Countries default on observing human rights

Human Rights Day marks the occasion when on December 10, 1948, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It was the destruction, deaths and incidents of gross human rights violation on an unprecedented scale during the Second World War that propelled the world community to consider the issue of human rights in a new light. As the madness of the war was over, good sense again prevailed. Humanity felt the need to designate a day of the year to observe as human rights day. Formally, that day was declared by the UNGA at one of its plenary meetings held in December 1950.
From that point of time until today, December 10, 2012, the world is observing the Human Rights Day for the 62nd time. The day is being observed at a time when about 1.2 million people have been internally displaced and some 500,000 made refugees in other countries, while 41 thousand people have been killed in Syrian civil war that started about 21 moths ago. The world is watching while Syria is bleeding. The people of that country are facing the worst kind of human rights violation at the hands of their own people in the government's security forces.
Similar violations of human rights have been going on unabated in Palestine at the hands of the Israeli forces since the time when the Universal Human Rights Day was proclaimed by the UN. Iraq, has been ravaged by wars with neighbouring Iran and Kuwait followed by US invasions. The first invasion took place between August 1990 and February 1991 (the Gulf war), while the last one termed "Iraq war" was foisted upon that country in March 2003. Internal conflicts and insurgencies further compounded the situation in Iraq and have turned it by now into a bottomless abyss of death and brutalisation of humanity.
The lofty aims of UDHR sound hollow to the people of Iraq. So does it to the people in Afghanistan since the former Soviet Union invaded it over three decades back. The US then created the Talibans with the help of the Pakistani dictator Ziaul Haq, to drive the Soviet communists out of that country and establish democracy and human rights in place of what they termed godless communist dictatorship. But the Taliban thought otherwise and so entered America on the scene, and the war continues to crush the Talibans for their extreme view as to how the country would be ruled. Amid these unending wars, the human rights of the Afghan people have been the ultimate casualty.
Violation of human rights on a colossal scale has also been occurring in Libya, Somalia, Congo and in many other parts of the globe. Besides these cases of large scale violations of human rights where full-fledged wars or civil wars are raging, other countries where apparent peace and stability prevail are also not immune from human rights violations.
Silent wars are going on day in day out in every country regardless of whether it is run by popularly elected governments or by dictators, or other forms of unelected governments. And the result is unending cases of HR violations. Social conflicts including communal violence, conflicts of political origin, gender-related violence, rivalries among social or political groups for supremacy, etc. are the social source of these HR violations. Security agencies of the state are also involved in HR violations. And reports published by international as well as local HR bodies periodically provide a very grim of picture of the state of human rights in every society.
Bangladesh, an elected democracy since 1991, is also facing this menace. Odhikar, a local human rights watchdog, in its monthly human rights monitoring report of November 2012, shows how a single instance of failure to maintain safety standards at workplace caused the death of 111 garment workers. It was a gross instance of the violation of the basic human right of a person to have a safe place to work. But the employer denied them that right.
The same HR report has brought to the fore 67 cases of extrajudicial killings, 34 deaths in firings by Indian border security force (BSF) at the border areas, 24 people were victims of enforced disappearance, 5 deaths occurred in the jail, 152 fatalities were caused by political violence. All these violent incidents took place over a period 11 months between January and November 2012. In the same period, attacks on journalists caused death to 5 and injuries to 156 persons. Add to these the victims of other types of HR violations such as acid violence (97), dowry-related violence against women (771), rape (760), sexual harassment including stalking (459), and public lynching (120).
But incidents of human rights violation in its hundred and one forms are taking place every minute across the globe of which only an insignificant fraction is reported by the HR watchdogs, research organisations and the media. And in each case of HR violation, the Articles of the UDHR are given short shrift by its perpetrator.
It was undoubtedly a moment of great historical significance when the UN adopted the UDHR 64 years ago. But when it comes to observing the principles enshrined in some 30 articles of the Declaration in practice, most governments have hopelessly defaulted on it.
The constitution of Bangladesh ensures basic human rights for all its citizens. And every time that an instance of HR violation occurs, it means the incumbent government has failed in its constitutional obligation to ensure the victim's human right. The last 11 months' account of HR violations as mentioned in Odhikar report is itself a testimony to how far the incumbent government has been able to fulfil its bounden obligations.

The writer is Editor, Science & Life, The Daily Star.
E-mail: [email protected]