Human Rights

Objectives
 To enable individuals to value human
Rights
 To promote human rights awareness
about the significance
 Develop sensitivity for human rights
violations
 What are Human Rights?
 Human Rights refer to the basic
rights and freedoms to which all
human beings are entitled.
E . g: The right to life and liberty.
Freedom of thought and
expression.
Equality before law.
 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS
 When the atrocities committed by Nazi
Germany became apparent after the
Second World War, there was as a
general consensus within the world
community that the United Nations
Charter did not sufficiently define the
rights similar to the ones of Bill of Rights
in the U.S.A and the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen in France.
 .
 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS
 The proclamation was ratified
during the General Assembly on 10
December,1948 by a vote of ’48’
in favor, and ‘0’against.
 It consists of 30 articles which
outline the view of the United
Nations General Assembly on the
human rights guaranteed to all
people.
 Human Rights are universal rights held to
belong to individuals by virtues of their being
human

 It includes civil, political, economic, social and

cultural rights and freedoms.

 Human Rights are universal , they belong to

each of us regardless of ethnicity, race,
gender, sexuality, age, religion, political
conviction, or type of government.
 Human Rights are absolute and innate.

 They are not grants from states, and thus

cannot be removed or denied by any
political authority.

 They do not require and are not negated by

the absence of , any corresponding duties.
 Freedom of Speech Freedom from Fear

Freedom to Vote
Freedom from Torture

Freedom of Choice
Freedom from enslavement

Freedom of Religion
- Abuse violence and discrimination
against women are widely tolerated and
systematic.

- The issues with women’s rights are

still being ignored and remain as a
‘social epidemic’.

- Many governments turn a blind eye

towards the increasing problems with
the discrimination and violence against
women

- Abused victims of rape, unfair

treatments in the workplace,
domestic violence etc., have got
no one to turn to..
 Domestic Servitude
 Hasits roots in the practice of
slavery of the past

 Denialto individuals or groups

of a particular freedom, to
have control over their own
lives
 What are the problems?
Child Soldiers
• India: Child Soldiers Global Report 200
There are indications of under-18 s in
government armed forces as voluntary
recruitment is possible from 16. There
is widespread use of child soldiers,
some as young as 11, by armed groups
in various regions.
 Child Labour
In many third world countries, children
from underprivileged families are often
sent to factories, farms etc to work.
The condition can often be awful and
there is a high chance of getting injured
or killed. These children are usually
underpaid.
 Child Abuse
Police Abuse and Killings of Street Children
: At least eighteen million children live or
work on the streets of India, laboring as
porters in railway stations or bus
terminals, as rag pickers, and as vendors
of food, tea, or handmade articles.
These street children are routinely
subjected to arbitrary and illegal
detention, torture, and extortion,
and on occasion, murder at the
hands of police who engage in these
violations of international and Indian law
with impunity.
Human
Trafficking
What is Human Trafficking?
 Illegal transportation of people
for forced labour, sex exploitation,
forced marriages…..
 Over one million people trafficked
annually
 Major profits for both individual
traffickers and organised criminal
groups (Mafia) who mislead/deceive
victims: fake advertisements, mail-
order catalogues etc.
Traffickers use blackmail, abuse, and threats
to force victims to comply with their wishes in the
destination country
Very often, cases go unreported
Usually caused by poverty/lack of economic
opportunities, especially for women and
children, and a demand for certain services in the
destination country
 The who and the what
Who is targeted by traffickers?
 mainly women and children

Why are these people targeted by traffickers?

 Generally poorer and own less property
 Less well educated and more prone to the tricks of traffickers

What happens to these people?

 Victims have their passports removed and destroyed
 Themselves or families threatened
 Bonded by debt
 Arranged marriages
 Slave labour
Where does trafficking take
place?

Trafficking is a global issue.

 HUMAN RIGHTS IN
PEACE KEEPING OPERATIONS
 Background:
Protecting Human Rights and preventing violations is
important to;

• Protect the host country population

• Build confidence and de-escalate conflicts
• Prevent future conflicts
• Enhance the effectiveness of peace operations
All peacekeepers should have a general
awareness of Human Rights
 Nature of today’s conflicts

• Most frequently fought within borders, often

involving forces fighting for autonomy, freedom
from oppression and social and political
injustices
• The main victims are non-combatants
• Human Rights are violated on a large scale
• Accompanied by massive humanitarian crises
 HUMAN RIGHTS
HUMAN WRONGS
Human Rights
Martin Luther King
A campaigner for Civil Rights in the
USA in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In
1963 he made his famous “I have a
dream speech”.
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi wanted
independence from
British rule in India.

He usedAa technique
called “Passive
Resistance” to get
what he wanted.
Mother Theresa

A catholic nun who worked

with the poor and needy.

She did much to help the

people of Calcutta in India
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was
sentenced to life in prison
for speaking out
against the government in
South Africa. He was
awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for his work in 1993.
Human Wrongs
War
Innocent people get
caught up in war. Some
children join in the fight
Tiananmen Square

Student
demonstrating
for democracy
in China.
Human Right Violations in India.
– Custodial Deaths
– Police Excesses
( Torture, Illegal Detention/Unlawful Arrest , False Implication E
– Fake Encounter
Cases Related To Women/Children
Atrocities On Dalits / Member Of Minority
Community / Disabled
Bonded Labor
Armed Forces / Para-Military Forces
 Protecting the Killers

A Policy of Impunity in Punjab, India

•The challenges faced by victims and

their relatives in pursuing legal
avenues for accountability for the
human rights abuses perpetrated
during the government’s
counterinsurgency campaign in the
Punjab.
The impunity enjoyed by
officials responsible for
violations and the near total
failure of India’s judicial and
state institutions, from the
National Human Rights
Commission to the Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI), to
"Everyone Lives in Fear“ Patterns of
Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir

 Alleged Abuses by the Indian army

and paramilitaries, as well as by
militants, many of whom are
backed by Pakistan.
 Militants have carried out
bombings and grenade attacks
against civilians, targeted killings,
torture and attacks upon religious
and ethnic minorities.
"Everyone Lives in Fear“ Patterns of
Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir

 It is alleged that Indian security

forces have committed torture,
“disappearances” and arbitrary
detentions, and they continue to
execute Kashmiris in faked
“encounter killings,” claiming that
these killings take place during
armed clashes with militants.
India's Reconstruction Following the
2004 Tsunami

Human Rights
Watch applauded the Indian
government’s overall response to
the tsunami, but found that
government recovery efforts did
not adequately take into account
the needs of different vulnerable
segments of the affected
population, particularly women,
children, the disabled, Dalits
(so-called untouchables) and tribal
groups
Abuses Against Children Affected by
HIV/AIDS in India
 Many doctors refuse to treat or even touch
HIV-positive children.
 Some schools expel or segregate children
because they or their parents are HIV-positive.
 Many orphanages and other residential
institutions reject HIV-positive children or deny
that they house them.

 Children from families affected by AIDS may

be denied an education, pushed onto the
street, forced into the worst forms of child
labor, or otherwise exploited, all of which puts
them at greater risk of contracting HIV.
 Bonded Child Labor
 A Bonded child labor refers to
the phenomenon of children
working in conditions of servitude
in order to pay off a debt.
 For the debt that binds them to
their employer is incurred not by
the children themselves, but by
their relatives or guardians usually
by a parent.
 Bonded Child Labor
 More than 300,000 children are
estimated to be working in the
carpet industry, the majority of
them in bondage. This is a
large number, but it represents
only about 2 percent of the
bonded child laborers of India.
 Bonded Child Labor in
India
 With credible estimates ranging from 60 to
115 million, India has the largest number of
working children in the world.
 Whether they are sweating in the heat of stone
quarries, working in the fields sixteen hours a
day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden
away as domestic servants, these children
endure miserable and difficult lives.
 They earn little and are abused much.
 They struggle to make enough to eat and
perhaps to help feed their families as well.
 They do not go to school; more than half
of them will never learn the barest skills
of literacy.
 Many of them have been working since
the age of four or five, and by the time
they reach adulthood they may be
irrevocably sick or deformed they will
certainly be exhausted, old men and
women by the age of forty, likely to be
dead by fifty. At least fifteen million of
them, however, are working as virtual
slaves.
 These are the bonded child laborers of
India.
 Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk
Industry

The rights of hundreds of

thousands of children who toil as
virtual slaves in the country's silk
industry
 Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk
Industry,"calls on the Indian
government to implement its
national laws to free and
rehabilitate these "bonded
children”.
 Bonded Child Labor in
India's Silk Industry
 Bound to their employers in exchange
for a loan to their families, they are
unable to leave while in debt and earn
so little they may never be free.
 A majority of them are Dalits, so-called
untouchables at the bottom of India's
caste system.
 Mainly in three states that form the
core of India's sari and silk industries:
Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil
Nadu.
 At every stage of the silk industry,
bonded children as young as five
years old work 12 or more hours a
day, six and a half or seven days a
week.
 Children making silk thread dip
their hands in boiling water that
burns and blisters them.
 They breathe smoke and fumes
from machinery, handle dead
worms that cause infections, and
guide twisting threads that cut
their fingers.
Bonded Child Labor in India's Silk Industry

 As they assist weavers, children sit

at cramped looms in damp, dim
rooms.
 They do not go to school and are
often beaten by their employers.
 By the time they reach adulthood,
they are impoverished, illiterate,
and often crippled by the work .
 Police Harassment of HIV/AIDS Outreach
Workers in India
 Women in prostitution in India are
treated with disdain and commonly
subjected to violations of their
fundamental rights by the police, both
at the time of their arrest and while in
detention.
 Peer educators providing HIV/AIDS
outreach to these women frequently
suffer many of the same abuses.
 Police Harassment of HIV/AIDS Outreach
Workers in India

 Police have beaten peer educators, claimed

without basis that HIV/AIDS outreach work
promotes prostitution, and brought trumped-
up criminal charges against HIV/AIDS workers.
 Police also extort money and sex from these
workers. The very possession of condoms—a
key tool in the work of HIV/AIDS peer
educators—often is enough to trigger police
harassment, so deterring outreach that could
help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and save
thousands of lives.
 Prison Conditions in India

 Despite the checks and balances

inherent in India’s democratic structure
designed to curb government
lawlessness, the institutional basis for
the prison system has become grossly
unfair.
 In some major cities anyone unlucky
enough to be arrested faces a far
greater likelihood of torture or worse at
the hands of the police than in many
countries entirely lacking in the
protections for civil liberties available in
 Prisons are supposed to be leveling
institutions in which the variables that affect
the conditions of confinement are expected to
be the criminal records of their inmates and
their behavior.
 In Indian prisons, however, there exists a rigid
class system that is explicitly mandated by
law, where special privileges are accorded to
the minority of prisoners who come from the
upper or middle classes, irrespective of the
crimes they may have committed or the way
that they comport themselves in prison.
 Human Rights Preventive Strategy

 Investigating, Monitoring and

Reporting Human Rights Violations.
 Networking and Reporting with other
institutions
– Human Rights Commission
– NGOs
– Police.
THANK YOU