items,
values
These everyday items are more than objects. They represent human rights. A key means you have a home. A phone with internet access means you can seek information. A credit card, cash or an ID card means you can buy food and access essential services. The list goes on.
These rights should be guaranteed for everyone, but for many, they don’t come easy. For millions of people living through poverty, violence or disasters, what seems ordinary becomes a hard-won achievement. Each step towards dignity often requires extraordinary efforts and courage.
Promoting and protecting human rights is essential for sustainable development. Everywhere we work, UNDP stands with people who defend and uphold human rights every day. In over 60 countries and territories, and in partnership with key donors, we also strengthen national human rights systems and build the capacity of states to uphold their human rights obligations.
Whether securing clean water, raising voices online, rebuilding after conflict or standing up for the planet, together we're showing that human rights aren’t abstract ideals—they are the foundation of lives lived in safety, equality and respect.
Clean water, clean future in the Pacific
The right to water connects health, equality and hope.
Across the Pacific, communities are safeguarding the fundamental right to clean water and health. In the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, where rising seas and saltwater intrusion threaten freshwater supplies, UNDP has supported the construction of climate-resilient rainwater harvesting systems and the rehabilitation of community water tanks connected to schools, hospitals and other key infrastructure.
Community boats carry materials ashore to support new rainwater-harvesting systems in the Marshall Islands.
UNDP
Through UNDP’s support for disaster preparedness and climate adaptation, local committees are developing water management plans that blend Indigenous knowledge and modern science, ensuring that access to safe water is not a privilege but a public guarantee.
Solutions include Fiji’s vanua approach, which entrusts local custodians to safeguard freshwater sources, and Kiribati’s use of ancestral weather knowledge to predict rainfall and guide conservation. In the Marshall Islands, traditional rain-harvesting designs have been adapted for modern buildings, increasing efficiency by 30 percent while preserving cultural relevance. What began as a technical intervention has become a movement for dignity and resilience, ensuring every household can depend on clean water even in times of crisis.
Right to participation and peace:
“If Not Youth, Who?”
The right to participate—to be heard and to help shape one’s future—is essential to building lasting peace.
Across the world, young people are bridging divides and transforming conflict into cooperation through their leadership, innovation and determination. Through the Youth, Peace and Security agenda, youth networks are mediating disputes, promoting inclusion and tackling the root causes of violence, showing that participation is a critical step towards peace.
In Colombia, UNDP’s Corredores de Paz (Peace Corridors) programme, with support from the Swedish embassy, is empowering young leaders from Northern Cauca, a region historically marked by interethnic land conflicts. They learn to shape local governance and resolve tensions, directly influencing public policy, with youth proposals now incorporated into the regional development plan. In Timor-Leste, youth-led podcasts like Coffee Talks are amplifying civic voices and connecting rural and urban youth with decision-makers through intergenerational dialogue. In north-west Nigeria, the Climate-Peace Hubs initiative, in partnership with Murna Foundation, is training young people to install solar systems, turning climate adaptation into a pathway for jobs, stability and hope.
Together, these young peacebuilders are demonstrating that when young people are able to participate meaningfully, peace becomes practical—and when their voices are heard, human rights become real.
Youth in Colombia have spent a decade building a shared political, social and community agenda, strengthening local peacebuilding efforts.
UNDP Colombia/David Baracaldo Orjuela
By training to install and maintain solar energy systems, young people in north-west Nigeria are helping to combat energy poverty and environmental degradation.
UNDP Nigeria
The "Coffee Talks" podcast aims to amplify young people's voices and boost civic engagement.
UNDP Timor-Leste
Right to a healthy environment:
Dialogue for the planet
The right to a healthy environment protects not just ecosystems, but the livelihoods of today and the rights of future generations.
Across Latin America, disputes over land, water and natural resources are a major source of socio-environmental conflict. In Peru, UNDP, through its partnership with the UN Human Rights Office and Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, is supporting the Ombudsperson's Office (Defensoría del Pueblo) to navigate these complex challenges by strengthening dialogue and accountability.
With support from Norway and the UN Peacebuilding Fund, the human rights body is now better equipped to understand and manage conflicts related to mining and land use, while tracking environmental agreements helps ensure that all parties uphold the right to a healthy environment. To engage communities, journalists were trained to report environmental disputes constructively and through a human rights perspective, combat disinformation, foster mutual understanding and avoid polarization.
Right to housing:
Planning for dignity
The right to adequate housing is more than having a roof over your head—it’s secure land, safer layouts and services that reduce risk.
Under a UNDP-UN-Habitat initiative for inclusive, safe, resilient settlements in the Sahel, authorities and communities in Adamawa State co-created a Resilience Framework for Action for Labondo and the wider Girei area in Nigeria. With support from Sweden, the plan ties land and housing to risk-informed urban growth: mapping hazard zones, improving basic services, guiding relocations where necessary, and aligning investments to protect households from climate and conflict shocks. It’s a practical blueprint that treats adequate housing as a public guarantee—linking tenure, services and safety.
Right to health:
Powering safer care and saving lives
The right to health is the foundation upon which we build our lives, pursue education and support our families. In some places, this right often depends on another everyday essential: reliable electricity.
In Paktika, Afghanistan, the Urgun District Hospital, serving over 51,000 people, had long struggled with sudden power cuts which endangered patients and compromised care.
To ensure the hospital benefits from reliable 24-hour electricity, UNDP installed a powerful solar energy system, saving fuel costs and allowing medical staff to work with confidence.
In the neonatal ward, nurse Sharifa monitors a 7-day-old baby weighing just 900 grams, lying in a neonatal warmer powered by the new system. "Now, we can give them a real chance for survival," she says.
A health worker cares for a newborn in the neonatal unit of Urgun District Hospital in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. A new 100 kW solar energy system keeps incubators, monitors and other essential equipment running around the clock, ensuring safer conditions for mothers and infants.
UNDP
Right to gender equality:
Reforming systems, restoring lives
Gender justice is a cornerstone of inclusive governance and sustainable peace.
Through the Gender Justice Platform, a partnership between UNDP and UN Women, with support from Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, more than 45 conflict-affected and fragile countries have strengthened justice institutions, improved support for survivors and advanced gender equality in the rule of law.
In Montenegro, the Women's Leadership Network was established to drive reforms and push for accountability. In cooperation with the Supreme State Prosecutor's Office, new regulations were developed to improve protection for gender-based violence survivors and criminalize femicide.
The fight for justice often means navigating deep-seated social stigma. In Yemen, UNDP assisted about 300 women held in prison, many of whom were there with their children. With UNICEF and civil society, UNDP helped to facilitate the release and reintegration of wrongfully detained women, restoring dignity and family connections. One woman, for example, spent an additional seven years in prison after completing her sentence, as no one from her family would come for her. With UNDP support, Yemen Women Union reconciled the woman with her family, and she was released.
A woman paralegal in Yemen meets with a community member as part of a locally led conflict-resolution process, helping people access justice where formal courts are distant or costly.
UNDP Yemen
The essentials we carry
When we protect human rights, we protect what makes us human—and what helps us recover in times of crisis. Human rights turn loss into rebuilding, fear into resilience and exclusion into participation.
Human Rights Day on 10 December is a reminder of how deeply rights shape our everyday lives. The objects we carry often tell a bigger story—of safety, dignity and equality. Let’s carry these essentials, protect and live them, standing up for the rights of all, everywhere.
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