World Day of Social Justice 2023
The General Assembly proclaimed 20 February as World Day of Social Justice in 2007, inviting Member States to devote the day to promoting national activities by the objectives and goals of the World Summit for Social Development and the twenty-fourth session of the General Assembly.
Svitac (Firefly in Bosnia) has marked this day with a workshop for participants 16+. The activity started with a role-play. Everyone got a card with a character description, for example, 21 years old, female, art student, parents: doctor, an environmental activist. They stood in a line, and one person read statements like “You never have serious money problems.” If you can agree with this statement (always related to the character you have drawn), then you take a step forward. So the group ended up with a field where some people were far behind, others far ahead, an example of how it is in many societies. Some people have better opportunities in life because of their age, origin, gender, etc. We wanted to show these injustices with this role play. We evaluated it and asked questions about how it felt to rarely be able to take a step forward, whether it is in the hands of the people where they stand.
After that, we talked about tools against social injustice. For this, we divided the group into two groups. Each group was given cards with possible tools that governments could use to fight social injustice. The groups were asked to rank them according to which ones they thought were the most effective and important. In this way, we also wanted to show solutions to the problem at the government level and encourage the participants to work for them.
This workshop aimed to make young people aware of social injustice. In addition, we wanted to show possible solutions on the state level, but also on the individual level, and to encourage the participants to use these tools and thus stand up for more justice every day, even in small ways.
