Bounty of Nature is a Human Right!

December 10th every year is to be commemorated as the Global human rights day. It is popularly believed that the basic rights of humans came to be reckoned as a global phenomenon after the universal declaration of human rights by the UNO in 1947. But the fact however is that different cultures and civilizations in world history have always been practicing human rights, in accordance with their might and as the circumstance would permit, long before 1947. All what happened in 1947 is that the West, having believed that might was right, was compelled to accept human rights as a pre-requisite for world peace after the monumental devastations caused by the two World Wars.

Ashoka edicts, inscribed 2,300 years ago in 347 BC in Kalinga, modern day Orissa in India, are considered a forerunner to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The analogy cited therein for the relationship between State and its citizenry is that between a father and his children. It is not just about loving kindness but benevolence based on equanimity and justice; about the positive power of ahimsa; about the eight fold path that avoids the extremes. The West however, had discarded all this as a mere advocacy of 'heathens and pagan', until these universal truths dawned on them, the hard way.

The current scenario on global human rights however, is again showing signs of getting ensconced in politics to a point where the quintessence and spirit of human rights would no longer be relevant. The West, with the powerful arms of propaganda at their command, continues to denounce the less developed countries for lacking in 'democracy', 'freedom of expression' and what have you! In fact these developed countries have been so concerned of these abominable practices that in 1997 the UN passed the R2P law (Responsibility to Protect) which bestowed Western countries the right to invade less developed countries whose Governments renege on basic human rights.

Recently, we witnessed the West orchestrating against our own efforts to overcome the world's most ruthless terror organization, twisting the inherent virtues of human rights to suit their own political agenda. While we were making a laboured and overdue effort to neutralize the primary source of human rights violations for the past thirty years in this country, the West were making a case against the Government of Sri Lanka passing strictures to make defeating terrorism extremely difficult. But those actions too were ostensibly carried out in the very name of 'human rights'. Isn't it paradoxical but yet true?

Now, come to think of it: what is the basic right of an ordinary human being that is common to all born to this world? There cannot be any argument on that and that is the right to live. Again, not just the right to live but, the right to live in an environment free of pollution and artificially catalyzed waste! Fresh air, clean water, un plundered land and uninhibited sunrays are bounties that this planet has been endowed with, since its very inception. Hence every man and animal born to this world has the unquestionable right to enjoy these privileges without being apologetic.

Yet living in this advanced age, we are being enlightened, day in and day out, about the current crisis the planet earth faces due to global warming caused by toxic gases. The irony is that the effect of all this environmental degradation is to be felt by the poor developing countries in the very near future in the form of, sea level rise, epidemics, parched up lands, and disturbance in the ecology resulting in storms and tempest. Tiny nations like Maldive Islands face the threat of being wiped out from the face of the earth within the next ten years and in order to stage a protest the Maldivian Government recently held an under water cabinet meeting.

The question then is: who is spewing these toxic gasses and waste material into the global environment and endangering the lives of citizens living in marginalized countries? It is none other than the developed countries of course and it is done in their quest to make their consumers the 'Kings' and then to dominate the whole world through trade and commerce.

Continuing to do something, while there is a global consensus against that act, is not as pardonable as doing it for years ignorantly and innocently. The US' failure to ratify the Kyoto protocol, designed to control global warming, could be called an act only short of inhumanity! Will the current discussions in Copenhagen produce results or would that be another talking shop where develop countries would try to protect their commercial interests? So then, what about the violation of that basic of human right of people to live in a cleaner planet? Could the developing countries invoke the R2P and invade the developed countries and destroy their obnoxious factories that pollute the earth?

The world today is full of paradoxes and double standards. Unless and until these incongruities are addressed by the world powers, they would not earn the credibility of the less developed world, resulting in North-South co-operation and world peace. Human rights, short of human feelings and mired in hypocrisy, would continue to remain abstract and unenforceable!