Statement of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle on the Occassion of International Human Rights Day
Today, December 10, the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) joins the struggling peoples of the world in marking International Human Rights Day. This year’s UN theme—“Human Rights: Our Everyday Essentials”—rings with deep truth: human rights are not privileges granted by states or imperialist powers; they are inherent to the people’s survival, dignity, and collective future. Yet it is precisely these essentials that are being violated, trampled, and denied on a global scale by the same forces who hollowly give them lip service while weaponizing the rhetoric of “human rights” and “progress” to launch wars of aggression and plunder whole nations.
Human rights cannot be separated from the political and economic systems that shape the lives of the oppressed. They cannot be upheld under a world order dominated by monopoly capitalism, militarism, and imperialist hegemony. As we mark this day, we confront a world gripped by intensifying crises: genocidal wars, economic plunder, massive displacement, starvation and hunger, ecological catastrophes, climate disasters, the suppression of dissent, and the criminalization of resistance.
We raise our voices with indignation at the ongoing assaults on people’s rights—from Palestine to the Philippines, from India to Haiti, from Sudan to Myanmar, and to every frontline of imperialist aggression. We reaffirm our solidarity with all peoples fighting for liberation, dignity, and justice.
Today we also sound the alarm on a dangerous and escalating situation: US imperialism’s mounting threats of war and military intervention against Venezuela. Once again, the US seeks to sabotage the sovereignty of a nation that refuses to bow to imperialist dictates. It is utilizing its repeated playbook of using fabricated narratives and the economic coercion of sanctions warfare to attempt regional destabilization and justify open aggression. The threat of imminent war—under the guise of “restoring democracy” or “protecting regional stability”—is a familiar imperialist script used to mask economic interests and geopolitical domination.
ILPS condemns in the strongest terms this renewed US war drive in Latin America. An attack on Venezuela is an attack on the sovereign rights of all peoples of the Global South. It is an assault on the collective aspiration for independence, social justice, and genuine democracy.
We stand with the workers, peasants, Indigenous peoples, students, women, and grassroots communities of Venezuela who are defending their nation against imperialist intervention and resisting the violent destabilization efforts of US-backed elites.
On this Human Rights Day, we declare:
- Human rights are not “everyday essentials” under imperialist rule—they are everyday targets.
- They are violated through blockades and sanctions.
- They are violated through US-led militarism and proxy wars.
- They are violated through repression of activists, community leaders, and movements fighting for liberation.
- They are violated wherever imperialism seeks to subjugate a people and exploit their land, labor, and resources.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the right of all peoples to resist tyranny, oppression, and aggression. Today, that right must be upheld more fiercely than ever. Resistance is not only justified—it is necessary.
While bourgeois notions of human rights tend to emphasize individual, civil-political liberties (like private property), which critics argue can entrench the existing economic order, the concept of people’s rights/liberation champions collective rights and views political freedoms as inseparable from socio-economic justice (including the rights to health, housing, and self-determination). The significance of this distinction is the recognition that genuine freedom requires not merely relief from state repression, but a fundamental transformation of the systemic economic and social roots of oppression.
We hold that the assertion of people’s rights is inseparable from organized struggle against imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism. The people must rise, organize, and collectively fight to reclaim what is theirs: land, labor, sovereignty, and the future.
We therefore reaffirm:
- Human rights of the individual can only be achieved through the realization of peoples’ rights for the whole collective
- Solidarity with all political prisoners worldwide who are persecuted for defending people’s rights and liberation.
- Support for the Venezuelan people’s resistance to US imperialist threats and intervention.
- Support to the Palestinian people’s unyielding struggle for national liberation against Zionist occupation and US imperialist backing.
- Commitment to strengthen global mass movements confronting tyranny, neoliberal plunder, and fascist repression.
- Human rights will never be guaranteed by declarations alone. They are won and defended through struggle—by the organized power of the people.
Assert people’s rights! Resist imperialist aggression!
Oppose U.S. threats of war against Venezuela!
Free all political prisoners!
Advance the struggles for national liberation and genuine democracy!
Long live the resisting peoples of the world!
Long live international solidarity!
Down with U.S. imperialism!
Down with fascism and reaction!
Long live the people’s struggles!
Signed,
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
