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Mauritius: How happy do you want to be?
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L'Express (Port Louis)
4 October 2007
Posted to the web 4 October 2007
Deepa Bhookhun
Port Louis
Protecting human rights is akin to protecting people's happiness because they are what make us happy; are we ready to fight for it? And how? That's what NGOs and the National Human Rights Commission are discussing at Maritim Hotel.
Participants in the workshop will keep discussing until this afternoon.
"Human rights" is a complex concept, isn't it? Without them, we would be a long way short of anything remotely resembling happiness. National Human Rights Commission President Dhiraj Seethulsing realising that the concept of "human rights" might be in need of demystification, spoke about it in terms of "happiness" at the opening of the workshop on the Implementation of the United Nations treaties signed by Mauritius.
The workshop opened yesterday at Maritim Hotel and will go on until this afternoon. Stakeholders want to devise an action plan to implement the six UN conventions that Mauritius has signed so far.
"Human rights have after all everything to do with happiness", said Seethulsing. What he means is that we fight for our rights in an attempt to be happy. A breach of our rights only makes us miserable, hence unhappy. The thing is, the State or Government has more important priorities than the happiness of the citizens and understandably so. To ensure that the right to happiness, the right to our rights is not violated, civil society, hence non governmental organisations (NGOs) have a prime role to play to ensure that human rights are respected.
The thing is, the State or Government has more important priorities than the happiness of the citizens and understandably so.
The general consensus is that NGOs in Mauritius do not play this role or that they play it in a very timid way. The reason for this is not known. Ombudsperson for children Shirin Aumeeruddy-Cziffra reckons it is because NGOs do not know how important a part they can play. For instance, every country signatory of UN conventions has an obligation to submit reports to the UN on a yearly basis. But governments tend to write reports that suit them. NGOs, on the other hand, can write what are called shadow reports and can discuss them at the meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Committee as NGO Justice did a few years ago on the issue of police brutality.
Mauritius Council of Social Services President Manda Boolell says the government in Mauritius has always been more concerned with the economic growth of the country rather than human rights, which would explain why government has never been very active in upholding and fighting for human rights. This, according to Manda Boolell, is why we do not have a "human rights culture" in the country. She goes on to say that she has written to some political parties on the matter but has not got any response from them. And yet, during electoral campaigns, several matters regarding human rights do crop up but the interest dies as soon as electoral campaigns end.
The media also face the same criticisms. A participant says, commenting on the presence of the media at the function: "The press is interested when there is a blatant case of human rights violation but it is not interested in following up the case and ensuring that such violations do not happen, which is why the media will not participate in such a conference." Many of his fellow participants at the conference yesterday, agree with him.
A representative of the Prison Service further adds: "The situation at the prisons has calmed down at the moment because the judiciary has decided that the granting of bail should be the rule rather than the exception. In practical terms, this means that the prison population is not going up, as it was these past months. But the problem, at its core, is still not being tackled - detainees are peaceful not necessarily because all their rights are being respected but because we are not adding on to their problems. This cannot be right."
All this goes back to the fact that governments, although they sign the conventions, have difficulty in implementing them, regardless of the commitments they take towards the UN. Lay persons also do not feel concerned with their fellow's human rights and whether or not they are being respected is the least of their problems. And seeing that attempts to have human rights included as a subject in the curriculum at secondary level have been unsuccessful, NGOs remain the country's only hope.
Mauritius falls short of only one convention - the rights of migrant workers but according to a spokesperson from the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, "even though Mauritius may get treaty fatigue, you will have to sign and ratify them; you will not be allowed to stop".
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And Mauritius will not stop signing treaties: it would look bad. But, as Dhiraj Seethulsing says, when will we start measuring Gross National Happiness the way we measure Gross National Product?
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