Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai
Chairman
World Forum for Peace & Justice

June 23, 2025

The 59th session of the Human Rights Council is currently been held in Geneva, Switzerland from June 16 to July 9, 2025. Ambassador Jürg Lauber of Switzerland is presiding over the current session. Today, on June 23rd, it will have an informal consultation on the draft resolution on enhancement of international cooperation in the field of human rights. I want to take this opportunity to address this urgent topic at this moment in history. It might be said that never have so many human rights been proclaimed yet been so routinely violated.

It seems to me that until there evolves a generally accepted moral duty among peoples and nations to assist all victims of widespread human rights violations by force or other stiff retaliation, human rights enforcement mechanisms will operate haphazardly and whimsically for reasons unrelated to the harm to the victims or the villainy of the perpetrators. It is our job to jump-start that moral evolution

It is a fact that no human rights are self-executing. Thus, everyone who participates in raising the issues of human rights does yeoman’s service on behalf of the oppressed. What is even more impressive is the willingness to invite risks to life, liberty, and property by those who would speak in the name of human rights against autocratic or cruel regimes. How many unknown champions lie unremembered and unheralded in graves? Vastly more than perfect justice would tolerate.

The UN Thematic Rapporteurs know it the best that human rights defenders are cornerstones of the UN Human Rights Council itself. No covenant, no law, is self-executing. Individuals must be energized to pick up the cudgels of enforcement, whether by way of free speech, legal services, political leadership, revelations, or otherwise. Thus, it seems to me, some special international immunity akin to diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention is worth considering for credentialed defenders of human rights.

It seems to me that international covenants on human rights need strengthening. A primary deficiency is the omission of specific and muscular enforcement mechanisms. Take the lofty Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 8 proclaims: “Everyone has a right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted to him by the constitution or by law.”

But suppose a nation’s constitution or laws recognize no such fundamental rights. Then the proclamation is virtually hollow. And competent national tribunals may not exist for official violations of basic human rights. It is, unfortunately, commonplace for governments to deny
judicial review of actions taken during states of emergency or under so-called anti-terrorism or anti-subversion laws in their constitutions or statutes. Moreover, article 8 does not demand an effective legal remedy for violation of rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration itself.

It thus seems to me worth contemplating an amendment that would specify that at least with respect to its core articles– such as rights of privacy, equality before the law, freedom of speech, press, religion, and association, or property, and the prohibitions against torture, slavery, or arbitrary detentions the victims of violations are entitled to a civil damages remedy in the World Court with no statute of limitations or official immunity or amnesty defenses. Nations would be jointly and severally accountable for the wrongdoing of their government officers. Further, a victim who prevailed in the World Court would be entitled to enforcement of the judgment in the domestic courts of all nations that have ratified the Universal Declaration.

This idea is not dramatically different from the European Court of Human Rights created by the European Convention on Human Rights by members of the Council of Europe. The number of judges equals the number of members in the Council. They are elected for nine-year terms by a majority vote of the Consultative Assembly. The Court’s jurisdiction extends to all cases
concerning the panoramic array of human rights protected by the Convention which are referred by any of the contracting nations or the European Commission on Human Rights, itself elected by the Committee of Ministers.

The European Court decides both questions of its own jurisdiction and questions of substance, and is empowered to render final judgments that afford just satisfaction to victims of human rights violations. All the contracting nations undertake to abide by the decision of the Court in any case to which they are parties. Unlike my suggestion, however, the European Court may not entertain lawsuits brought directly by individuals alleging human rights violations, and the sanctions for disobedience to a final judgment are indeterminate.

In any event, I would respectfully suggest that the Human Rights Council consider establishing an advisory committee of experts to recommend stiffer civil enforcement mechanisms for incorporation into outstanding international human rights covenants. A right without a legal remedy is no more valuable than a munificent bequest in a pauper’s will.

Candor and fair-mindedness, I submit, supports the conclusion that the United Nations has been painfully ineffective measured by the yardsticks of international peace, human rights, and self-determination. An initial example was and remains Kashmir, over which I must disclose a personal bias since it is my homeland. Kashmir was a princely state under the British raj, and achieved statehood on August 15, 1947 when British paramountcy lapsed. Amidst much intrigue, India dispatched military troops to prop up a crumbling autocratic regime, but concurrently raced to the United Nations Security Council, with Pakistan in close pursuit, to secure multiple resolutions prescribing a self-determination plebiscite for Kashmir conducted by the United Nations.

The Security Council agreed to the plebiscite formula, but India soon apostatized from its international law commitment when it recognized that Kashmiris would never vote accession to its sovereign orbit in a free and fair election. India’s international lawlessness has escaped United Nations sanctions or even moral reproach for more than 78 years. Its human rights record is gruesome but hidden behind an iron curtain that keeps out the likes of CNN and BBC; but the commonplace Indian military atrocities extrajudicial killings, rape, torture, plunder, abduction, and arbitrary detentions without trial, are at least on a par with Slobodan Milosevic’s savagery towards Kosovar Albanians, which provoked NATO’s, but not United Nations, military intervention.

I suppose the best way to sum up my remarks today is to summon a sober French adage deduced from the incorrigibility of human nature: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The United Nations, in my humble opinion, represents an improvement over its predecessors, but measured by inches, not feet or yards. But improvement in international affairs is a rara avis, and we should cherish it no matter how modest.

Candor is the better part of wisdom. I thus cede my time to address this bureaucratic issue to those more studied and experienced in the ways of large-scale management. As a free speech icon once taught, what is important is not that everyone shall speak, but that everything worth saying shall be said.

Dr. Fai is also the Secretary General, World Kashmir Awareness forum.
He can be reached at: WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435 or gnfai2003@yahoo.com
www.kashmirawareness.org