3. Meaning of Human Rights

 MEANING OF HUMAN RIGHTS

-By Dheeraj Kumar

 Good afternoon all. unfortunately, i have been given a topic of which I am a fierce critique.  I would try to explain the meaning of human rights.
Since beginning fear has been a component of human nature. Earlier we were afraid of wild animals, darkness etc. ; now we are afraid of humans themselves. man is afraid of other man. or to say we are afraid of ourselves. The reason is - mind is a very powerful tool.
As we have learnt our mind posses many qualities. one of them is desire- Desire for longer life, comfort, possessions and power. This very instict, i.e., desire, is the source of both- the fear and the opression. for example if you wish to live longer and someone is threatening you; you will be afraid, try to avoid the danger or eliminate the danger. so desire gets you kill or get killed.
we have done this quite a number of time. Our history is filled with wars and blood bath. we did nothing but killing; if not killing we tortured each other. Earlier it was easy to kill because the rulers were the kings. Gradually our idea of ruling evolved into sovereign nations. Now, we have democracies; killing is not that easy, so it has been replaced by torture.

it happend in mid 20th century that some of the civilised countries after dropping nuclear bombs thought of spreading humanity to the world and thus, human rights were born. Needless to say, at that time the purpose of human rights was to pressurise some countries to stop unethical practicess at war. Later on human rights convention was held and it became universal.
But here is the catch. Human rights are not legally binding on nations, neither can it force countries to observe them.  It is a toothless watchdog that can bark but not bite.
Moreover, it has been acting as a proxy of P5 to advance personal interests through economic sanctions.
take the example of Afghanistan; In the name of humanitarian aide and support it has been ruled by USA for years and at end was left on the mercy of terrorists. Human rights commission was not at all bothered by it. It seems that identity is no more important before wealth and power.
The human rights commission was set up to stand against the atrocities of wealthy and powerful but it is sitting in their lap, singing their song.


the first question that comes to mind is do human rights exists or its just an idea? I think it is an idea, a theoratical proposition for ideal world and far above from the ground. It is not on the ground, not in the heaven; it is in between.

the second question is Can there be such rights exclusive to one species and still be considered universal? In the sense of universality, human rights are nowhere closer to its slightest meaning.I don't think they should be called universal but rather natural.

There is a saying that action speaks louder than words. But human rights commission is doing otherwise. It believes in dialogues and condemnation.
Dialogues are impactful when there is problem of understanding. But hunger is a physical phenomena. Dialogues can't feed people. The inability to tranform resolutions into action is the biggest failure of human rights comission.
The need is to take human rights from our minds, books and papers to the field.