Right to a living planet

Written by Patricia Casillas, 15, Mexico

"Human rights"

You wonder why I put human rights in quotation marks. But I ask them, why do we want human rights? If there is not going to be a planet where we can exercise them, what use is it that I can be born free if I don't have a planet to live on? In the same way, what is the use of being assured of my life, liberty and security if my world is not assured.

Everyone talks and how good it is, that there is no slavery, that the law protects me, that I can come and go freely, that I belong to a nation, that I can get married, start a family and then if I want to separate, that I can to be the owner of my own house, that I can believe in who I want, that I can say what I want, as long as it does not affect third parties, and meet who I want, enjoy social security, dedicate myself to whatever I want to, rest and have free time, even have the right to educate myself and acquire culture.

And I would like you not to misunderstand me, that you think that for me all these rights are useless, but it is not like that, what happens is that I worry that at the rate we are going we will not have a planet where we can do all this, without On a planet we do not have how to feed ourselves, on which land to walk, contemplate the sky and get wet with the rain (but not with acid rain), contemplate the sea and be able to swim (but without sargassum), but nevertheless we are more concerned with the power each devastating time from hurricanes, storms, ultraviolet rays, melting glaciers, and many other things.

To make matters worse we have as an example that the president of the most powerful and influential country in the world, declares that everything that is argued about climate change and the transformations that our planet is undergoing and that are destroying it, are "fake news", and even you dare to withdraw your country from

the treaty of Paris, and do you know what the worst of this is? That he is exercising one of the rights contemplated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically 21, which allowed him to be president.

But thanks to people interested and aware of what is happening is that actions have been taken to save our planet, we have the case of non-governmental organizations, which with their actions make us understand these problems, or like the Swedish environmental activist, Greta Thunberg that gives voice to our world and organizations like the UN that asks for the human right to a healthy environment to be recognized, but unfortunately their efforts have not been enough, although they are on the right track.

That is why I consider and except for a better opinion from you, that we have to add one more article to this Declaration, number 31, but that in reality I would put it as number 1, and that would be the right to a living planet, whose wording I would propose to read as follows:

"All human beings have the right to enjoy a living planet, clean, healthy and free from any type of contamination in which human beings can enjoy and exercise their other rights"