Sunday, September 5, 2010

Whose Right is it after all?

Human Rights have been one of the highly contested ideas in the era of Globalization and Global Integration. The advocates of Human Rights say that they are applicable to all human beings by virtue of the very fact that they are Human. But the essence of the above idea is itself marred with Ideological differences and skewed Cultural rhetoric. Whether we highlight the liberal democratic ideas of the free market economies of the Western world or the State Centric Socio Economic Welfare Ideas of the Eastern Block all of them in practice are not capable of withstanding even the slightest of grievances of the eventual claimant i.e. the Common man. That Common man who suffers daily in the tussle between imperialistically driven ambitions of the Coalition forces and the dissidents in Iraq or the ill fated farmer in India who is compelled to commit suicide due to faulty economic policies and inequitable distribution of national resources in spite of the Indian Constitution mandating a positive obligation on its government to ensure proper living and health conditions of its citizens and promote agricultural activities for all round socio economic development. (See Articles 47 and 48 of the Indian constitution).
 It is rather ironical that those states who have advocated the setting up of an International mechanism to ensure the protection and preservation of Human Rights are themselves one of the poorest performers in maintaining human rights standards in their respective domestic Jurisdictions. Take the instance of the United States of America which has championed the cause of Liberal democratic principles of free speech, freedom from arbitrary detention etc. A closer look into the country’s foreign policies and its record in conforming with Human Rights obligations would present you a bleak picture of the harshest realities which it has so effectively concealed from being disclosed. Thousands of detainees are being locked up secretly in a Nazi concentration camp like area of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for obvious reasons. Some of them are political dissidents who do not agree with American foreign policies and the rest are detained purely on grounds of suspicion without any reasonable proof to justify such detention. Moreover even if such detainees do get a hearing in one of the judicial courts of the American Republic and are cleared of the arbitrary charges against them by following the due process of law they are again hauled up and imprisoned by America’s draconian and archaic immigration laws which entail strict punishment for those individuals entering US soil without proper travel documents. To the greatest consternation of any reasonable human being how are these individuals supposed to even posses the most rudimentary documents certifying their nationality when they were being secretly whisked away or kidnapped into American territory by the nefarious schemes of its dreaded Intelligence Services. So in hindsight very few of these ill fated detainees get to live a free life so actively propounded in the doctrinal and political justifications of the American State. This was just one example highlighting the obstacles facing the sustenance of the sanctified principles of Human Rights obligations on the nation states.
Therefore on a parting note I put forth this question Can we ever imagine an International Human Rights Regime endowed with such authority which binds all its subjects with equal force and Zero tolerance against non compliance and Political arm twisting so that the layman for whom such elaborate provisions have been designed and articulated is indeed able to avail them when he requires them the most for his survival?

Debanjan Sinha
B.A.LL.B,  5th Sem

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