THE 13th annual Oxford Human Rights Festival will start tomorrow and run until Saturday, February 21.

Our programme will feature a wide range of screenings which fall into three categories: Refugees, Women’s Rights and Politics and Revolution.

War, crime and conflict have been on the front pages of newspapers for years now.

We reflectively look back, in a melancholic manner thinking ‘it doesn’t have to be like this’.

We live in a violent world that pushes people to act differently, to be less human and to be colder and more distant.

The struggle to maintain our place in the world is getting tougher while the fight to remain privileged with our human rights is becoming more and more difficult.

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It is one thing when the problem is somewhere else, in other countries, across other continents, but we, as part of the Oxford Human Rights Festival think differently.

What if the problem was in your neighbourhood, next door to you? How would you react?

Spread across four days, the themes for this year’s festival will animate panel discussions and engage audiences with movies such as Private Violence, a film about domestic violence, and Infiltrators, a film about everyday battles in a segregated Palestine.

Films such as Syria Inside, a collaboration of work by Syrian activists, artists and comedians, and Evaporating Borders, which is about asylum seekers, will all shed new light on human rights issues across the world.

This year we are fortunate to have with us illustrator and animator George McBean, who will be sharing his life experience as well as his life’s work.

Mr McBean has retired as head of UNICEF’s graphics section.

During his career he was fundamental in forming one of UNICEF’s most successful partnerships with more than 100 animation studios worldwide, including Disney, Pixar, Warner Bros, Dreamworks, Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network.

His work is the centrepiece of this year’s festival because it is dictated by human rights issues and he has had a great impact on finding humanitarian solutions to problems everywhere he goes.

His work is currently displayed in the Glass Tank exhibition space at Oxford Brookes Headington Campus.

Entry to the exhibition and all the festival activities is free for all.

Mr McBean will also be present during the first day of the festival, tomorrow for a Q&A session and talk about his life’s work, and an afternoon graphics workshop with the students.

The Oxford Human Rights Festival has reached its 13th anniversary and this year students studying Applied Design in Architecture and Development and Emergency Practice, have worked together to bring something really unique to the public.

I found the collaboration between Architecture and DEP most impressive as these are two unique realms which, when placed together, can benefit from one another’s experience and global knowledge of difficult situations and mind-blowing solutions.

What we are trying to do with the festival is make an impact.

It is a way of raising awareness of present, pressing issues that have an effect not just on some people, but all people.

The time has passed for thinking that ignorance is bliss.

We are here to start a small conversation which could have a big impact. All it takes is you.

Visit oxfordhumanrightsfestival.org for more information about the festival.