Blog Elements – Page 473

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Human rights are not a luxury

June 20, 2018/in News

By Zeid Ra’ad Al HusseinJune 15 Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. Four years as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights have brought me many luminous encounters and desperate struggles, much painful and shocking information, and some profound lessons that may take many years to fully assimilate. I have […]

Kachin Aid Group Halts Humanitarian Work After Threat by Myanmar Army

June 18, 2018/in News

An evangelical Christian organization based in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state has stopped its humanitarian work in areas controlled by an ethnic militia in the conflict-ridden region after the Myanmar military warned that it would take action against the group for associating with an illegal entity, an official from the NGO said Friday. The Kachin Baptist […]

Human rights are not a luxury

June 20, 2018/in News

Kachin Aid Group Halts Humanitarian Work After Threat by Myanmar Army

June 18, 2018/in News

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

Human rights are not a luxury

June 20, 2018/in News

By Zeid Ra’ad Al HusseinJune 15

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

Four years as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights have brought me many luminous encounters and desperate struggles, much painful and shocking information, and some profound lessons that may take many years to fully assimilate.

I have constantly circled back to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rightsin 1948, where this story truly began. It was a time of slaughter and terrible suffering, with broken economies and nations emerging from the ashes of two global wars, an immense genocide, atomic destruction and the Great Depression. Finding solutions that could ensure global — and national — peace was a matter of the starkest kind of survival. Committing to the U.N. Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was crucial. They were not philosophical goals: This was life or death.

There could be no peace without justice. There could be no durable development without promotion of broad social progress and better standards of life, for all, in larger freedom. The men and women who survived the two world wars understood this utterly. It was in their bones.

Treaty by treaty, world leaders built a great body of laws and covenants and committed to upholding them. Today there is a great cynicism about the global order they constructed — never fully global, never very orderly — but although it may have been partial, the progress they ensured was immense.

But that generation is departing quickly, and with them the living memory of the lessons that were so painfully clear to them. Now, rather than advancing toward greater freedom, justice and peace, the world is going backward — to a landscape of increasingly strident, zero-sum nationalism, where the jealously guarded, short-term interests of individual leaders supplant and destroy efforts to find common solutions.

0:03 / 2:37

Deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl says the best way to negotiate with North Korea on nuclear weapons is to bring up human rights. (Gillian Brockell, Kate Woodsome/The Washington Post)

We are moving backward to an era of contempt for the rights of people who have been forced to flee their homes, because the threats they face there are more dangerous even than the perils of their voyage. Backward to a time when military operations could deliberately target civilians and civilian sites such as hospitals, and chemical gases were openly used for military purposes and against innocent families.

We are moving backward to an era when racists and xenophobes deliberately inflamed hatred and discrimination among the public, while carefully cloaking themselves in the guise of democracy and the rule of law. Backward to an era when women were not permitted to control their own choices and their own bodies — when criticism was criminalized and human rights activism brought jail, or worse.

This is the way that wars are made: with the snarl of belligerence and the smirk of dehumanization; the lash of injustice and the incremental erosion of old and seemingly wearisome checks. The path of violence is made up of the unreckoned consequences of banal, incidental brutality seeping into the political landscape.

Here is one lesson: Intolerance is an insatiable machine. Its wheels, once they begin to function at a certain amplitude, become uncontrollable — grinding deeper, more cruelly and widely. First one group of people is singled out for hatred; next it will be more, and then more, as the machine for exclusion accelerates into violence, and into civil or international warfare — feeding always on its own rage, a growing frenzy of grievance and blaming. As that tension begins to peak, no obvious mechanism exists that is capable of decompressing and controlling its intensity, because the machine functions on an emotional level that has very little contact with reason. Release may come only after tremendous violence. This is something those of us who work for human rights have witnessed time and again.

We are at a pivotal moment in history, now, as contempt for human rights spreads. Xenophobes and racists have emerged from the shadows. A backlash is growing against advances made in women’s rights and many others. The space for civic activism is shrinking. The legitimacy of human rights principles is attacked, and the practice of human rights norms is in retreat.

What we are destroying is, quite simply, the structures that ensure our safety.

The destruction of Syria is a murderous parable, written in blood, that brings home yet again that horrific spiraling of incremental human rights violations into absolute destruction.

The organized campaigns of violence against the Rohingya in Myanmar – Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing economy in 2016 — yet again reminds us that economic growth will never maintain peace and security in the face of biting discrimination. In 2017 — 2017! — we once again saw the specter of genocide, and once again, we did very, very little to stop it from happening.

So, in a sentence, what is the one core lesson that has been brought home to me by this extraordinary, privileged, crushing mandate as high commissioner?

It is that in every circumstance, the safety of humanity will be secured only through vision, energy and generosity of spirit; through activism; through the struggle for greater freedom, in equality; and through justice.

Sources

Kachin Aid Group Halts Humanitarian Work After Threat by Myanmar Army

June 18, 2018/in News

The Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC), headquartered in the state capital Myitkyina, has helped civilians displaced by fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Myanmar forces since hostilities resumed in June 2011 following the breakdown of a 17-year bilateral peace accord.

A surge in the clashes this year in the long-running civil war between the KIA and Myanmar army has displaced more than 7,400 civilians in Hpakant, Tanaing, and Injangyang townships since early April, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The fighting forced more IDPs into camps between Myanmar-China border posts Nos. 6 and 8 in Waingmaw township in Myitkyina district, joining some 5,000 others already living there, according to the KBC.

The Myanmar army said KBC members delivered food supplies to the newly arrived IDPs in the area in early May.

“The refugees are in danger during this rainy season,” Rev. Hkalam Samson, the KBC’s general secretary, told RFA’s Myanmar Service. “That’s why we have been helping them.”

Colonel Thura Myo Tin, Kachin state’s security and border affairs minister, sent the KBC a letter dated May 21, telling the organization to stop going to the border camps to help the IDPs or risk being charged under Article 17(1) of the colonial-era Unlawful Association Act because the camps are in KIA-controlled territory, he said.

“Actually, every border area in Kachin state is KIA-controlled territory,” Hkalam Samson added.

‘Not helping the KIA’

The Unlawful Association Act was used during Myanmar’s decades of military junta rule to detain those linked to rebel groups, and it continues to be used to jail people in Kachin state for allegedly being in contact with the KIA.

It sets out prison terms of two to three years and a possible fine for being a member of an “unlawful association,” making contributions to one, or assisting its operations.

The KBC — the main domestic aid organization in Kachin state — has been helping IDPs for seven years, along with United Nations agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Hkalam Samson said.

“We all are helping all IDPs,” he said. “We are not helping the KIA.”

The KBC is planning to send a response to the ministry, he added.

Intensified clashes between the KIA and Myanmar forces this year have raised questions about the military’s possible role in hindering the government’s efforts to end the country’s civil wars and forge lasting peace.

Since 2011, more than 100,000 civilians have been displaced in Kachin state, many of whom have been unable to return to their homes as the conflict continues.

Reported by Kyaw Thu for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

RFA News

Spring Revolution

Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 8 to 14, 2024)September 20, 2024 - 2:30 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 8 to 14, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Magway Region, Shan State, Kachin State, and Rakhine State from September 8th to 14th. Military Junta arrested the civilians as human shields from Mindon Township, Magway Region, and Salingyi Township, […]
Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 1 to 7, 2024)September 13, 2024 - 5:08 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 1 to 7, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Sagaing Region, Mandalay Region, Magway Region, and Shan State from September 1st to 7th. The Military Junta threatened that they would launch airstrikes on the townships which they lost. The […]
Human Rights Situation weekly update (Aug 22 to 31, 2024)September 7, 2024 - 4:09 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Aug 22 to 31, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Sagaing Region, Magway Region, Bago Region, Mandalay Region, Tanintharyi Region, and Shan State from August 22nd to 31st. Head of Prison which works under Military Junta, tortured and blackmailed the […]

Multimedia

What is the Truth (Cartoon Animation)May 31, 2024 - 4:58 pm
What is Transitional Justice (Cartoon Animation)May 3, 2024 - 8:38 am
Close the SkyApril 11, 2024 - 7:45 am
Forced MarriageJanuary 9, 2024 - 2:12 pm

ND Burma

ND-Burma formed in 2004 in order to provide a way for Burma human rights organizations to collaborate on the human rights documentation process. The 13 ND-Burma member organizations seek to collectively use the truth of what communities in Burma have endured to advocate for justice for victims. ND-Burma trains local organizations in human rights documentation; coordinates members’ input into a common database using Martus, a secure open-source software; and engages in joint-advocacy campaigns.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

ND Burma

Recent Posts