Miss Peace Nigeria (Culture) Cautions on Security and the safeguard of Human Rights

Human Rights Day as observed every year on 10th December, is the anniversary of the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On that day the United Nations adopted a list of Human Rights for the protection of humanity and has since then be celebrating the day as Human Rights Day. This year, Human Rights Day marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with the theme: “Stand Up for Human Rights”.

As Nigeria joins other Nations of the world to celebrate International Human Rights Day, Miss Peace Nigeria (Culture); Queen Tessy Okoh has expressed worries over the massive infringement on these rights, especially by the wave of insurgency, killings (both Christians, Muslems), and perpetrating havoc and wilful displacement of communities, which has infringed on peace and cultural integration.

Addressing Journalists during a Media Parley in Abuja on Monday, Queen Tessy said that the significance of the day should be to remind the people of the world, including Nigeria of the complementarities between peace and human rights.

“It seems clear that human rights and peace are ‘intrinsically’ interwoven in that the latter cannot be achieved without respect for the former and human rights cannot be enforced and observed without sustainable peace and good governance. Even though there seems to be no single model of peace, the claim is that human rights stipulations empower individuals to live in dignity, they strengthen good governance frameworks. Besides, human rights stipulations “promote checks and balances between formal and informal institutions of governance. They effect necessary social changes, generating political will and public participation and awareness; and responding to key challenges on human rights and sustainable peace”, Miss Okoh opined.

Continuing, the 23 year old beauty queen noted that there is no better time to talk about peace and human rights other than now the Country is moving towards its general elections in 2019. According to her; “adherence to human rights principles and best practices require that political parties and politicians in all their dealings must respect human and democratic rights, so that lives can be better lived and properties saved. Violence and torture in the electoral process must be avoided”.

In addition “government must begin to open access to better environment with good sanitation. Internal and inter State war must be avoided to reduce killings and reduce the establishment of Camps in nearly all the states of the country. This is because internal displacements subject the people to degrading conditions and poverty, which decrease on daily basis the quality of lives.

Furthermore, Queen Okoh urged Nigeria and the world to reaffirm their commitment to promoting human rights by ensuring that these fundamental rights are no more infringed upon. “Thuggery, which breeds violence must be taken out of our elections, rigging must be aborted in the electoral processes, while vote buying and selling must be discouraged for all times”, she added.

Finally, Miss Tessy Okoh observed that for human rights to be meaningful, all Nigerians and world citizens must come together to re-write the genuine principles of human rights in their conscience to make the creation of human rights on 10 December 1948 and its yearly celebration meaningful. She therefore called on all with conscience to rise to arrest the situation of human rights abuses to put an end to bad practices so as to bring back peace into the country and the world at large.