Half of World’s People Deprived of Basic Human Rights, U.N. Says

At least half the world’s population is deprived of basic human rights and many are subject to violations ranging from torture and executions to slavery and starvation, the United Nations said Sunday.

A report by the U.N. Human Rights Center said it had received 125,000 complaints about politically motivated human rights abuses in the first three months of this year.

“This is believed to be only a fraction of the actual violations involving torture, mass executions, arbitrary arrests, lack of freedom of opinions, corrupt judicial systems and violence of all types including rapes,” the report said.

It said 5,000 cases of “disappearances” had been reported by the end of March, compared with 17,000 for the whole of last year.

Up to 1.4 billion people worldwide lived in absolute poverty and 1 billion more teetered on the brink, deprived of all economic rights, it said.

Between 150 million and 200 million children were forced to work in more than 50 countries, in violation of international law, it said.

The statistics were published on the eve of a 12-day meeting in Geneva meant to finalize plans for the World Conference on Human Rights, scheduled for June in Vienna.

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has described the world conference, the first gathering of government leaders on human rights in 25 years, as a “milestone on the road to a better world society.”

But the growing divide between the industrialized and non-industrialized nations dooms attempts to promote human rights.

The West and its new allies in Eastern Europe want to focus on civil rights such as freedom of expression and to clamp down on executions, torture and detention without trial.

China, Iran and Pakistan lead a movement that says individual civil liberties are meaningless in countries where people are struggling for survival. They want emphasis placed on economic rights.