IHRAAM ROUND TABLE: Peace and Security, Development and Human Rights

PEACE & SECURITY, DEVELOPMENT AND HUMAN RIGHTS:

AN INTERACTIVE DIALOGUE & ROUND TABLE

Geneva, 19 March 2009 - International Council for Human Rights (ICHR), in

association with

International Human Rights Association of American Minorities

(IHRAAM) hosted an Interactive

Dialogue & Round

able at the Palais des Nations

in Geneva. The event entitled Peace &

Security,

Development and Human Rights

as Pillars of the UN System ran in parallel to the 10th

session of the

Human

Rights Council and discussed the state of the three pillars since the

inception

of the United

Nations and their relevance to the modern world.

The comprehensive and distinguished list of speakers included Barrister A. Majid

Tramboo

Chairman of ICHR and IHRAAM

s permanent representative to the UN Geneva, Prof. Alfred de

Zayas

Public and International Law professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy &

International Relations,

Prof. Krishna Ahoojapatel UN Representative Women's Int. League for

Peace and Freedom (WILPF),

Prof. Joseph Wronka, professor of Social Work, Springﬁeld

College, Massachusetts and author of

Human Rights and Social Justice

, Ms. Victoria Schoﬁeld,

South

Asia Analyst & Distinguished

Academic, Mr. Shah Ghulam Qadir, the Chairman

Kashmir

Institute of International Relations,

Princess Michelene Makou Djouma

the International Co-

ordinator and UN representative for

OrganisationCamerounaise de Promotion de la

Coopération Economique Internationale

(OCAPROCE) and Mr. Ronald Barnes Chair of Indigenous Peoples and Nations

Coalition (IPNC).

Barrister A. Majid Tramboo opened the interactive dialogue and round

table by

outlining the

changing nature of the three pillars of the UN. He noted that

the deﬁnition of peace & security

has

changed since the inception of

the UN and, as such, new ways of tackling

old

problems

have been

sought.

The concept of Human Rights has taken root and has now entered the daily

lexicon used by

governments, NGOs and international organisations around the world. The

signiﬁcance of which is

embodied by the three sessions of the Human

ights Council that take

place each year and the

universal periodic review in

which the human rights record nations

are reviewed and then

discussed by all of

the members of the HRC. However, despite the

signiﬁcance of global

human rights and the increasing amount of importance that the UN places on these rights

there is

still a long way to go before they are afforded to many of the

people in the world.

Barrister A. Majid Tramboo expressed serious concern over the continuous gross human

rights

violations by India in the Indian Held Kashmir. Very recently the issue of land mines has

come to

surface which allegedly had been laid down by the Indian military and paramilitary

forces at the

various parts of Kashmir.

There is

the

issue of nameless and mass graves which has been also reported by the United

Nations

working group on enforced and involuntary disappearances as well as an urgency

resolution passed

by the European Parliament, unfortunately no independent and impartial

investigation has been

conducted by the government of India on this issue. Arrests and

detentions take place as a matter of

routine in Indian Held Kashmir. Hundreds of political and

human rights activists are being detained

without any charge or trial including Saleem Nanaji

and Farooq A. Dar of Jammu Kashmir Liberation

Front, Shabir Ahmad Shah of Jammu Kashmir

Democratic Freedom Party and Masrat Alam of Jammu

& Kashmir Muslim League.

Prof. Alfred de Zayas began by stating that the concept of human rights is not

the ﬂavor of the

month. It is the most noble commitment of men and women

of good will, who believe in peace

and

development and who want to make this a

reality not just for elites but for all human

beings in all

regions of the

world.

The problem with the United Nations -- as with every human institution -- is

that member States

work

for their perceived interests, not for human rights or

human dignity. Thus it is the task of

the Ofﬁce

of the High

Commissioner for Human Rights to persuade States that it is in their own

interest to play

by the rules. The principle of equality and non-selectivity

is crucial for the

credibility and good

functioning of the system.

There are many States who apply human rights -- or for that matter international

aw -- à la

carte.

Today they invoke human rights with regard to a particular

country or region, they point

ﬁngers, they

engage in naming and shaming.

Tomorrow they keep quiet when the violations

occur in their own

territory or in

the territory of an allied or friendly State. Here again it is the

task of the

Ofﬁce of the

High Commissioner and of moral authorities throughout the

world to

insist in the necessity of

honesty and consistency in the application

of human rights norms.

This requires patience and

continuing education. In

this context UNESCO has an eminent

challenge to fulﬁll. Most

mportantly,

the human right to peace must be vindicated. Peace is

the

condition for the enjoyment of all civil,

political, economic, social and

cultural rights. And

peace is not just the absence of war -- it is the

presence of all those elements that make peace possible -- disarmament, mutual respect,

equality

and social justice. The Spanish Association for the

Advancement of International

Human Rights Law

(AEDIDH) has adopted an important document: The Luarca Declaration on

the Human Right to Peace.

This declaration was formally submitted to the Human Rights

Council on 15 March 2007 and has been

discussed worldwide in international seminars and

congresses. It is to be hoped that it shall be

adopted by the Human Rights Council in 2010. As

of today 164 non-governmental organization

endorse

this initiative. The International Labour

Ofﬁce has given us a motto

that is worth reﬂecting

on -- si vis pacem, cole justitiam. If you want

peace, cultivate justice. Indeed, there can be no peace

in the world when

social injustice

prevails in so many countries, when millions of persons suffer

hunger and extreme poverty. We must change our priorities and ensure the

implementation of

the

millennium development goals.

Prof. Krishna Ahoojapatel began by expressing her agreement with the comments that

Barrister

Tramboo has made about the human rights situation in Kashmir and then discussed

development

and industrialisation. The distinguished professor noted that all development

processes had been

intervened in by western nations and that this had resulted in many

problems for the least

developed nations of the world. Since 1994 the USA, the world's only

superpower, has been shying

away from multilateralism and

towards unilateral trade

agreements. The entire UN system of the

World Bank,

he World Trade Organisation and the

International Monetary Fund was allowing

capital ﬂight from the poorest nations of the world to the richest and

this is part of the reason

for

the current global economic crises. She noted

that if we are to achieve peace in the world

then

there needs to be less

hypocrisy within the largest International Organisations of the

World.

Prof. Joseph Wronka began by stating that to achieve global peace we ﬁrst

need to eradicate

global

poverty. The global disparity of incomes is a leading

factor in global turmoil. Prof.

Wronka implored

civil society to demand that

the governments of the world tackle poverty and

extreme poverty by

meeting their legal commitments under the Convention to Eradicate

Extreme Poverty as well as

several other international agreements to that end. He noted that

the human rights mechanisms and

treaties are pillars of a globally just world and noted that the

right to peace should be paramount on

the agenda of the Human Rights Council.

Ms. Victoria Schoﬁeld started by outlining some of the "new" security

threats that the World is

facing. These are the rich/poor divide, international

crime, terrorism, environmental concerns

and

migrations. Examining them in the

context of Jammu & Kashmir she noted that the people

of Jammu

and Kashmir had been unable to attain their human right to peace. Ms. Schoﬁeld

believes

that the valley of Jammu and Kashmir is a victim of four of the above ﬁve

points, excluding the

threat of international crime. The people of Jammu and

Kashmir have been suffering from

economic

deprivation and this has led to

frustration. She discussed the ﬁrst ever economic

survey of Kashmir

that

was carried out by the Indian sponsored government if Indian Held

Jammu and

Kashmir in 2007.

The ﬁndings of the report were glaring illustrations of

the growing

rich/poor divide.

Firstly, Jammu and Kashmir lags behind in development aspects including per

capita income,

healthcare, communications and literacy. The per capita income

of the state is only two thirds

of the

national average. On communications the

story is little different. On average there is

one post ofﬁce

to serve

an area of 60sq km which is three times greater than the rest of the

country.

On the social

infrastructure side the outlook is even more bleak. In 2006 there

was on

average one medical

institution servicing 3000 people, 71% of homes do

not receive drinking

water, the literacy rate is

55% as opposed 64% in the rest

of India. Such disparities have the

potential to threaten political

security

and without peace then security is always under threat

and this is made worse by social

deprivation.

The second threat is terrorism. This can be state terror and unlawful killings

of civilians the

greatest

example of this being the mass graves that have been

discovered in the state.

Unlawful killings of

civilians and the use of illegal

force has not brought peace and security but

has exacerbated it. For

instance

the recent terror attacks in Mumbai where immediately

blamed on the Kashmiris

and this

has had a negative effect on the peace process. Terrorism is

a threat

to peace and security in

Kashmir because it sets back dialogue.

Thirdly, environmental concerns. Kashmir is one of the most beautiful places on

the world and

if the

environment is destroyed then peoples incomes will suffer.

The damage that occurred in

Kargil in

1999 caused lots of damage to the weavers

of the region and disrupted an entire way

of life. Also, on

the Sichuan glacier

the high levels of military activity is leading to a great deal

of environmental

pollution which could have a serious affect on the water supplies for many of

the people of

Kashmir.

Finally there is the issue of migration. The compulsion of so many of the

Kashmiris of the valley

migrate due to political repression has effectively

led to them having the right to live in

their

homeland taken away from them.

These are ways in which the four modern threats to world peace can be related to Jammu and

Kashmir and a speedy resolution of the conﬂict would go a long

way to neutralizing them.

Mr. Shah Ghulam Qadir began by discussing the universal declaration of human

rights. The

problem,

he said, lay not in the document itself but in the

implementation of that document. If

we look at the

Peace & Security problems

all

over the world we have to ask why there is such a

disparity between

Peace &

Security in the developed world and the developing world. He

pointed out that

n chastising

developing countries the countries of the developed world

made

little attempt to discuss the human

rights record of countries with which they

shared

political and economic interests and this has a

direct effect on the

discussion of human rights

abuses in Kashmir.

Princess Michelene Makou Djouma highlighted the need for a socio-economic

approach to

improving human rights of marginalised communities, particularly

women and children,

emphasising

the role of education and the need for skills

based training. She argued that this

approach was

crucial for breaking the

cycle of extreme poverty in Africa and easing its

dependance on aid.

Mr. Ronald Barnes discussed how in the name of peace and security the previous US

administration

fostered a doctrine of pre-emptive defense and this has had a negative effect

on Peace and

Security across the globe. He went on to outline the difference between

terrorists and "freedom

ﬁghters" and pointed out

that even on his 90th birthday Nelson

Mandela was still on the US terror

list.

He then discussed how the realisation of the right to self-determination of

people all-over the

world

is critical to the peace and security of the world.

Mr. Barnes stated his belief that if the

HRC could

achieve the goals set out in

ts mandate then we would be closer to solving many of

the problems of

peace &

security, development and human rights across the globe.

Barrister Tramboo then opened the ﬂoor for the interactive dialogue where

questions were

put to

the panel before the interactive dialogue and round table

was adjourned.

-The End-