Birthday wishes: world peace and all that crap

• By the ages of four, five, and probably six, I wished that my father would come back to life, but deep down I sort of knew that wasn’t going to happen.
• By 10 or so I wished for an X-Wing fighter, I got it and it’s still somewhere in the basement. But I don’t play with it anymore (please, I’m a Star Trek fan).
• By 16 or so I wished for a role in a Star Trek movie. Hasn’t happened yet but I’m enthused by my chances thanks to the reboot. Also wished for innumerable chance encounters with plenty of girls I had crushes on. As best I recall, nothing panned out, but I don’t really care about that now.
•  By 20 I wished I’d never opted to study applied mathematics and physics in university. Anyone sane would wish for that too.
• By 24 I wished for Kraft Dinner, a Dunkin Donuts doughnut, and a Molson Dry. Those were days when I lived in Africa and my food and drink options were quite limited.
•  I used to wish for world peace.

Ha! World peace. As if. Nowadays let me be more practical:

1.  I wish for the immediate release of Abdulhadi Alkhawaja, human rights defender who was arrested, beaten, jailed, and sentenced to life in Bahrain for defending the rights of others. Plenty of other innocent people are being held in prisons in Bahrain and also deserve to be released. Abdulhadi has been on a hunger strike now for over forty days.
2. I wish the Syrian government would stop the bloodshed. One life lost is one too many. Ten thousand deaths in one year are unfathomable.
3. I wish the Canadian government would do a better job of fulfilling its human rights obligations to the poorest of our nation, including the First Nations.
4.  I wish the Canadian government and other rich nations would do their part and commit to the 0.7% pledge, whereby this small percentage of a state’s gross national income goes towards overseas development assistance. Canada’s percentage is hovering around 0.33%.
5.  I wish that local non-governmental organizations working to protect the rights of others get the support they need to continue their work. This applies just as much in Canada as it does for small NGOs helping in rehabilitation and reintegration efforts of former child soldiers in Africa and elsewhere. These organizations are doing great work without all the fanfare.
6.  I wish that all the nasty guys on the International Criminal Court’s list are caught and put on trial the way Thomas Lubanga was.
7.  I wish governments, businesses, and average folks in a position question human rights abuses and violations do so more adamantly than ever before. I wish they could realize that there are solutions to nearly 10 million children under the age of five dying yearly from preventable diseases, there are ways to prevent the hundreds of thousands of women and girls who die yearly from pregnancy-related complications, and there should be more public outrage against millions of people dying in conflicts around the world.
8.  I wish some people would stop arguing about rights that aren’t worth arguing about, like gay rights. They’re just rights, please accept them and do your best to “get it.” There is no ambiguity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “all human beings are born equal in dignity and rights.” Please find something better to do – plant some flowers or go ride a bike, but stop getting riled up over nothing.
9. I wish people would stop thinking that poverty, disease, and climate change aren’t “their problems” – they’re everyone’s problems, and they will be our children’s problems too. Only they’re bound to get worse by the time our kids are as old as us.
10. I wish people would care more and hate less.