It was the Holocaust and the fact that Germany had been able to commit atrocities against millions of its own people in 1930 with little or no interference which jolted the entire international community into identifying rules to protect human rights.

As a result of this major international shift, the rights of the individual became a matter of international and not only State concern. The logic was that unless rights are respected there would hardly be peace nationally and internationally.

The U.N. Charter of 1945 thus became the major charter linking world peace with the respect for human rights irrespective of political or geographic boundaries.

It was the progenitor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 which then internationally recognised a number of rights. What was prioritised was "first generation" rights - namely the right to life, expression, assembly, property, fair trial. Due recognition was given to "second generation" rights however, namely, rights to work, shelter, food, social security, health care and education.

Today I must say that we do have a large collection of "third generation" rights which have the attribute of being collective or group rights. These include the right to self-determination, rights of indigenous people, right to development, right to safe environment.

The emphasis over the years has been on political and civil rights and their enjoyment, with socio/economic rights taking a back seat. This however must be seen not exclusively as a criticism, because it is celebratory indeed to ensure a climate for the enjoyment of civil and political rights. Ensuring the enjoyment of these rights gives dignity to the human being; it assures a fuller happiness for the individual. In the international community's long journey, this milestone of guaranteeing at all levels and making enforceable these civil and political rights, is an extremely important one.

But the world is by no means perfect and very many leaders and governments pay lip service to human rights when it suits their purposes. This is an indictment especially of Third World leaders and Governments; however, even First World leaders and Governments sometimes cannot be exculpated. One has only to remember what took place in the entire Latin America; and presently large parts of Africa and the Islamic world too. Also, many western liberal democracies which are strong on human rights rhetoric are noticeably reluctant to take action against those states which have rapidly growing economies that may offer them fresh markets and new trading partnerships.

But notwithstanding the very many Conventions and Treaties on human rights we still do not have peace in the world. It can never be regarded as a peaceful world when 1.2 billion people still do not have access to clean water, 1.3 billion people live under the United Nations income poverty line, when millions of children remain illiterate, malnourished and abused; when genocide is still practised in certain places.

I agree with the statement - "The world has no future unless the rule of law including the recognition of human rights, is embedded at the supra-national level". And in my opinion Human Rights and Peace are indivisible. Neither should be sacrificed for the supposed protection of the other.

However, it is my view that for there to be real Peace in the world or a better Peace, the concept of human rights must not be contained and cribbed in the narrow definitions in which they are today. The human rights movements and their sponsors must expand the frontiers to stress the importance of respect, tolerance, dignity and quality of life in our shrinking global world.

The long term interests of the movement for human rights are not likely to be served by the proselytising zeal and righteous advocacy that reveal human rights as frozen and fixed only in the realm of political and civil rights.

There is thus the need for a re-visioning and a re-defining of rights to include those socio/economic rights that the Declaration of 1948 recognised only (see articles 22 to 29) but did not guarantee as it did concerning the political and civil rights (see articles 1 to 21) through the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights and the Optional Protocol.

It was President Roosevelt in 1941, some 7 years before the Declaration of 1948 who actually nominated freedom from want as one of the (four) 4 freedoms that should characterise a peaceful future world order. He spelled out the vision in his 1944 State of the Union address:

"We have come to a clear realisation of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without security and independence. 'Necessitous men are not free men.' People who are out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our days these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident."

Sir Isaiah Berlin in his great treatise "Two Concepts of Liberty" was very emphatic when he said:

"To offer political rights or safeguards against intervention by the State, to men who are half-naked, illiterate, underfed and diseased, is to mock their condition."

And so it seems to me that the all-important task at hand must be a further and fuller conceptualisation of rights and norms whose purpose is the reduction - if not elimination - of the conditions which foster human indignity, violence, intolerance, poverty and powerlessness. This however does not mean that the present conception, i.e. what is generally regarded as "first generation rights" must not be aggressively and earnestly implemented by nation-states and the international bodies concerned with their elaboration and implementation.