An Interesting Book on Human Rights

Source: “Our Rights, Our Information -- Empowering People to Demand Rights through Knowledge,” Maja Daruwala and Venkatesh Nayak (Editors), Cecelia Burgman, Carrie Gage, Claire Cronin and Reshmi Mitra (Research and Compilation), The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, 2007.

Excerpt from the Foreward:

The right to information has long been recognised as a ‘Fundamental Right’ of a free citizenry. It is from this right that other basic human rights can flow. No society can claim to be truly free unless it has both the instruments and the practice of providing its people with access to information.....

Although, the exercise of the freedom of information has now matured in several societies, it is relatively nascent in most developing countries. These countries moreover are in many cases those which are only now emerging from the incubus of a colonial hierarchy, structured to exploit the skills of its people at the least cost to the colonial masters and the economic ruin of the colonised populace.......

(This book) show cases how the right has been used by ordinary people to change systems, redress grievances and realise other rights. It places these experiences in the historical context of the evolution of this right from an esoteric freedom of a highly enlightened society aloof from the humdrum of the prosaic world, to its recognition through the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as a fundamental right for all. It highlights with detailed discussions the bearing the right to information will have not only on social development through promoting gender equality but also on economic development while protecting the essential requirements of humankind like the need for food and water.