International Human Rights Day: Awakening humanity

Daily Times
Every year December 10th marks ‘International Human Rights Day’ to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948 following the aftershocks of the devastation caused in the Second World War. The declaration is a set of the fundamental civil and constitutional liberties that all human beings are entitled to, with the rights to life, freedom and equality being at the top of the list.

Foreign interventions, violations of territorial integrity, genocide, dictatorships, gender violence, child labour, false imprisonment and denying the right to a fair trial are just a few instances of human rights violations that the whole world is faced with today. It is, therefore, an established fact that in many countries around the world these basic rights are mere privileges, which millions of people are denied. These rights are meant to be universal and egalitarian; why then are so many people victims of conflict and war, starvation and poverty, restrictions and captivity? It is partisan individuals or societies that transcend the boundaries of humanity, oblivious and/or indifferent to the greater suffering afflicted upon the common people, who are only fighting to gain what is rightfully theirs and unjustifiably not accorded to them.

Similarly, Pakistan too encompasses a system that guarantees human rights but fails where the practical implementation and protection of those rights is concerned. Unfortunately, it is mostly the poor and the minorities who are subjected to oppression and deprivation of some of their most basic rights as equal citizens of the country. With the army’s kill and dump policy in Balochistan, targeted killing of minorities and human rights advocates, discrimination against minorities vis-à-vis their due parliamentary representation to ensure safeguarding of their rights, incitement of sectarian and ethnic conflicts and many other deprivations, Balochistan is the greater victim of human rights defilement in the country today. Therefore, it is noteworthy that the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has taken this day to underscore the plight of the people of Balochistan, whose pleas for liberation from the repressive policy of the armed forces have long been turned a deaf ear to by the authorities. The chairperson of the Baloch Human Rights Organisation (BHRO) Nargis Baloch has petitioned the apex court to take suo motu action against the relentless and uncontrolled state of insecurity that the people of Balochistan are confronted with on a daily basis. The government must awaken to resolve this crisis before the Baloch people, who are as much citizens of Pakistan as the rest of us, are permanently alienated and Pakistan suffers an irreversible setback to its solidarity.