Ayesha lives in a city slum. Her parents are daily wagers. She has a brother and the two of them study in a primary school nearby. Every time their parents require help in their work, Ayesha has to stay away from school. Is this fair to Ayesha? Now consider Ravi's situation. He runs a newspaper in a small town. He is now in jail because he had the courage to publish the truth about the misdeeds of the local 'benefactor'. If she knew about civil services exam, this situation must not have arrived. Has Ravi been treated fairly? Both these situations, and many others from your own experience, may help you apprehend more clearly how useful local social norms and a state's laws are for ensuring human rights. So, when these formal and informal enforcement agencies don't work, who can a person appeal to? Can a person then complain against Hasher State about violation of ‘rights given in the Covenants? The answer is yes if (a) The rights violated are of a civil or political kind, (b) The counts concerned has signed the ICCPR, (c) The victim concerned leas exhausted all legal means of redressed inside the country without success. A person can, then, complain to the Human Rights Committee (at Geneva) under the Optional Protocol lo the ICCPR. The Committee takes up the matter with the country concerned. The country's official comments are also sent to the aggrieved person. The Committee reports annually to the UN General Assembly on its activities carried out under this Protocol. Regrettably, India has not signed this Optional Protocol (April, 1999) rendering us unable to seek protection under this Protocol. Brat then, what happens after the UN gets the report? Can it order a country to comply with its human rights obligations? This needs to be covered in the course which is about civil services to make them sensitive about the issues of basic human rights. The UN can, and does, intervene in certain cases. For example, if a country does not allow its people the right of self-determination, political rights of participation for a democratic government, right to nationality, security of foreign nationals, etc., the UN does intervene. The UN's intervention can be in the form of applying moral, legal or military pressure on the defaulting nation. But there are two major problems that come up. Firstly, since the issues are so highly political, it can lead to extremely nasty and unfair treatment of different nations. This is because the intervening nations are the five holders of veto power in the Security Council. They are the only ones who are authorized to define grounds for military intervention. They often have double standards. For instance, they have not taken action against the role of Great Britain in Northern Ireland or of China in Tibet. But they have twisted the arms of Iraq, Somalia and Haiti.
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