My Voice Counts - the theme of this year's Human Rights Day - was the shared vision for young amateur film makers as they gathered at the Vienna International Centre on 6 December to attend a special award ceremony.
On the occasion of Human Rights Day 2012 the United Nations Information Service in Vienna once again hosted the award ceremony of a youth short film competition on human rights, which invited students between the ages of 10 - 20 worldwide to produce short films on the topics of sustainability, migration/ refugees, and global warming.
The aim of the competition was to raise awareness of the human rights of young people, to give students the opportunity to tackle this topic from a cinematic point of view and to offer them a platform for the presentation of their films.
The Competition was launched by the First Austrian Film Festival on Human Rights "this human world" together with schools in Austria and the support of the Federal Ministry for Art, Culture and Education, the City of Vienna, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Austria.
Winner of this year's youth film competition is 17-year-old Hungarian Eszter Janka, who convinced the jury with an unbiased animation film on freedom. Eszter met with the Hungarian Ambassador to the United Nations, Balazs Csuday and gave an interview to the Hungarian News Agency MTI and to Duna TV.
The Award Ceremony also honoured the four Austrian winning teams. All winning teams participated in a guided tour through the UN premises and were invited to lunch after the ceremony. One of the highlights of this year's Award Ceremony was a live performance of the two young rappers Bünyamin Celik and Baris Cetin, who portrayed their personal lives as Viennese-born "foreigners" in Austria.
In honoring the winners, UNIS Director Janos Tisovszky pointed to the fundamental role young people had to achieve the goal of including everybody in decision-making processes, adding that the numerous short films submitted to this year's Competition were clear proof of a strong commitment and engagement of youth to make the respect of human rights a reality for all.
