“The Right to Have Rights”
Open Call for Artwork & Proposals
Dominicans Love Haitians Movement is proud to present its second annual Nou Akoma Nou Sinèrji Haitian Dominican Transnational Symposium theme: “The Right to Have Rights.”While many contend the innate and inalienable nature of human rights, history and the present have shown that the absence of an entity (a country, a nation state, a community, an organization) to effectively uphold them can render this alleged fundamental birthright essentially meaningless. Use of the terms “dignity” and “worth” in the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was supposedly meant to extend inclusivity to all human beings under blanket phrasing like “all peoples and all nations,” “brotherhood,” and “all members of the human family” but has fallen reprehensibly short. In action, said declaration has been glaringly dismissive of the respective and systematic enslavements, genocides, and apartheids endured by marginalized African and indigenous peoples and diasporas worldwide in the past and present.
Therefore it is not enough to simply possess rights by virtue of being human—those same rights must likewise be enforced and defended. Effectively, this often translates to access to education, health, and civic participation, for example, with the facilitating entity serving as a gateway. So, what does this mean for those forcibly rendered stateless and those stripped of citizenship who have neither the protection nor the sanction of such an entity? What of those relegated to an existence on the peripheries of a given society as a result of being deemed “other,” “alien,” and thus somehow inadmissible by some contrived standard?
Inspired by the essay collection The Right to Have Rights and the theory of political theorist Hannah Arendt, the second annual Nou Akoma Nou Sinèrji Haitian Dominican Transnational Symposium will delve into the underpinnings of rights and their divestment:
Climate Justice and Environmental Racism
Resistance and Reclamation
Belonging and Dignity
Disallowance and Invisibility
Exclusion and Uprootedness
Vulnerability+
Dominicans Love Haitians Movement invites artists, performers, panels, and podcasts to submit proposals* related to the aforementioned topics.
For consideration, please submit proposals by Sunday, August 5, 2024, 11:59PM EST to: bit.ly/Nou_Open_Call
*public performances and audio proposals accepted
Dominicans Love Haitians Movement 