HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION

• Human rights
violations occur when
actions by state (or
non-state) actors
HUMAN RIGHTS abuse, ignore, or deny
basic human rights
VIOLATION (including civil, political,
cultural, social, and
economic rights).
• Furthermore, violations
of human rights can
occur when any state or
non- state actor
breaches any part of the
UDHR treaty or other
 international human
rights or humanitarian
law.
• Human rights abuses
are monitored by United
Nations committees,
national institutions and
governments and by
many independent
NGO.
The Second World War One of the main
reasons that the nations of the world
decided it was time to draw up a list of
human rights in 1948 was because of the
trauma of the Second World War and
during which so many human rights
violations were carried out by the Nazi
regime.

The atrocities carried out in the name of

the Nazi regime
• Bombing of civilians
• Murder of homosexuals
• Murder of political opponents
• Torture during interrogation
• Abuse of prisoners of war
• Persecution of Christians
and of Jehovah’s
Witnesses
• Mass murder of gypsies
• Arrest without trial
• Arrest and execution
without trial
• Mass murder of
resistance fighters
• Cruel medical
experimentation without
consent
• Mass deportation
• Murder of 6 million Jews Slave

labour

• Confiscation of property
 The Second
World War and the
Nuremberg
Trials
After the Second World War the not just the responsibility of the person
victorious allies decided to set up war actually committing them. They were the
crimes trials in the form of an responsibility of the highest government
International Military Tribunal. officials who ordered or planned them.
This was held in the city of Nuremberg,
which had been a very important place
in the celebration of Nazism.
At Nuremberg 22 high level Nazis were
put on trial. This was the first time that
human rights violations committed by
those waging aggressive wars were
prosecuted.
The prosecutions included the planning
of atrocities by high government officials.
The Nazi leaders were tried according to
the accepted principles of law. The
Nuremberg trials effectively established
that planning, preparing and initiating
aggressive war constitutes an
international crime.
It also established that atrocities were
The Second
World War and

Genocide
• The genocide in the South East Asia country
of Cambodia, committed by the regime of Pol
Pot. This took place between 1975 and 1979. It
is believed that 2 million people died in this
genocide. This genocide is portrayed in the film ‘The
Killing Fields’, made in 1984 and directed by Roland Joffe.
• The genocide committed in the former
Yugoslavia, involving the people of Bosnia,
Serbia, Croatia and Kosovo. A violent conflict
involving ethnic and religious differences raged
for three years, from 1992 to 1995, in which it is
estimated over 200,000 people died.
• The genocide in the African country of
Rwanda, committed by the Hutu tribes and the
Tutsi tribes, who turned on each other in April
1994. This genocide is portrayed in the film ‘Hotel
Rwanda’, (2004) directed by Terry George.
Genocide and the Trial

of Saddam Hussein

• During the 1980s there was a war between Iraq

and Iran.
• In March 1988, during a major battle between
Iraq and Iran, chemical weapons were used by
the Iraqi government forces to kill a number of
people in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja.
• Estimates of casualties range from several
hundred to 7,000 people. Almost all accounts
of the incident regard Iraq as responsible for
this gas attack. It is the largest-scale use of
chemical weapons against civilians in modern
times.
• Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled in 2003
and Saddam Hussein was captured by
American forces. The trial of Saddam Hussein
began in October 2005.
• The trial of Saddam Hussein is an important
landmark in the development of international
criminal law. The transitional government of
Iraq has incorporated genocide, war crimes,
and crimes against humanity into the Iraqi
national legal system.
 • The First World War (1914-1918) was famously
expected to be ‘the war to end all wars’. Only 20
Armed conflict years later the world was engulfed by another
global conflict which raged for 6 years.
• The shock of the Second World War gave rise to a
huge desire for world-wide justice and peace, seen
in the creation of the United Nations Organization
and the production of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. However, wars have continued to
take their toll on humanity, always involving the
death of innocent civilians and the large-scale abuse
of human rights.
 • The modern history of Israel is very complicated. The
creation of the modern state of Israel came about
The Arab – Israeli largely as a result of the terrible sufferings inflicted on
the Jewish people during the Second World War.

Conflict
• The State of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948
and Israel was admitted as a member of the United
Nations on May 11, 1949. The creation of the state of
Israel and the resulting violent conflicts over the years
have resulted in the displacement of large numbers of
 the Palestinian people.
• There have been many attempts at peace
settlements. The latest flare-up of violence took place
in 2006, with armed conflict taking place between
Hezbollah guerillas in Southern Lebanon and Israeli
armed forces.
The Arms Trade

• It is difficult to talk about war, peace and human rights without referring to the arms trade.
• $21 billion per year spent by governments on arms.
• There are 639 million small arms in the world, or one for every ten people, produced by over

1,000 companies in at least 98 countries.

• 60% of small arms are in civilian hands.
• 8 million more small arms are produced every year.
• 16 billion units of ammunition are produced each year - more than two new bullets for every

man, woman and child on the planet.

• More than 500,000 people on average are killed with conventional arms every year:
one person every minute.
• In World War One, 14% of total casualties were civilian. In World War Two this grew to 67%.

In

some of today’s conflicts the figure is even higher.

 • There are 300,000 child soldiers

involved in conflicts.

• One third of countries spend more

on the military than they do on
health- care services.
• An average of US$22 billion a
year is spent on arms by
countries in Africa, Asia, Middle
East and Latin America. Half of
this amount would enable every
girl and boy in those regions to
go to primary school.
• In Africa, economic losses due to
war are about $15 billion per
year.
Human rights advocates agree that, sixty
years after its issue, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights is still more a
dream than reality.

Violations exist in every part of the world. For

example, Amnesty International’s 2009 World
Report and other sources show that
individuals are:
1. Tortured or abused in at least 81 countries
2. Face unfair trials in at least 54 countries
3. Restricted in their freedom of expression

in at least 77 countries
 ARTICLE 3 THE
RIGHT TO • An estimated 6,500 people
LIVE FREE were killed in 2007 in armed
conflict in
Afghanistan—nearly half
being non-combatant civilian
deaths at the hands of
“Everyone has the right to life,
insurgents. Hundreds of
liberty and security of person.” civilians were also killed in
suicide attacks by armed
groups.
• In Brazil in 2007, according to official
figures, police killed at least 1,260
individuals—the highest total to date.
All incidents were officially labelled
“acts of resistance” and received little
or no investigation.
• In Uganda, 1,500 people die
each week in the internally
displaced person camps.
According to the World
Health Organization, 500,000
have died in these camps.
• Vietnamese authorities forced at least
75,000 drug addicts and prostitutes into
71
overpopulated “rehab” camps, labeling the
detainees at “high risk” of contracting HIV/AIDS
but providing no treatment.
 ARTICLE 4 —
NO SLAVERY
“No one shall be held in slavery
or servitude; slavery and the
slave trade shall be prohibited
in all their forms.”

• In Guinea-Bissau, children as young

as five are trafficked out of the
country to work in cotton fields in
southern Senegal or as beggars in
the capital city.
• In Ghana, children five to fourteen
are tricked with false promises of
education and future into
dangerous, unpaid jobs in the
fishing industry.
• In Asia, Japan is the major destination
country for trafficked women, especially
women coming from the Philippines and
Thailand. UNICEF estimates 60,000 child
prostitutes in the Philippines.
• The US State Department estimates 600,000 to 820,000 men,
women and children are trafficked across international borders
each year, half of whom are minors, including record numbers
of women and girls fleeing from Iraq.
• In nearly all countries, including Canada, the US and the
UK, deportation or harassment are the usual governmental
responses, with no assistance services for the victims.
• In the Dominican Republic, the
operations of a trafficking ring led to
the death by asphyxiation of 25
Haitian migrant workers. In 2007, two
civilians and two military officers
received lenient prison sentences for
their part in the operation.
• In Somalia in 2007, more than 1,400
displaced Somalis and Ethiopian
nationals died at sea in trafficking
operations.
 ARTICLE 5 — NO • In 2008, US authorities continued to
hold 270 prisoners in Guantánamo
TORTURE Bay, Cuba, without charge or trial,
subjecting them to “water-boarding,”
torture that simulates drowning.
“No one shall be subjected to torture or Former-President George W. Bush
to cruel, inhuman or degrading authorized the CIA to continue secret
treatment or detention and interrogation, despite its
punishment.” violation of international law.
• In Darfur, violence, atrocities and abduction are rampant and outside aid
all but cut off. Women in particular are the victims of unrestrained
assault, with more than 200 rapes in the vicinity of a displaced persons
camp in one five-week period, with no effort by authorities to punish the
perpetrators.
•
• In the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
acts of torture and ill treatment are routinely
committed by government security services
and armed groups, including sustained
beatings, stabbings and rapes of those in
custody. Detainees are held incommunicado,
sometimes in secret detention sites.
• In 2007, the Republican Guard (presidential
guard) and Special Services police division in
Kinshasa arbitrarily detained and tortured
numerous individuals labeled as critics of the
government.
 • In Algeria, refugees and
ARTICLE 13 — FREEDOM TO MOVE asylum-seekers were frequent
victims of detention, expulsion or
ill treatment. Twenty-eight
“1. Everyone has the right to freedom of
movement and residence within the
individuals from sub- Saharan
borders of each State. African countries with official
“2. Everyone has the right to leave any refugee status from the United
country, including his own, and to return to Nations High Commissioner for
his country.” Refugees (UNHCR) were
deported to Mali after being
falsely tried, without legal
counsel or interpreters, on
charges of entering Algeria
illegally.
• They were dumped near a
desert town where a Malian
armed group was active,
without food, water or
medical aid.
• In Kenya, authorities violated
international refugee law when they
closed the border to thousands of
people fleeing armed conflict in
Somalia. Asylum-seekers were illegally
detained at the Kenyan border without
charge or trial and forcibly returned to
Somalia.
• In northern Uganda, 1.6 million
citizens remained in displacement
camps. In the Acholi subregion, the
area most affected by armed conflict,
63 percent of the 1.1 million people
displaced in 2005 were still living in
camps in 2007, with only 7,000
returned permanently to their places
of origin.
 ARTICLE 18 — FREEDOM OF
THOUGHT
• In Myanmar, the military junta
“Everyone has the right to freedom of
thought, conscience and religion; this right
includes freedom to change his religion or
belief, and freedom, either alone or in
community with others and in public or
private, to manifest his religion or belief in
teaching, practice, worship and
observance.”
crushed peaceful
demonstrations led by monks,
raided and closed monasteries,
confiscated and destroyed
property, shot, beat and
detained protesters, and
harassed or held hostage the
friends and family members of
the protesters.
• In China, Falun Gong
practitioners were singled out
for torture and other abuses
while in detention. Christians
were persecuted for practicing
their religion outside
state-sanctioned channels.

• .
• In Kazakhstan, local authorities in
a community near Almaty
authorized the destruction of
twelve homes, all belonging to
Hare Krishna members, falsely
charging that the land on which the
homes were built had been illegally
acquired. Only homes belonging to
members of the Hare Krishna
community were destroyed.
 ARTICLE 19 — FREEDOM
OF EXPRESSION
“Everyone has the right to freedom of
opinion and expression; this right includes
freedom to hold opinions without
interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.”
• In Sudan, dozens of human
rights defenders were arrested
and tortured by national
intelligence and security forces.
• In Ethiopia, two prominent
human rights defenders were
convicted on false charges and
sentenced to nearly three years
in prison.
• In Somalia, a prominent
human rights defender was
murdered.
• In the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, the government attacks and
threatens human rights defenders and
restricts freedom of expression and
association. In 2007, provisions of the
2004 Press Act were used by the
government to censor newspapers and
limit freedom of expression.
• Russia repressed political dissent,
pressured or shut down independent
media and harassed nongovernmental
organizations. Peaceful public
demonstrations were dispersed with
force, and lawyers, human rights
defenders and journalists were
threatened and attacked. Since 2000,
the murders of seventeen journalists,
all critical of government policies and
actions, remain unsolved.
• In Iraq, at least thirty-seven Iraqi employees of media networks were killed
in 2008, and a total of 235 since the invasion of March 2003, making Iraq
the world’s most dangerous place for journalists.
 • “1. Everyone has the
right to take part in the
government of his
country, directly or
ARTICLE 21 — through freely chosen
representatives.
RIGHT TO • “2. Everyone has the
right to equal access to
DEMOCRACY public service in his
country.
• “3. The will of the
people shall be the basis
of the authority of
government; this will
shall be expressed in
periodic and genuine
elections which shall be
by universal and equal
suffrage and shall be
held by secret vote or by
equivalent free voting
procedures.”
• In Zimbabwe, hundreds of human rights defenders and members of the
main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were
arrested for participating in peaceful gatherings.
•
• In Cuba, at the end of 2007, sixty
two prisoners of conscience
remained incarcerated for their
nonviolent political views or
activities.
• In Pakistan, thousands of lawyers,
journalists, human rights defenders
and political activists were arrested for
demanding democracy, the rule of law
and an independent judiciary.
 • For 18 years, the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA)

CHILD SLAVERY IN guerrillas of northern Uganda

has been kidnapping boys to

THE LRA train them as soldiers and girls

to turn them into sexual slaves
of the commanders. In 2002,
as many as 20,000 children
were controlled by the LRA.
•
• The involuntary
sterilization of disabled
underage girls is still lawful
in Australia(2014).
• In Afghanistan, invasive vaginal
examinations are forced on women to test
“virginity” every time a girl is arrested on a
morality charge.
• During the

Industrial Revolutions

children as young

as six worked up to 19 hours a

day for little or no pay in
horrid, dangerous conditions.
• After being brought to the American colonies, Africans were
stripped of human rights, enslaved, brutally treated and
considered lesser than their fellow human beings for centuries.
• The international sex trade remains a
huge problem around the world and may
involve upward of 27 million people. The
sale of the women’s and girls’ bodies is
a result of gender inequality and is
viewed as acceptable by many
countries.
• The discrimination and violation of African-Americans’ human rights did not end
after slavery was abolished. From separate bathrooms and schools to belittlement
and judgement of individuals based on their skin color, African-Americans were
stripped of their rights in America until 1964.
 VALLEY
MASS
EXODUS OF
KASHMIRI PUNDITS
FROM
• Terrorism forced the Hindus, a and extortion of property.
large majority of whom were
Kashmiri Pandits, to flee from
their homes in the Kashmir
valley in the early part of
1990.
• According to Asia Watch, the
militant organisations forced
the Hindus residing in the
Kashmir valley to flee and
become refugees in
Delhi-NCR and Jammu.
• Ethnic cleansing continued till a
vast majority of the Kashmiri
Pandits were evicted out of the
valley after having suffered
numerous acts of violence,
including sexual assault on
women, arson, mental torture
HINDU – SIKH RIOTS IN DELHI

-
1984

• In the early 1980s, Sikh separatists in Punjab demanding separate

state ‘Khalistan’ committed serious human rights abuses,
massacring civilians, attacking Hindu minorities, and carried out bomb
attacks in crowded places. In June 1984, the government deployed
security forces to flush out the militants who had occupied the holiest
of Sikh shrines, the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
• The military campaign inflicted serious damage to the shrine and
killed hundreds, including pilgrims, militants, and security personnel.
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was murdered in an act of
 revenge by two of her Sikh bodyguards.
• Following the assassination, mobs, reportedly instigated by political
leaders, went on a rampage against Sikhs in Delhi and other cities.
Over three days, over 2500 Sikhs were killed, robbed of their
belongings and and destroyed. Many women were raped in the
national capital. Hundreds of Sikhs were massacred elsewhere in the
country. The authorities quickly blamed every incident of mass
communal violence on a spontaneous public reaction.
 CHILD LABOUR DEPRIVES
MANY IGNITED MINDS OF A
BRIGHT FUTURE
• Child labour is one of the biggest
menaces which grips many bright
children and spoils their promising
futures.
• Children belonging to the poorer or
economically weaker sections of the
society often fall prey to child labour.
For want of money, their parents force
them to take on petty jobs at a very
tender age and make huge compromise
with their education.
• According to Human Rights Watch, two
out of five children in India drop out of
school before completing their eighth
standard. Hence, a large number of
children in our country are robbed of
their fundamental right to free and
compulsory education.
 • Last year, a Delhi court
acquitted 16 police officers
who were accused of
massacring 40 Muslims in the
Hashimpura locality in
Police Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, back
in 1987.

Impunities • The court’s defence was

that the prosecution had not
been able to establish the
identity of the suspected
policemen.
• In April of the same year, 20
people were shot dead by the
police forces in Andhra
Pradesh for ‘suspected
smuggling’. In Telangana,
they shot five pre-trial
detainees who were being
taken to court, with the
excuse that they had tried to
‘overpower
them’.
• According to a report released by the US
Congress, the researchers found continuing
allegations that the Indian police raped women
while in police custody.
• Tribal girls were gang-raped in government
hostels, and 48,338 child-rape cases were
recorded from 2001 to 2011, A US State
Department for Human Rights report for
2015 stated that there were 555 ‘encounter
killings’ by security forces and police between
2008 and 2013.
• The list includes: Uttar Pradesh (138),
Jharkhand (50), Manipur (41), Assam (33),
Chhattisgarh (29), Odisha (27), Jammu and
Kashmir (26), Tamil Nadu (23), and Madhya
Pradesh (20). In August, the National Human
Rights Commission recorded 1,327 deaths in
judicial custody between April 2014 and
January 2015.
•
 • According to the National
Crime Records Bureau
(NCRB), crime against Dalits
– ranging from rape, murder,
DALITS beatings, and violence
related to land matters –
increased by 29 percent from
2012 to 2014. In 2014 itself,
over 47,064 cases of crimes
against Dalits were
registered. Dalits are still
considered ‘untouchables’
who should not receive the
kind of civility extended to
every other branch of society.
• The suicide of Rohith
Vemula, a Dalit PhD student
at the Hyderabad Central
University, and the outrage
that followed, led to the
revelation of dozens of
similar cases of Dalit
suicides.
• An NHRC report shows that Dalits are prevented from entering the police station in 28 percent of Indian
villages, and their children have been made to sit separately while eating in 39 percent of government
schools.
• They do not get mail delivered to their homes in 24 percent of villages and are denied access to water
sources in 48 percent of our villages. Their women raped, their children tortured, and their livelihoods
stripped away every odd day, the Dalit community is the embodiment of gross human rights violations.
•
CONCLUSION

• Human rights exist, as embodied in the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights and the entire body of
international human rights law. They are recognized—at
least in principle—by most nations and form the heart of
many national constitutions. Yet the actual situation in
 the world is far distant from the ideals envisioned in the
Declaration.
• To some, the full realization of human rights is a remote
and unattainable goal. Even international human rights
laws are difficult to enforce and pursuing a complaint can
take years and a great deal of money. These
international laws serve as a restraining function but are
insufficient to provide adequate human rights protection,
as evidenced by the stark reality of abuses perpetrated
daily.
• Discrimination is rampant throughout the
world. Thousands are in prison for speaking
their minds. Torture and politically motivated
imprisonment, often without trial, are
commonplace, condoned and
practiced—even in some democratic
countries.
• But you can make a difference. Become
informed by reading the reports on human
rights around the world.
THANKYOU