Information and Human Rights

By: Bernard Worthy

Information as a human right is something I have never considered until this semester, but yet it has been staring me in the face my entire life. Coming from an impoverished area of an Atlanta suburb I can totally relate to this issue, from the privileged and unprivileged perspective. Growing up, my parents always went the extra mile to ensure that I had access to whatever necessary when it came to my academics, because they were not afforded the same opportunities. I never really thought about it until high school when I realized that some of my best friends did not even have access to a working computer at home.

How can we expect the achievement gap to be repressed when there are so many basic holes like limited access to information? We want our young minorities to vote, but what if they canʼt log on to cnn.com every day to educate themselves on the issues and candidates? What about the out of work young refugee working class man that canʼt submit his resume to monster.com or he canʼt check it at the library frequently enough because it closes? On another note, we all want to help our communities, but what if the information about our Human Rights Cities initiative doesnʼt reach the people who want to help the most? It is their right to know about our work. Information as a human right is definitely a complicated and multi-faceted issue, but equal access to information is something that should be easy.