Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) is having its 77th session in Geneva under the chairmanship of Mohamed Ezzeldin Abdul Moneim of Egypt. It will conclude on February 28, 2025.
The Covenant enshrines economic, social and cultural rights such as the rights to adequate food, adequate housing, education, health, social security, water and sanitation, and work.
In her opening remarks, Wan-Hea Lee, Chief, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General said, “As we welcome the continued march toward universal ratification of the Covenant and the Optional Protocol, even if incremental, we are mindful of current events and modern challenges which are regrettably affecting the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, as well as all other human rights across the globe.
The High Commissioner, in his recent statement at the launch of the UN Human Rights Annual Appeal 2025, noted the widespread pushback on Multilateralism and how the challenges faced in 2024 are unlikely to let up in 2025, as conflicts continue and reemerge. Most prominently, the High Commissioner has been consistently urging States to “Our world cannot be based on a model that offers health for some, wealth for some, jobs for some, rights for some”, he said.
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman, World Forum for Peace & Justice, said in its resolution #4 of 21 February 1977, the commission on Human Rights stressed the responsibility and duty of all members of the international community to create the necessary conditions for the full realization of economic, social and cultural rights as an essential means of ensuring the real and meaningful enjoyment of civil and political rights and fundamental freedoms. Also, according to the United Nations document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1996/15, “the 1968 proclamation of Tehran reaffirmed that human right and fundamental freedoms were indivisible. in this context of that interdependence, the realization of economic social and cultural rights was of crucial importance for the effective exercise of civil and political rights.”
Dr. Fai added that economy, social and cultural rights are the very basic and fundamental rights. We cannot conceive of progress, self-betterment, and becoming the masters of our destiny without first realizing these inalienable rights. The universality of these rights has been recognized theoretically. Indeed, there exists a covenant of economic, social and culture rights but their attainment remains an elusive goal. The concept of international solidarity and cooperation for the realization of these rights so, is completely forgotten when we come to the question of economic development. Countries are being told to solve their own economic problems. This makes sense to an extent. However, it would be myopic to gloss over the international dimension of this question.
Dr. Fai suggested that the eighteen independent experts of the 77th session of ESCR must examine the issue of realization of these rights of peoples under foreign occupation or alien domination. It should devise ways and means of monitoring the violations of economic social and cultural rights. As an example, the people of Kashmir have been languishing under the foreign occupation of India for the last more than seven decades. India has depriving them not only of economic, social and cultural rights but of all civil and political rights as well. They have yet to realize their right to self-determination. They have yet to realize this right despite being promised by the UN Security Council, also by both India and Pakistan, that they would be given that right.
Today, the territory of Kashmir is bound and gauged. Of late so called ‘militants’ have come to be blamed for everything that is wrong with Kashmir. The right of self-determination has not been realized because of ‘militants.’ The weather is not good, blame the ‘militants. The school bus is late, hold ‘militants’ accountable. The environment has degraded, the ‘militants’ are responsible. The freedom movement of Kashmiris called ‘militancy’ by India has become a favorite whipping boy of occupier – India.
Just read what an Indian novelist and essayist, Pankaj Mishra has eloquently said which was reported in Daily Guardian, London on August 13, 2010 that, The hundreds of thousands of demonstrators that fill the streets of Kashmir’s cities today are overwhelmingly young, many in their teens, and armed with nothing more lethal than stones. Yet the Indian state seems determined to strangle their voices as it did of the old one…They indeed have a broader mass base than the Green Movement does in Iran. But no colour-coded revolution is heralded in Kashmir by western commentators. The BBC and CNN don’t endlessly loop clips of little children being shot in the head by Indian soldiers. Bloggers and tweeters in the west fail to keep a virtual vigil by the side of the dead and the wounded.”
Dr. Fai warned that because the international community and particularly the developed countries see a lot of economic potential in India, they do not want to lose their economic opportunity by raising the question of human rights in Kashmir. Otherwise, the situation in Kashmir is no more different than it was in Bosnia in 1990’s. The only difference is that freedom of expression is under threat in Kashmir. As BBC quoted a Kashmir journalist saying, “We live in fear that any story could be our last story. And then you’d be in jail,” NBC news reported that, “Press freedom chilled in Kashmir as reporting is ‘criminalized’. Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma, Columbia Journalism School, New York, said “As Kashmir is silenced, press freedom levels fall below Afghanistan and Myanmar. And reported by New York-based ‘Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) the news media in Kashmir is at the brink of extinction.
Dr. Fai appealed to the world powers that they should not be completely oblivious of the right to development of communities trapped in such situations. A sincere effort towards the pacific settlement of disputes in such areas like Kashmir, can be the first necessary step for the protection of their human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights.
