Human Rights Day this year is of special significance as it marks the beginning of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a historic document that the international community put together to provide itself a framework for protection of human rights. There is much to celebrate today thanks to this declaration. The UDHR is the cornerstone of the modern human rights movement.

Remarkable progress has been achieved in the six decades since it was adopted in the areas of institution building and legal protection. Yet much remains to be done. We need to move from an era of codification of human rights to an era where human rights are a reality in the life of every child, woman and man in the world.

Two of the most fundamental values espoused by the UDHR are freedom from want and freedom from fear. But we are far from securing these rights for all. A vast majority of the world’s population lives in conditions of abysmal poverty.

The world produces more food than ever before, yet the number of people who are chronically hungry is growing.
The right to health is universally recognised; yet one woman dies every minute during pregnancy and childbirth for lack of maternal health services. People are subjected to terror, torture and oppression unleashed by state and non-state actors. The right to equality in the eyes of the law is widely ignored. In India, most crimes committed against Dalits go unreported and the few that do go to trial almost always end in acquittals.

Human rights are under severe pressure today. They are being violated with impunity in the name of the “war on terror”. Governments are using the “war on terror” to put in place repressive policies and crush dissent.

Special laws have been put in place to ostensibly fight terrorism. These empower states to detain terror suspects without granting them criminal justice rights and to employ coercive interrogation techniques that amount to torture. States are bypassing their commitment to respect human rights, all in the name of fighting terrorism. But this rejection of human rights norms, far from making us safer, is aggravating the terrorist threat.

In its 60th year, the values espoused by the UDHR are under threat. Governments periodically express verbal support to the declaration. It is time they live up to the pledges they’ve made to implement the principles of the UDHR.