With almost every day of the calendar year designated to mark some subject or other, this week's International Human Rights Day passed as insignificantly as ever.

There was some pronouncement from the minister in charge of Human Rights to the effect that a Human Rights Charter was on the way-- as if we have not heard that before. A media conference by the Minister in charge of Child Protection had to be cancelled as there were not enough journalists to cover the proceedings - most of them assigned elsewhere that day.
Given the excitement of the forthcoming Presidential Election, all issues seem to be submerged by the happenings on the political front.

In this part of the world, however, the most basic human right of any person has to be the right to have his or her stomach full. Without food, as with air and water, there cannot be life. For millions of people in Latin America, Africa and Asia, there is no greater human right.

This is now the crux of a difficult debate between the countries of the Northern Hemisphere and those of the 'South', in the Danish capital of Copenhagen where countries' right to economically develop at the expense of emitting carbon into the air and contributing to global warming is under scrutiny.

The debate is so intense, that countries at loggerheads on other issues, like India and China for instance, have got together to resist pressure from the US and the EU to cut carbon emissions at the expense of raising the living standards of their teeming millions.

All this while poverty levels and population growth keep spiralling. In Sri Lanka, recent poverty surveys have reported both gains and setbacks. The Northern areas have been worst hit due to the 30-year separatist insurgency with malnourishment statistics appalling. We all saw the 'walking sticks' emerging from the LTTE-controlled areas as the Army moved in. In the plantations, which had nothing to do with the 'war, malnourishment levels have also risen to unacceptable proportions.
If these are the fundamental human rights of every man, woman and child, there are a host of other human rights that ought to be the barometer - the benchmark, for the well-being of any nation and the quality of life of its citizenry.

In Sri Lanka, the residual aspects of the conflict still remain. Due to the forthcoming election there seems to be an effort at accelerating the process of ensuring the release of the IDPs, only because the Opposition is making it an election issue - both sides desperate for each and every vote.

But human rights are not confined to these seemingly visible areas. Take the right to medical care -- Sri Lanka, which has an exemplary record in primary health care, and an extensive network of family health clinics and hospitals, often attributed to the fact that the country was one of the earliest in the world to have voting rights for women (1931), is now in the grip of a 'drug mafia'.

We are not referring to marijuana, LSD, 'Ecstasy' and such intoxicants but the pharmaceuticals business which is controlled by a 'mafia' of officials in the health sector together with unscrupulous agents not unknown to the Health Minister, who for reasons best known to him, has done little or nothing to stem the rot. Poor patients are the unfortunate victims of this multi-million rupee fraud.

Then consider the human rights of the disabled. The number of people with disabilities, both permanent and temporary or with 'curtailed mobility' is increasing. More than 17% of Sri Lanka's population will soon be over 65 years and it took the Government nine long years to even frame regulations under the 1996 Law for the Protection of the Rights of the Disabled Persons.

The Supreme Court has now intervened to push the state into providing accessibility for them at public buildings. The state machinery is so slow that it has been left to individuals and private organisations to lobby for its proper implementation. The Disabled category is inclusive of the Deaf and Blind, visually handicapped, hearing impaired as well as the mentally disturbed and the large number of soldiers who gave their sight and limbs so that this country remains a united nation.
Other sectors cry out - children whose rights include proper schooling and protection from paedophiles; and the senior citizens to whom runaway inflation has dealt a cruel blow. Their pensions cannot keep pace. Some have fallen into bigger soups by investing in dubious finance companies.

What of the public servants - and those of the working class - people who are entitled to a 'living wage'? Though ameliorating their grievances is not easy when the economy is retarded, there cannot be excuses when the trickle-down effect of the economy is clogged by corruption in high places and those at the helm cream off the fat of the land.

Not to be forgotten are the human rights of the unemployed -- half a million or 6% of the 8 million working population in Sri Lanka are without jobs. This excludes those not officially accounted for, and the under-employed (doing some part-time work) and the many employed abroad often in menial jobs.

The fundamental Right to Information is also a human right, as we have frequently pointed out. Countries like India have recognized this as a human right of the ordinary citizenry. There is a whole gamut of human rights that need immediate attention. State agencies must be empowered to put into place these rights that upgrade Sri Lanka from a sort of 'Banana Republic' to a modern state where the citizen is considered 'king', not just at election time.

Continued international scrutiny of Sri Lanka's human rights record is inevitable, and related to foreign economic assistance in the immediate future. It should not be due to fear of such scrutiny, however, that our constitutional institutions, rights monitors and the legal process must be seen to work properly. Instead, this is the duty owed by the country's rulers, and those who wish to rule it, to its people.