It's been 70 years since the United Nations universal declaration of human rights was adopted, and we've come a long way in the last seven decades, but we haven't come far enough. For millions of people around the world, those universal promises and protections are nothing but a distant dream. The 30 articles that we hold so dear have little meaning to the people in Yemen or Venezuela, Syria or South Sudan, Somalia or Saudi Arabia. Men, women and children who struggle and fight each day just to stay alive do not enjoy the rights and protections drafted following the horrors of the second world war and the Holocaust. Many are forced to flee their homes and their former lives in search of safety, faced with journeys that are often as dangerous as the one they hope to leave behind as they cross the Mediterranean, or Mexico, in pursuit of a safe haven.

But it is not just those in war-torn regions that are denied basic rights; we see human rights abuses in western civilisation. In the so-called land of the free, US citizens are denied basic rights, human rights, on a daily basis, and it is evident that members of the BME community do receive harsher prison sentences than white members. The US has a leader who is hostile to refugees and he thinks it is okay to forcibly break up families and imprison children whose only crime is to flee famine, war and persecution. Some families are not reunited and despite this, he is sometimes idolised by some people on the far right who hope to emulate him.

Closer to home, our wheelchair users cannot travel together for any distances and be companions on a train or bus because our infrastructure is not equipped to ensure that equality. Also close to home, just down the road in Swansea, in Cardiff, we have a homeless epidemic, where men and women, many of whom are ex-forces, are denied their article 25 rights. Rather than ensuring these poor unfortunate souls have a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of themselves and of their families—including food, clothing, housing and medical care—some politicians are concerned with ensuring homeless people do not make their high streets look unsightly. In a park in Swansea the other day, I came across a person sleeping behind the bushes, hidden from view, wrapped in a blanket, ashamed to be homeless, and at that moment in time I felt ashamed to be a politician.

We also have politicians and entire political parties who attack people based upon their religious views or their choice of dress, and seek to pit communities against one another and make celebrities out of people who spread racism, bigotry and misogyny online. And we have a right—we have to stand up to these people: people who want to see this document torn up, people who would love to see legally binding human rights removed, people who put petty nationalism before humanism.

On 10 December 1948, the majority of world leaders had the foresight to see that our future did not lie in more warfare and division but that recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. We have to defend these rights from those who would see them torn up and diluted, not just from the likes of Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, Tayyip Erdoğan or Kim Jong-un, but from the likes of Gerard Batten and Tommy Robinson—Gerard Batten, who obviously thought that a woman's place was not in politics. Hopefully, it won't take another 70 years before all 7 billion of us who share this planet enjoy the same inalienable rights ratified by world leaders on 10 December 1948. I will be supporting both the amendments, Rhun, and will acknowledge that extremism in any form, whether it be extreme left, extreme right—anywhere—is not conducive to our environment and society. Because we are all equal regardless of the colour of our skin, the religion we follow, our sex, our physical ability, our economic situation or the country we live in, and the sooner everyone accepts that, the more peaceful our planet will be. Diolch yn fawr.