Right to food

People in Bundelkhand are being forced to eat grass for survival. This dire situation is being aired in reports after report of news channels. Grass and weeds are traditional diet in the area, counter officials of the Uttar Pradesh government. Neither is entirely wrong. What villagers are being forced to eat is not exactly grass, […]

Children with sunken eyes and protruding bones, struggling to breathe; mothers watching haplessly as their children die in front of their eyes; this sad reality was not happening in Somalia or Ethiopia, but in a country that is the seventh atomic power of the world. The ongoing drought in Pakistan’s Tharparkar district, Sindh province has […]

Who can enjoy any of the basic human rights guaranteed to them by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 through the United Nations General Assembly resolution 217, if they face chronic hunger, or even worse, starvation? The answer to the question […]

This week world leaders met in Paris to kick off a two-week climate change summit, a meeting some say will determine the future viability of human civilisation on our planet. Just Asia looks at the implications for Asia from a human rights perspective. Next, Just Asia reports on the violent arrests of Papuans during peaceful […]

Avinash Pandey By 30 June 2015, 1300 farmers had killed themselves in Maharashtra, according to the state government’s own admission, with half of the year still to go. The ongoing drought in Marathwada was supposed to deepen the crisis, which it did, with the toll reaching 997 there alone by 30 November 2015. The total […]

More than 100 farmers have reportedly committed suicide in Uttar Pradesh, one of the most impoverished states in India, because of a hailstorm that destroyed their crops. The situation will only worsen with 50 of 75 districts being hit by a severe drought. Despite having evidence of the drought, the provincial government took two and […]

Avinash Pandey Dear President Pranab Mukherjee, it feels good to see your concern over the imminent threat of food insecurity because of the degradation of large masses of agricultural land. Your insistence upon the urgent need to adopt more sustainable methods of land use systems and soil management practices is really important and must be […]

A Statement from Roshni Helpline forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission Universal Children’s Day is being celebrated today (20th November), world over, with regrettably a majority of Pakistani children still facing a number of threats to their safety, security, and welfare, either due to the lack of or inadequacy of laws, and hazardous living […]

The Roundupthis week opens with a report of yet another targeted assassination in Bangladesh, which pushes the country further into lawlessness and terror. Faisal ArefinDipan, owner of a publishing house, is the latest victim. AHRC TV interviews Md.Ashrafuzzamanabout the killing spree and what is behind it. Next in this programme, BablooLoitongbam, of Human Rights Alert […]

Javeria Younes Women in Pakistan are treated as second class citizens. Denied their fundamental rights, the they are often viewed as property, to be dealt with as their owners deems fit. The chauvinism and patriarchy prevalent in Pakistan ensures systematic gender subordination, which perpetuates violence. In a society where the male ego is inflated at […]

Prashant Kumar Dubey Nutrition and TB are two entities which need to be considered together, not separately. It is unfortunate that our country has not taken any initiative in this area resulting in a disregard for this relationship. If we really want to overcome TB, we need to talk through a package system similar to […]

Death of children under its care is nothing novel for the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Post Graduate Institute of Paediatrics located in Cuttack, Odisha. It took 58 of them to die in less than 10 days for it to become scandalous. Over the years, the Institute, popularly known as Shishu Bhawan, has recorded an alarming number […]

The abduction, rape, and murder of Seya Sadewmi of Kotadeniyawa on 12 September 2015 has led many Sri Lankans to react across the country, and provoked many demonstrations by women’s organisations and also by children. Even yesterday, 23 September 2015, demonstrations by school children were reported from the North of the country. Similarly, media reports […]

A social justice bench of the Supreme Court of India comprising justices Madan B. Lokur and U.U. Lalit recently lambasted the government yet again for its failure in implementing welfare schemes for children belonging to the lower strata of society. The Court stressed the “mismatch” between the “wonderful schemes” the government creates and the ground […]

Sachin Kumar Jain Whenever clichés like development, economic progress, growth rates, and their ilk begin swirling in the air, it can, rather, it should, be safely assumed that there is something terribly amiss; the most important social issues are getting brushed under a (red?) carpet (for whom?). The day’s vegetable prices become the handle to […]

The rights of tribal people and other forest dwelling communities are set to be assaulted again, as the Indian government is warming up to the to the idea of public private partnerships in forest management. Though the details of the proposal are still unclear, a report in the Hindustan Times suggest that the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate […]

An Article published in the Hong Kong Free Press, on 11th September 2015, forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission By Basil Fernando Perhaps the most touching moment broadcast through international media in recent times is the warm welcome people fleeing Syria through Hungary received from large German crowds on arrival. When citizens of one country […]

The practice of untouchability being a criminal offence did not deter ‘upper caste’ villagers in Sigaranahalli in Holenarsipur Taluk of Karnataka from mercilessly driving out four Dalit women who dared to enter a local Hindu temple. It did not deter them from fining the women with 10,000 rupees (about $150 USD) for a crime they, […]

Iqbal Ahmed Detho The debate around legislating child protection laws and creating institutional mechanisms has got sympathetic constituency both among public and policy makers after the gory incident of raping the children and making their videos in Kasur, Punjab. Before this incident became public, Federal Government had moved a draft bill in the parliament for […]

Who will account for the death of three year old Aylan whose dead body was washed up at the Aegean beach in Turkey, the photo of the toddler called upon world’s conscience. The photo that went viral over social media sparked a fresh debate on the Syrian refugees facing civil strife since 2011. As mentioned […]