India has recently secured a seat in the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for a period of three years starting next year. This news, although quite expected, sheds light on how the international community is ready to overlook the atrocities being carried out in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) under the garb of national interest. There is absolutely no regard for human life in any form - children, women, elderly and everyone having the slightest of reservations against state terrorism is hunted down and killed for their dissenting views.

With such blatant extremism on the soil of India, granting it a position in the United Nations Human Rights Council shows the amount of value that such institutions have towards innocent lives being lost in the country applying for a seat in the council. The process of scrutiny is almost non-existence unless some major power has an interest in the non-election of a country to the council. At this point, India seems to be a favourite with the international community due its thriving economic endeavours and its aim to curb China in the region by forming an alliance with the United States of America (USA). Such grouping allows several countries to get a free pass in the international global regime and allows for atrocities to continue, making such councils irrelevant when it comes to crisis management.

Pakistan has pledged to bring these atrocities, especially against children, to the attention of the international community. Many children suffer due to the political differences of the countries and that should not be the everyday reality of children anywhere. It is the lack of attention to the issue of Kashmir, which has allowed such treatment of people that violence and extremism has become a common occurrence. It has been over three decades that a people are restricted to a land which calls them a part of their country but does not grant them equal rights as citizens and does nothing to safeguard their right to life.

A country which is now a part of a council which promotes the rights of human beings in any part of the world to live their lives with the freedom granted by the global political regime and the constitution of the country, must ensure that member countries are abiding by these rules in their own countries because they are expected to exemplify these standards set by the global community. Ignoring it will confirm the belief that these councils are not equipped to implement the principles they stand by.