Sheena Chohan was selected as the first Indian approached by the office of the United Nations’ Human Rights High Commissioner, Volker Türk, to help him promote the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights; her efforts have gone so viral that she’s number 1, 2 and 3 on Google out of 274 million searches.
Sheena, who has been South Asian Ambassador for the world’s largest non-governmental human rights education campaign – United for Human Rights (www.humanrights.com) for over ten years, has used her position as an actress to help spread awareness of basic rights and equality to over 160 million people. High Commissioner Türk’s office noticed this and selected Sheena as the first celebrity from India to request to help promote human rights including the right to equality, education and social security. Sheena Chohan took such major action to spread this awareness that if you search “Indian Actor Human Rights” she now takes the 1st, 2nd and 3rd top spots on Google.
Sheena, who was awarded the Hero Award at the United Nations in New York for her awareness campaign said: “I was so humbled when High Commissioner Türk’s Office reached out to me on Instagram and selected me as the first Indian to ask to help on this most important campaign. Awareness of both the Indian Constitution and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is vital, because knowledge of our right and responsibilities is what brings decency, unity, peace and stability to our great nation. We must come together and spread awareness of our rights and make human rights education mandatory in all schools so we can end discrimination, ensure all have education and social security and that all of our basic rights stop just being words on paper and instead are followed and enjoyed. Please, take a moment and visit and share www.humanrights.com so we can all understand our basic rights and achieve equality.”
The main action that Sheena took that caught the High Commissioner’s Office’s attention was her work with artists like Preety Zinta, Sonakshi Sinha, Oscar Winner – Guneet Monga, Raveena Tandon, Sonu Sood and many more, on a podcast titled Born Free and Equal on HubHopper. On that podcast Sheena worked with the stars to read from the Indian Constitution and UN’s Declaration and also quote from the Supreme Court of India, so Indians can hear what their rights and responsibilities are, how they relate to day to day life, what the main human rights issues of the day are and stories from the celebrities about how they’ve fought for these rights. Sheena also hosted events where Preety Zinta, Guneet Monga and PR power-house Rohini Iyer talked about the importance of women knowing their rights so they could achieve safety, equality and respect and another in-person event with famed director Imtiaz Ali about Freedom of Thought.
About her next steps with the UN High Commissioners’ program, after achieving number one on Google, Sheena said: “The two most important steps to improve human rights in India are awareness of basic rights and mandatory human rights education in schools. United for Human Rights has committed to giving free education kits, shipped for free from the United States, to any school or university in India. Educators can visit www.humanrights.com to avail themselves of a kit for their place of education. This 75th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is so important because India is proudly becoming a super power, with the world’s fastest growing economy and also largest population on Earth, so it’s vital that we realise we also have one of the world’s most admired Constitutions, and make sure we read and understand it. Our Constitution was written in complicated language with a lot of words that need to be looked up in the dictionary to make sure they are understood, which is why United for Human Rights has made 30 short films that have been seen by over 700 million people, to help make our rights easier to understand. Let’s all make sure during this special celebration year that we know and spread awareness of our basic rights, so we can achieve equality and end discrimination!”
Sheena Chohan is an Indian feature film, web series and theatre actress. She was nominated as Best Actress in the Dubai Film Festival and also at the Shanghai Film Festival, alongside Kiera Knightley and Kate Beckinsale, for her leading role in the international film, “Ant Story” aka “Piprabidya” which was bought by Netflix. She made her feature film debut in “The Train”, directed by national award-winning director, Jayaraj, opposite the south superstar, Mammootty. Next, Sheena shot two films with the national award-winner, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, named “Mukti” and “Patralekha” based on Rabindranath Tagore’s Poems, which led to her being called an It Girl by FilmFare. Sheena has recently shot for the forthcoming Hollywood film “Nomad”, an epic sci-fi, being shot in 27 countries and 7 continents, directed by award-winning American director, Taron Lexton. She starred in the 2nd series of City of Dreams, The Fame Game on Netflix and opposite Kajol in The Trial on Disney Hotstar. She will next be seen in as the lead female role opposite Subodh Bhave in the Hindi biographical feature Sant Tukaram, directed by Aditya Om, then as the lead negative role in a web-series where she plays a She Devil. In 2019, Sheena was given the Hero Award at the United Nations in New York for her work as South Asia Ambassador for United For Human Rights.
