-19 to spread but still  those countries have the least cases in the world. Africa has less than 4% of infections and  deaths of the global total even though 1,3 Billion people are living in Africa. One reason for the small number of cases and deaths is the young population in developing  countries. If young people get infected with the virus, they mostly suffer only mild symptoms or  the infection goes unnoticed. However, this is not the only reason why there are not as many  cases in developing countries as there are in industrialized countries.  

The main reason is that developing countries, in Africa, for example, have experience in dealing  with diseases and epidemics such as the Ebola outbreak in 2014. They are even handling other  diseases alongside COVID-19 such as yellow fever, cholera, measles, and many more. By responding earlier and more forcefully by closing borders and early testing for COVID-19 some  developing countries could combat the virus very quickly. Some countries, for example, Mauritius,  began screening airport arrivals and quarantining visitors from high-risk countries before their first  case was even detected.  

Another reason why developing countries are dealing so well with COVID-19 is because of their  good cooperation with other nations. In Africa, they have the so called African Medical Supplies  Platform, where they share medical supplies all over the continent. In Europe, there is a similar  platform but it did not work in Europe because of bureaucratic challenges. 

Even though the developing countries handled the virus very well so far, they are afraid of the  second wave that has already hit Europe and North America.  

Moreover are the people in developing countries still affected by COVID-19. Not of the virus  directly but of its consequences on the economy. 
Because of harsh lockdowns, people can’t go to work and children can’t go to school. Even if the  possibility of working from home or online classes are provided, people cannot take part because  of bad internet connections. Many people lose their job and therefore their homes and they can’t  fulfill basic needs such as providing food and water, medical supplies, or even medical care. 
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Even if people from developing countries are not dying because of COVID-19, they might die  because of its consequences.

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  There are many reasons that stop us from solving this issue. For example victim blaming. When a woman experiences assault, why is it more acceptable to ask: what was she wearing, why did she drink so much, why does she live with that guy? Rather than asking: why does HE beat her, why do so many MEN abuse women that they claim to love, why do they rape, what is going on with these men?
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  In addition we have created this kind of culture of silence, which gives violence even more power. Most women do not report violence, because they are being degraded by their abuser and as mentioned earlier, they are blamed for getting abused.
  What is more, it seems that many men do not or do not want to understand what is consent. Using phrases such as: ,,boys will be boys’’ or ,,she was asking for it’’ is a way for perpetrators to excuse their crimes and in no way is this acceptable! Yes is yes and everything else is rape!
 
  Is there anything we can do to help the situation? -Yes, there is! Firstly, we have to listen to the victims - it can be extremely difficult to break the cycle of abuse and talk about it. Catcalling, sexist jokes etc are never okay, we should call it out when we witness it.

  In addition, we should encourage others to stop victim blaming and to stop normalizing that it is on women to avoid dangerous situations and not on men to create them in the first place.

  Furthermore, young boys do what they see men do and that is why we have to teach our younger generations about consent, respect and even challenging their abusive peers. Not by getting into a fight, but if for example in a group of guys, somebody makes an inappropriate  comment, instead of laughing or pretending not to hear it, we should encourage them to speak up and say that this kind of talk is unacceptable. If we create that kind of peer pressure, where abusive behaviour is being addressed by others and seen as a wrong thing to do, we would most likely see a great diminution of violence against women and girls.
 
In conclusion, violence against women and girls remains a problem, unless we stop being by-standers, call out victim blaming and start educating ourselves on this matter.

As a reminder, it is okay to talk about your experiences with other people, whether it is your close friend or family friend or if needed reaching out to the authorities to deal with the situation. If it is starting to feel too difficult to handle, especially mentally, it is important to seek help and talk about your experience(s) with professionals. The United Nations have provided helplines for all countries, for women in need. (link is at the end of the article)

Oftentimes women do not feel safe walking alone at night, which came up on our questionnaire as well, resulting in over half of the responses to say that they also do not feel safe walking alone at night. Therefore we asked them to tell us about what measures they have taken to feel safer in real life situations.

​We got answers of women carrying pepper spray(or hair spray) or keys with them, taking self-defense classes, calling somebody whilst walking alone or fake-calling, avoid walking around late at night by themselves, avoiding people they do not know and dark alleys, taking thai boxing classes, speed up their pace or start running if they feel too unsafe. ​