- International Human Rights --
UN Treaties,
Geneva Conventions,
Observers --
UN Treaties
Since the UN adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, issues once considered local have become internationalized. India has ratified two treaties which comprise the International Bill of Rights. Ratifying governments promise to conform domestic law with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and to submit reports to the UN Human Rights Committee.
That covenant forbids torture and summary killing in all circumstances, but creates emergency exceptions to guarantees of due process, free speech and other political liberties. Article 9 requires that detainees be informed of reasons at the time of arrest, and obliges the government to bring detainees to a court which determines the lawfulness of detention. When an emergency threatens the life of the nation, a government may formally derogate from covenant guarantees of due process and use preventive detention, within limits.
India has never issued a formal derogation notice. After reviewing India's report in 1989, experts on the Human Rights Committee suggested that India's emergency security laws violated the government's obligations under the covenant.
An optional protocol to the covenant allows states to grant their citizens a right to file individual complaints before the Human Rights Committee. India has not ratified that optional protocol. Nor is India a party to the UN Convention Against Torture that also allows individual petitions. Torture clearly violates the express prohibition of the political covenant, a peremptory norm of customary international law, as well as the laws of India. Mistreatment nonetheless occurs most often during the prolonged incommunicado detention permitted under Indian security measures.
In 1948 the UN Security Council called for a self determination plebiscite in Kashmir.
11 India has refused on the grounds that Pakistan failed to withdraw its armed forces.
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