his brief status report of human rights in India gives a general overview of the most critical human rights issues in India today. It has been drafted by the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR), a platform of some of Inida’s important human rights groups, as a background document to assist in the preparation of India’s second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) that took place in Geneva on 24 May, 2012.
The UPR is a unique process conducted by the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC), involving a review of the human rights record of all 192 UN Member States once every four and a half years.
The WGHR submitted a stakeholders’ report to Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) in November 2011. The present report is a more detailed and comprehensive version of WGHR’s stakeholders’ report that includes:
Information gathered from five regional and one national consultation held with civil society across India from August to October 2011;
Case studies that illustrate the text of the report;
WGHR’s initial response to the Government of India’s national report to the second UPR;
An up-to-date analysis of the status of implementation of the 18 recommendations made to India during the first UPR.
It is amply evident from the report that much remains to be done to improve the human rights situation inIndia. The scope of the UPR is enormous as it covers all recognised international human rights. If we take almost any of these human rights, the situation inIndiaremains challenging; yet the scope for improvement is immense. If the required positive changes are to take place, however, a radical change in national and regional actions by governments at all levels is necessary. The report highlights some of these required changes.
The opportunity offered byIndia’s second UPR at the HRC should not be underestimated. The clear direction that can emanate from the second UPR’s recommendations largely depend, however, on the approach adopted by the Indian delegation during the UPR in May 2012. We all look forward to a shift away from the defensive posture adopted byIndiain the first UPR to a constructive engagement with the HRC. Such an engagement can only prove fruitful if the deliberations during the UPR debate and the resulting recommendations are placed within the space of the recognition of human rights (through laws, policies, administrative actions and budgetary allocations) and their implementation.
We hope this report will contribute to such a debate at the HRC.Indiamust meet the human rights accountability challenge posed by the contents of its own Constitution and the international human rights instruments it had ratified. To meet this enormous challenge, nothing but a radical shift in economic, security and social policy is needed. It is hoped thatIndia’s second UPR will provide solid recommendations to make such a radical change possible, which is urgently required to reverse the adverse human rights situation faced by a significant part of the people ofIndia.
The Barak Human Rights Protection Committee (BHRPC, though is not a formal member of the WGHR, participated in the preparation of the report. Dr Prasenjit Biswas and Mr Waliullah Ahmed Laskar took part in the North East regional consultation held in Shillong and the former represented the BHRPC in the national consultation in New Delhi. Along with reports on starvation deaths of tea labourers in Assam the BHRPC also provided inputs in other subjects.
The report can be downloaded from here and from the WGHR website.
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