Satyarthi urges NHRC to set up a full-fledged anti-human trafficking cell

Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi on Monday urged human rights body the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to set up a full-fledged cell to take up cases of human trafficking, forced child labour and prostitution.

At the silver jubilee celebrations of the human rights body, he said safeguarding human rights are not just limited to enforcement of certain laws.

"We have to create a culture of human rights to live with human values which begin by respecting and tolerating each other and also respecting the plurality in our country.

"This is a responsibility cast upon all individuals and not just the governments, judiciary and statutory bodies like NHRC alone. Despite legislations, the challenges in the field of child rights have not ended in the country. Child trafficking and child labour still persist," the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner said.

He also expressed concern over the recent incidents of mob lynching on suspicion of child lifting and cow smuggling.

Congratulating the NHRC on its silver jubilee, the founder of NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan lauded the role of the rights panel, since its inception in 1993, in promoting and protecting human rights.

Satyarthi also recalled how the personal intervention of former chairperson of the NHRC Justice Rangnath Mishra and member Justice V S Malimath ensured that employment of children as domestic help by the government servants was banned.

This later helped him in taking up the matter before the Supreme Court for banning child labour in the country, he said.

Former Uttar Pradesh DGP Prakash Singh told the gathering that India has been following the concept of human rights since ancient times and it reflects in our Constitution.

Director General of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Ajay Mathur stressed on the immediate need for developing consensus on a corpus of knowledge that would be agreed to as actions which result in the lack of a clean environment hampering human rights.

He urged the NHRC to initiate a dialogue on right to clean environment as a human right to help build a common understanding on the issue.

International bodies, including those under the aegis of the United Nations and our domestic laws and interpretation of constitutional guarantees through judicial pronouncements have underlined the right to clean environment as a human rights, Mathur said.

NHRC Chairperson, Justice H L Dattu said the Commission has been making efforts to spread human rights literacy among various sections of society and government, and promote awareness of the safeguards available for the protection of these rights through publications, the media, seminars and other available means.

More recently, to further spread the message of human rights protection, the panel has developed an 'Online Human Rights Pledge' hosted on the My Government portal, which is open to both individuals and organisations for signing, he said.