AS World Human Rights Day was being celebrated yesterday across the world under the theme: “Human Rights 365,” the United Nations Association of Guyana (UNAG) has expressed the need for continued, active surveillance of human rights and freedoms not only locally, but internationally as well. According to the UNAG in a statement issued to this publication yesterday, while human rights may be relative to the society and individuals within that environment, those of us who have been nurtured in a democratic tradition recognise and accept certain rights and freedoms as necessary prerequisites for the enjoyment and sustenance of life and liberty, and as part of the inherent entitlement of human beings.
In the statement, the UNAG further noted that since 1950, after the UN General Assembly had proclaimed December 10 as International Human Rights Day, this day has been observed by peoples in member states of the United Nations.
However, the statement added that prior to this, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 proclaimed that recognition of these rights is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace and that, “it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse to rebellion against tyranny and oppression that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”
This declaration, UNAG contended, paved the way for the International Covenant of Political and Civil Rights and of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966; and all three instruments endorsed the entitlement of everyone to these rights and freedoms without distinction of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status including the right to life and personal security, to education, freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention; from arbitrary deprivation of property; freedom of expression, of religion and of movement, of assembly and association; freedom from torture and from inhumane and degrading treatment.
The statement further highlighted that Guyana has ratified these covenants; is a party to several other international instruments which endorse these rights and has enshrined them in the constitution.
“In Europe and America in the 17th and 18th centuries, there had been significant conceptual development of many of these rights by the published thoughts of Thomas Hobbes, Descartes, Condorcet, Tom Paine and John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, Lafayette, Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau and the inspired popular expressions culminating in the French and American Revolutions” the statement explained.
These rights and freedoms according to the UNAG, in our time and space have been earnestly promoted by Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham and Eusi Kwayana of Guyana; Norman and Michael Manley and Alexander Bustamante of Jamaica; C.L.R James, Eric Williams and Cipriani of Trinidad; Albert Marryshow and Maurice Bishop of Grenada; and Fidel Castro of Cuba.
“It is vitally important that people who live in democratic societies do not take these rights for granted, complacently assuming that they will be automatically translated into their individual lives and into the societies in which they live,” the UNAG said.
In this regard, they echoed the words of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which they regarded as of perennial significance: “I call on states to honour their obligations to protect human rights every day of the year. I call on people to hold their governments to account.”
“The need is constant and continuing for active surveillance of human rights and freedoms, for consistent maintenance of the municipal and international machinery installed for their protection; and for unflagging assertion and exercise of them; of those self-evident truths on which these rights and freedoms are based – even to the point, if necessary, where we have got to sacrifice all else in order to protect them against erosion and destruction,” the association urged in its closing remarks.