The six-day Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Executive (ITEC) Capacity Building Programme on human rights for the NHRIs of Global South, being organized by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), India in partnership with the Union Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) began in New Delhi today. About 47 participants from the NHRIs of 14 countries of the Global South have confirmed their participation. These are Madagascar, Uganda, Samoa, Timor Leste, DR Congo, Togo, Mali, Nigeria, Egypt, Tanzania, Mauritius, Burundi, Turkmenistan, and Qatar.

Justice V Ramasubramanian, Chairperson, NHRC, India in his inaugural address said that India is a country of rich diverse cultural ethos with various castes, communities, art forms and languages and yet it thrives in its unity of shared values and traditions for centuries. However, he said that diversity also comes with diverse problems requiring diverse solutions. Every country has its socio-cultural, political, and economic traditions and diversities may face challenges while addressing the human rights issues given their standardised approaches set to dealing with them following the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Therefore, solutions to the problems can’t be tailor-made for every country to follow.

Justice Ramasubramanian said that such platforms like ITEC provide an opportunity to share and exchange each other’s rich cultural diversity and human rights values to think and find ways how best to address the ever-emerging human rights challenges in each country with its social, cultural, political and economic realities.

He expressed his gratitude to the participating senior functionaries of the NHRIs of Global South and their countries for accepting NHRC, India’s invitation to depute them for participation. He also referred to many ancient Indian texts highlighting the human values and ethos practiced in the countries or centuries, which hold relevance even today for the whole world.

News source: PIB