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Progress not possible without human rights

Chief Justice of India Dr Adarsh Sein Anand, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson Najma Heptulla and National Human Rights Commission Chairman Justice M N Venkatachelliah on Thursday stressed the need for respect, protection and preservation of human rights.

Addressing a function organised by the NHRC in Delhi on Human Rights Day to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Justice Anand said that unless rights were made the focal point of governance, no progress is possible or sustainable. No amount of economic development can be sustained without a baseline of respect for these rights.

At the threshold of the new millennium, no country can look back on its record of human rights for the century with any sense of pride, he pointed out. Some 100 million people have been killed in armed conflict; 120 million more died in political violence, he said.

As per the United Nations Human Development Report 1998, a disturbing trend is that civilian casualties in armed conflict have gone up to 90 per cent from the mere 5 per cent it was at the beginning of the century. Children are the main sufferers.

The chief justice said that in India the greatest challenge of human rights lies in the areas of maternal and child care, child education, child labour, child abuse and the protection of minorities and weaker sections of the society. He stressed the need for streamlining the criminal justice system and protecting the citizenry from custodial violence and investigative abuse.

Heptullah regretted that women are still denied basic human rights. She said there is a huge gap in political power between the genders. Women still remain a missing entity in political thinking and social interaction.

UNI

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