Sensitivity and sympathy key to promoting human rights: President Murmu
1 min read . Updated: 10 Dec 2022, 05:24 PM IST
PremiumPresident Murmu said that the challenge of climate change is so enormous that it forces us to redefine rights
New Delhi: President Droupadi Murmu has stressed on the need for expanding the notion of justice among all and said, developing sensitivity and sympathy are key to promoting human rights.
Addressing the 74th Human Rights Day celebrations in New Delhi today, the President said, “If we can imagine ourselves in the place of those who are treated as less than human, it would open our eyes and compel us to do the needful. There is a so-called ‘golden rule’, which says “Treat others as you would like them to treat you". That sums up the human rights discourse beautifully," she added.
President said that it is an important occasion for the whole of humankind, as it was on this day in 1948 that the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (HDHR). She noted that the text of the UDHR has been translated into more than 500 languages, which makes it the most translated document in history.
She said that over the past few years, the world has suffered from a high number of natural disasters caused by unusual weather patterns. Climate change is knocking on the doors. People in the poorer nations are going to pay a heavier price for the degradation of our environment. We must consider the environmental dimension of justice now.
The President said that the challenge of climate change is so enormous that it forces us to redefine ‘rights’. Five years ago, the High Court of Uttarakhand held that the Ganga and Yamuna rivers have the same legal rights as human beings. India is a land of sacred geography, with countless holy lakes, rivers and mountains. To these landscapes, the flora and fauna add rich biodiversity. In old times, our sages and seers saw them all as part of a universal whole, along with us. So, just as the concept of human rights exhorts us to consider every human being as no different from us, we should treat the whole living world and its habitat with respect.
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