21, March 2019 21/03/2019 – Posted in: Daily News – Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

US Country Human Rights report 2018

News Flash

The recently issued human rights report showed concern about the following human right issues:

  • Freedom of press and media.
  • Coerced disappearance.
  • Restrictions on NGOs : The government forced restrictions on foreign financing of some nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), incorporating those with views the government stated were not in the ‘national interest’, thereby curtailing the work of these NGO.
  • A large number of undertrials in prisons and their conditions : National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data, says just over 2,93,000 individuals were awaiting trial at the end of 2016.
  • Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis comprised a disproportionate number (53%) of pre-trial detainees.
  • Custodial deaths : The Report cites official (Indian) figures of 1,674 cases of such death between August 2017 and February 2018, with 1,530 occurring in judicial custody and 144 in police custody.
  • The deaths of civilians in Kashmir : Report reveals 130-145 civilian deaths by security forces in Jammu & Kashmir occurred between June 2016 and April 2018.
  • Overburdened and underpaid police, political pressure and corruption, on and in polices system.
  • Report also highlighted violence by non-state organised groups, like terrorists in Kashmir and Maoists.
  • Surveillance without permission by CMS.
  • Maoists in Jharkhand and Bihar continued to attack security forces and key infrastructure facilities such as roads, railways, and communication towers.

 

National Human Right Commission of India

The National Human Rights Commission of India is an autonomous public body established on 12  October 1993 under the Protection of Human Rights Ordinance of 28 September 1993. It was given a statutory base by the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 (TPHRA).

 

Human Right Reports

The annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – the Human Rights Reports – cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political, and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international agreements.

Source: The Hindu

 

 

International Day of Forests

 

News Flash

The International Day of Forests is held annually on 21 March to raise awareness of the importance of forests to people and their vital role in poverty eradication, environmental sustainability and food security.

 

Background

  • Forests cover one third of the Earth’s land mass, performing vital functions around the world.
  • Around 1.6 billion people – including more than 2,000 indigenous cultures – depend on forests for their livelihoods, medicines, fuel, food and shelter.
  • Forests are the most biologically-diverse ecosystems on land, home to more than 80% of the terrestrial species of animals, plants and insects.

 

India’s Forest Man

Jadav Payeng, single handedly convert barren island into a forest that today stands at 550 hectares. He went on to plant saplings and seeds along a dry sandbar by the Brahmaputra in Assam. This results in forest stand in the island of Majuli near Jorhat.

 

Majuli Island

  • Majuli, the world’s largest river island, was flooded as usual by the Brahmaputra during the monsoon that year.
  • The Assam Government has granted district status to Majuli. With this it becomes India’s first island district.
  • Majuli island is mostly inhabited by Mishing tribal people.
  • Majuli island is a rich environmental hotspot harbouring. It is home of many rare and endangered avifauna species including migratory birds.

 

Significance of Forests

We depend on forests for our survival, from the air we breathe to the wood we use. Besides providing habitats for animals and livelihoods for humans, forests also offer watershed protection, prevent soil erosion and mitigate climate change.

  • Forests help in maintaining water cycle on earth.
  • Forests help in maintaining the temperature and oxygen level of the atmosphere.
  • Forests provide habitats to diverse animal species.

  

After oceans, forests are the world’s largest storehouses of carbon

They provide ecosystem services that are critical to human welfare. These include:

  • Absorbing harmful greenhouse gasses that produce climate change. In tropical forests alone, a quarter of a trillion tons of carbon is stored in above and below ground biomass.
  • Providing clean water for drinking, bathing, and other household needs.
  • Protecting watersheds and reducing or slowing the amount of erosion and chemicals that reach waterways.
  • Providing food and medicine.
  • Serving as a buffer in natural disasters like flood and rainfalls.
  • Providing habitat to more than half of the world’s land-based species.

 

Forest Rights Act

The act was passed in December 2006. It deals with the rights of forest-dwelling communities over land and other resources.

Source: The Hindu

 

 

Integrate TB services with primary health system

 

News Flash

The Lancet Global Health: Of the 10 million new tuberculosis (TB) cases reported globally in 2017 by the World Health Organisation, 2.74 million were from India.

  • With 1,35,000 cases in 2017, India has the highest number of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) cases in the world.
  • The Lancet Commission recommends that India should scale up access to TB services for all those seeking them, optimise engagement of private sector providers and guarantee universal access to drug susceptibility testing and second line TB drugs.

 

Improvement in Medicines

  • With the improvement in TB resistant drug we can save eight million lives (28%) over the next 30 years.
  • Government need to subsidised the tests and patients are supported to complete the treatment.

 

Pros & Cons

  • This would cost an extra $290 million each year.
  • This can save India’s $32 billion losses associated with TB mortality each year.

 

Ambitious Plan

  • Government has set a highly ambitious target of “eliminating TB by 2025”, five years ahead of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) target.
  • India’s National Strategic Plan for TB Elimination (2017–25) has called for a six-time increase in private notifications to two million patients per year by 2020.
  • Instead of waiting for people with TB to reach diagnostic centres for testing, India has now undertaken case-finding campaigns to cut the transmission cycle.

 

Lancet Commission on TB

  • Tuberculosis was declared a global emergency by WHO in 1993.
  • The Lancet Commission on Tuberculosis provides critical reflection on progress to-date and a roadmap for countries and their development partners to achieve global commitments towards ending the tuberculosis epidemic.
  • In September, 2018, the UN held its first High-Level Meeting on tuberculosis that produced a political declaration to accelerate global and national actions.

Source: The Hindu

 

 

Brexit

 

News Flash

EU leaders agree Article 50 delay plan.

 

Article 50

Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) states that “Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements”.

 

Brexit

It is the abbreviation of “Britian Exit” from the European Union (EU).

 

European Union

The EU is a political, trade and economic union founded in 1957. It evolved over decades and reached its present model in 1992. There are 51 countries in Europe, out of which 28 countries have signed a treaty to become a part of the European Union.

 

Why Britain wants exit from EU

  • It has to pay millions of pounds each week as a contribution to the European budget.
  • EU in creating an imbalance in the welfare scheme of the UK government.

 

Brexit and India

  • India is one of the top investor in the UK and there are roughly around 1,00,000 people working there in companies.
  • UK is the third largest source of FDI in India.

Source: Indian Express

 

 

Kartarpur corridor

 

News Flash

Farmer donating 16.5 acres of land to the state government for the Kartarpur corridor project without any conditions.

 

Corridor

Kartarpur corridor was proposed by India in 1999. Recently union cabinet has approved the construction of corridor linkin India with Kartarpur gurudwara in Pakistan. The corridor will connect Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in kartarpur, pakistan with Dera Baba Nanak sahib in gurdaspur, India.

 

Significance

It will allow Indian devotees to visit holy shrine without visa.

Source: Indian Express

 

 

Equality : Access to justice for all

 

News flash

Principle Article 38-A, providing a fundamental obligation of the state to “secure that the operation of the legal system promotes justice, on a basis of equal opportunity, and shall, in particular, provide free legal aid, by suitable legislation or schemes or in any other way, to ensure that opportunities for securing justice are not denied to any citizen by reason of economic or other disabilities”.

  • It means state shall endeavour to make provisions for legal aid.
  • Article guarantees a basic human right to a just social and political order under the Constitution. And “other disabilities” go beyond economic disability
  • Access to justice now also means access to judicial infrastructure. The Supreme Court in 2012 has held that “it is the constitutional duty of the government to provide the citizens of the country with judicial infrastructure and means of access to justice” so that “every person is able to receive an expeditious, inexpensive, and fair trial”.

 

People on margins deprived of their rights

  • Undertrials and prisoners: Adjudicatory polices on bail and some procedures that allow long periods of pre-trial detention also need a close review 

 

Specially on following points :

  • First we have to acknowledge that the undertrials are not in jail for punishment.
  • Two, the difference between prosecution and persecution should be maintained.
  • Three, a person in custody has all the rights (save freedom of movement) of a citizen, person and human being.
  • Presumption of guilt should never rule or replace the presumption of innocence.
  • Five, No one should be allowed to forget that the accused, defendant, or the convict has a right to be, and to remain, fully human.
  • Miscarriage of justice even under the rarest of rare situations in the cases of death penalties.
  • The arbitrary and inconsistent manner in which death penalty is used by the courts can be justice depriving , particularly for marginalised suctions as we know that most of the convicts sentenced to death come from these sections.

 

Caution needed

  • The Supreme Court shall sit as a full Court and with unanimity decide on the award of death penalty.
  • A political consensus should be made to abolish the death penalty from the law books. Already, 160 state members of the United Nations have done so, under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1989.
  • Complete and free legal aid and consultation available to the magical sections.
  • Free and fair police investigations

Source: The Hindu