A Logo for Human Rights.

I send you this e-mail, in order to present and inform you about an initiative, which is taking place at the moment.

What is it about? Nearly everybody knows that a heart symbolizes love and a dove means peace. But how can we depict human rights? The answer is simply that we can’t: there is no logo for human rights. There are 6.8 billion people living on this planet, all of them vessels of human rights – and yet we have no way of transcending all borders to communicate this universal bond.

This gap is now to be filled. World Press Freedom Day, on 3 May, has seen the launch of a world-wide competition to find a human rights logo. Anyone can take part and submit an entry. The best suggestions will be put to an international online vote starting at the end of August. The winning logo will then be presented in September, when the United Nations General Assembly meets in New York.

Who is running this initiative and who is supporting it? The online competition platform was created by nine countries representing different regions of the world and various cultural and social traditions.

Furthermore the logo competition is supported by a jury of renowned and high-ranking personalities. They include the Foreign Ministers of the 9 partner countries, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay (South Africa) and four Nobel Peace Prize winners – Aung San Suu Kyi (Myanmar), Shirin Ebadi (Iran), Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh) and Mikhail Gorbachev (Russia) – as well as Angelina Acheng Atyam (children’s rights activist, Uganda), Waris Dirie (supermodel and women’s rights activist, Austria/Somalia), Roland Emmerich (Hollywood director and producer, Germany), Carolyn Gomes (human rights activist, Jamaica), Juanes (pop star and peace activist, Colombia), Somaly Mam (human rights activist, Cambodia), Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu (human rights activist, Sri Lanka), Jimmy Wales (wikipedia founder, USA), and internationally renowned design experts such as Ahmad Humeid (Jordan), Javier Mariscal (Spain) and Erik Spiekermann (Germany).

What happens now? Ideas for the logo can be sent in from 3 May until 31 July. All the entries will be put online at www.humanrightslogo.net, where people can leave comments and rate the designs. The jury will then whittle down the 100 best entries to create a top ten. An open, world-wide online vote will then run from 27 August until 17 September to choose the winner from among the top ten. The winning logo will be presented at the end of September alongside the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

We would be very pleased if you could use the attached material, for instance by putting it on your Homepage, including it in your social media account, spreading it on Twitter and Facebook.

In return we would be happy to feature the logo of your institution in our supporters section on our website.

Please visit as well our channel “humanrightslogo” on youtube, where you can find the teaser trailer of the initiative, a video message from Aung San Suu Kyi and more: http://www.youtube.com/user/humanrightslogo

For any support and commitment we want to thank you very much in advance!

Kind Regards

Philipp Koch

Project management