Human Rights Awareness among the People of Agra City: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The greatest challenges before humanity at the start of the 21st century are conflict, violence, terrorism, and war along with their terrible consequences of poverty, disease, despair, environmental destruction, and poor leadership. Religious fanaticism, insecurity, unemployment, illiteracy, fear, depression and dejection have been some of the primary causes of terrorist activities in the world. These challenges are present at all levels of human life—family, school, community, society, and globally. While considerable resources have always been and still are spent to offset the costly ravages of conflict, violence, and war and to pay for the high price of military defense and security measures, there are relatively few programs dedicated to a systematic, sustained plan of action to educate children and youth, create families, and build communities in ways that reflect the principles of peace. 

Human rights are the result of humanity's increasing and persistent demand for dignity, respect, justice, protection and freedom--all needed for a decent human existence.The United Nations was created to protect future generations from the curse of war and to reiterate the belief in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and value of the human being, and in the equality of men and women. The end of the Cold War leads us to a single global conception of human rights. The UN's message is: Know your human rights. People who know their rights stand the best chance of realizing them. Knowledge of human rights is the best defense against their violation. Learning about one's rights builds respect for the rights of others and points the way to more tolerant and peaceful societies. Vast numbers of people are still unaware of their rights. While laws and institutions could in many cases defend them, people must first know where they may turn for help. Keeping in view the Importance and popularity of the subject in todays world, I have endeavoured to focus my attention on the level of knowledge of human rights among the people of Agra city in regardtheir gender, occupation, education level and age group.

In the present study 80 People were selected from the Agra city.Subjects consisted of 40 Males and 40 Females age ranged from 25 to 45. A survey was conducted using a self-prepared interview schedule to collect the data about the knowledge of people in regard to Human rights. The study found that the number of people with average level of human rights awareness (65.0%) is more than the people with high level of human rights awareness (35.0%). Result indicated that there is no significant difference between male and female in their level of Human Rights awareness. Occupation is found to be a significant factor in the respondents’ performance. Between Businessmen and Servicemen, the latter significantly performed better in the test than the former. Education level also significantly affects the sample’s scores, with the High educated people scoring significantly higher than the low educated respondents.Also age group is a factor, which can affect people’s human rights awareness. It was also found that mass media which includes TV, Radio and Internetis the most helpful source of knowledge regarding human rights among the people.

Through this study it was found that people dont have much knowledge about the basic concepts and application of human rights yet they have good knowledge of human rights violations. Human rights education among people can play an important role to make the people aware about their basic rights. Once the people get to know about their rights nobody can exploit them which can further threats to international peace and security. The study emphasize the need to develop more aggressive and effective human rights education program to ensure the proper dissemination and education of human rights among the people of Agra city. The dream of peace education can only be realized through the proper implementation of human rights education programme.