Human Rights Violations in Slums

“Conditions in slums are a violation of human rights,” argues the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon.

Ban Ki-moon said on Monday at the fifth World Urban Forum that the living conditions that are found in slums all over the world are a violation of human rights.  For the more than one billion people living in poverty around the world, access to safe drinking water, sanitation and shelter are everyday concerns.  The increasing urbanization of the world’s population is a cause for the increase in the number of people living in slums.  Nearly half of the world’s population lives in towns or cities and there are almost 830 million who live in slums.  Some of the biggest slums in the world are found in Africa and Asia, including the one pictured above in Dharavi.  It is considered to be the largest slum in Asia and is located in Mumbai, India.  Still, it is smaller than slums in Neza-Chalco-Itza, Mexico and Kibera, Nairobi.

The World Urban Forum, which is taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from March 22 to March 26, is a conference that discusses issues of urbanization.  According to UN-HABITAT, a United Nations agency, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in towns and cities within the next 50 years.  Because of this, one of the goals of UN-HABITAT is to find ways to create sustainable development in cities and help reduce poverty.

Ban Ki-moon’s view on living conditions in slums brings a different perspective on why there is an urgent need to create a future that is free of slums.  Besides the desire felt by many people to help out your fellow man, it is also a matter of preserving an idea that everyone, no matter their nationality, race, gender, or religion, deserves basic human rights outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  For the individuals that live in slums, many of their basic human rights are not available.  The men, women and children without access to clean drinking water or adequate shelter are living in fear of their safety and the safety of their families.  This problem is one that UN-HABITAT and many organizations are trying to address.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December, 1948.  It contains 30 articles that define the human rights that each person has.  According to the General Assembly, the declaration is “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms.”  Human Rights Day is celebrated every year on December 10 in honor of the adoption of the declaration.

U.S. Human Rights Report

The U.S. Department of State released a report on world-wide human rights on Thursday.  The report cited human rights violations from different countries around the world including Nigeria, Kenya, China, North Korea and many more.  According to the report, 2009 was “a year in which ethnic, racial, and religious tensions led to violent conflicts and serious human rights violations and fueled or exacerbated more than 30 wars or internal armed conflicts.”  The annual report reviewed human rights conditions of 194 countries and condemned abuses of human rights found in several countries including China, North Korea, Iran, and Nigeria.

AFRICA

There were reports of unlawful killings by the government, abductions by militant groups, torture and many other problems in Nigeria.  In Uganda there was consideration of a bill that would create a death penalty for homosexuals.  Overall, there were far more reports of human rights violations than there were reports of improving human rights.  More conflict was found in some of Africa’s most populous countries like Kenya and Ethiopia.

CHINA

The report found “extrajudicial killings, executions without due process, torture and coerced confessions of prisoners, and the use of forced labor, including prison labor” in China.  Despite these violations of human rights, China did create a National Human Rights Action Plan in April of 2009, but has not yet been carried out.

There were numerous other human rights violations from many other countries besides Nigeria, Uganda and China that were included in the report.  However, it shows that there are also some countries that have taken a step in the right direction.

Some have cited human rights violations committed by the U.S. in Afghanistan.  There have been cases of Afghan civilians who have been killed by United States forces. For instance, according to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, more Afghan civilians have been killed by the United States and Allied forces than have been killed by insurgents.  The United States human rights records were not a part of the 2009 report, but the U.S. will have to give a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council sometime this year, as a part of a process called the Universal Periodic Review.  The process was created in 2006 as a way for the Human Rights Council to review human rights records of all 192 United Nation Member States.

STOP THE ABUSE

In order to improve human rights throughout the world, there must be a greater awareness of the many violations of human rights that are taking place.  There are many organizations that are dedicated to ending human rights abuses.  Human Rights Watch and  Amnesty International are a couple examples of these organizations.  You can find out how you can help put an end to human rights abuses by visiting their websites.

Some Links:

• http://www.hrw.org/ – Human Rights Watch
• http://www.amnesty.org/ – Amnesty International
• http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/index.aspx – Human Rights First
• http://www.hrc.org/ – Human Rights Campaign
• http://www.humanrightsusa.org/ – World Organization for Human Rights USA

Cultural Diversity

Growing up in a small town in rural Iowa, I never really experienced much except for life in my own town.  In high school we had foreign exchange students that would come for a year, but other than that the vast majority of students and people living there were middle class white people.  It was easy to see all of the differences that there were between myself and people from other cultures, even though there were far more similarities.  Now that I have had the chance to go to school with people from different cultures and travel to different places to experience different cultures for myself, I have a much greater appreciation for the amount of diversity that exists in the world.

Puncky Heppner, a teacher at the University of Missouri, was recognized for his cross-cultural work by the American Psychological Association.  “Culture affects human behavior. The more we learn about other cultures, the better teachers, mentors, scholars and therapists we can be. Ultimately, understanding different cultures makes us better people.”

Culture can be defined as the sum total of all beliefs and behaviors of a specific social, ethnic, or age group.  There are many benefits of understanding cultures that are different from your own.  The United States is one of the most culturally diverse places in the world.  Your neighbor or coworker could be from a different country and developing relationships with those people is easier when you know a little about where they are coming from.  Besides benefitting relationship building, learning about other cultures can help in other ways.  You might learn something about another culture that you feel you should adopt into your own life.

Once you have learned about a culture, you will understand that the definition that I used earlier to describe culture is not a very good one.  This is because not every single person in a culture has the same beliefs and behaviors.  Understanding more about other cultures has helped me see the amount of diversity that exists in those cultures and that there are often stereotypes associated with different cultures that are false.  

Since not everybody in a certain location has exactly the same beliefs and behaviors, being able to understand and appreciate different lifestyles can help to develop relationships with people from your own culture, but who hold different beliefs than you do.  Whether it’s religion, political views or any number of things, it is important that you can understand that your point of view is not the only one that exists.  So maybe the entire idea of understanding and appreciating other cultures outside your own should be changed to understanding and appreciating other people.

I feel that learning more about people from other cultures has made me question my own beliefs and values, but it ends up solidifying them.  Being more open to learning about different cultures has helped me be more accepting of people and ideas that are foreign to me, which is something that everyone can benefit from.