Importance of Human Rights to Women, Children and the Minority

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Therefore, I am concluding that human rights to women are a very important aspect and should not be neglected. The UN Women in the United Nation Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women with other Advocates of women violence etc. have done so much to ameliorate the state of the woman over the years and are still working to ensure they touch more affected women yearly.

Importance of Human Rights to Children

The children of today are our leaders of tomorrow, they are the future. If we groom bad - behaved children, then we will have bad leaders in the future. Children education is one of the ways we can sustain our future generation. Thus, the right to education is very important to a child. In some areas the girl child is not allowed to go to school and might be forced into early marriage at very tender age. Some children are sold out as sex workers to generate money for their families. There is too much violence against children now our days especially the girl child, they suffer all sorts of things from denial from birth because she is a girl to sexual harassment and maltreatment from forced marriages and presumed sex employers. Other threats to these “fragile group” are; prenatal sex selection, sexual harassment in schools and work place, crimes committed in the name of honor, sexual assault in conflict and humanitarian etc. Some of these threats have detrimental effects like; depressions, stress developed diseases, death etc.

There is also the aspect of child labor, child trafficking, abortion etc. These are all threats to a child’s life. Some children are sent out to generate revenue for their families, e.g. a girl of 10 years old rendering nanny services, how matured is this child to take care of another child? These children always face maltreatment from their employers. They are forced to do things your own child is not allowed to do. They are immature in their acts and are being beaten for this. Some of them are sexually abused by the family members of her employer. This is just a tip of the iceberg of what these children undergo. Some children are forced to hawk in poor conditions to generate their school fees or for their employers to raise money.

Human trafficking is practiced mostly amongst older children and on the 3rd of September 2015 some civil societies, human right advocates and NGO’s came together in Bamenda- Cameroon for a three days capacity building workshop. This was to assist the participant easily identify and stop human trafficking which is becoming an alarming aspect these days.

Human rights are very important for these “fragile group” because the situations they face regularly are getting worst as the years goes by. Much has been done by some advocate groups to make these rights have legal binding. Thus, breaching any of these rights relating to children is punishable.

[pic 1] Source: Crtv. (9/04/2015)

The Government of Cameroon is equally working on options to ameliorate the rights of children, especially child labor. On the 18th of December 2015 a meeting was held in Yaounde with the National Community of Human rights in their second session to discuss and look for ways to stop child labor and other human right practices that affect children. (See picture above)

Importance of Human Rights to the minority

“Minority group is a term referring to a category of people differentiated from the social majority, i.e. those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society, and may be defined by law. Rather than a relational "social group", as the term would indicate, minority group refers to the above-described. (Wikipediaorg, 2015).

In Cameroon some of the minority groups are the Mbororos and the pygmies. These two ethnic groups always stress issues of conflict with land ownership and other land related matters. Many believe these groups of people are the poorest in Cameroon.

On the 11th of September, 2013 in Yaounde the UN Independent Expert on minority issues Rita Izsák, recognized what the government of Cameroon is doing to ameliorate the major problems faced by these group of people and also promote the right of all its numerous ethnic, religious, linguistic minority groups. However, she stressed some aspects to take into consideration for the way forward for some marginalized minorities.

She said; “Mbororos frequently stated that they face conflicts over access to and ownership of land and access to water. The Government encourages sedentary lifestyles, however some wish to continue their traditional nomadic ways of life. Ms. Rita Izsák highlighted that the government should accommodate such wishes where possible”.

“Pygmy communities also face unique challenges often related to their forced removal from their forest lands and the loss of their forest based, hunter - gatherer lifestyles,” the UN Expert said, stressing that their right to remain on their ancestral forest lands must be respected, where possible, even in the face of national resource development projects. These communities are often poorly equipped to manage away from their traditional forest habitats. (Ohchrorg, 2015)

There is equally the issue of language. Cameroon is bilingual but we still face language barriers. Ms Rita had this to say on this linguistic aspect; “Despite the official bilingual language policy throughout the country, she urged the government to address concerns about discrimination against the English speaking minority, and to ensure equality and equal opportunities for English speakers in all areas of life. (Ohchrorg, 2015)

Conclusions

In conclusion to this I can say that the rights of human beings are to be respected and we should not neglect these rights especially when it concerns the “fragile group”. We should individually as well as in small teams try everything to put in our modest contributions to ameliorate the ways humans are treated. We should all try to promote and protect the rights of humans in our own little ways and if everyone puts a little contribution to this objective it will positively affect the whole world.

Reference

- Ohchrorg. (2015). Ohchrorg. Retrieved 13 December, 2015, from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx

- James Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, December 13, 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Human Rights, Retrieved August 14, 2014 [Online] Retrieved December 12, 2015.

- Samaritanmagcom. (2015). Samaritanmagcom.