Human Rights and Peace: Laws, Institutions and Movements explores the shifts in the way peace has been envisaged in the rhetoric and practice of human rights. Peace has come to be seen as a continuing process of the pursuit of liberation, a progressive dismantling of relationships, of exploitation based on gender, caste, class, race, ethnicity and nationality, and a countervailing force to the coercive practices of the state. Woven around the themes of ideas, laws and institutions, and movements, the articles in this volume show how peace has become an over-arching framework in the domain of human rights. The book traces how the idea of peace has transformed from a passive condition of 'sepulchral silence' associated with 'guided' peace, into a praxis led by and producing radical politics of liberatory change. The volume examines: " The distinct claims that peace makes to durable rights which are not subject to arbitrary withdrawals or selective investment by the state; " The articulations of right to peace in the largely unexplored processes of 'conflict resolution' in South Asia; and " The role of human rights movement and institutions in situations of prolonged absence of peace, sustained repression by the state, and unprecedented growth in non-state violence of all kinds.

The Human Right to Peace

The human right to peace
Peace Declaration by the Director-General of UNESCO

Lasting peace is a prerequisite for the exercise of all human rights and duties. It is not the peace of silence, of men and women who by choice or constraint remain silent. It is the peace of freedom—and therefore of just laws—of happiness, equality and solidarity, in which all citizens count, live together and share.

Peace, development and democracy form an interactive triangle. They are mutually reinforcing. Without democracy, there is no sustainable development: disparities become unsustainable and lead to imposition and domination.

In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations and UNESCO and the United Nations Year for Tolerance, we stressed that it was only through a daily effort to ...

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