Roundtable
D i s cu s s io n
PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO SAFETY
In May 2002, the 6th World Conference on Injury Prevention
and Control was held in Montreal,Canada.An outcome of that conference was the finalization of a draftcharteron the People's Right
to Safety (previously adopted by participants of the 5th World
Conference in New Delhi). We recognized that this issue of Health
and Human Rights, with its special focus on violence, health, and
human rights, provided a fitting opportunity to bring together a
groupof health and human rights experts with diverse opinions and
perspectives on the value of recognizing this new right.
With an introduction and response by Dinesh Mohan
Discussants: Garth Stevens, Mindy Jane Roseman,
Alice M. Miller, and Adnan A. Hyder
INTRODUCTION: Safety as a Human Right
Dinesh Mohan
Oliln
10 December 1948,the GeneralAssembly of the
United Nations (UN) adopted and proclaimed the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).' Article 3 of this
Declaration states, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty
and security of person." The UDHR also contains within it
Dinesh Mohan, PhD, is Henry Ford Professor for Biomechanics and
Transportation Safety in the Transportation Research and Injury
Prevention Program at the Indian Institute of Technology. Please
address all correspondence to the author at Room MS 808, Main
Building, Indian Institute of Technology, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, India
110016 or at dmohan(@cbme.iitd.ernet.in.
Copyright ? 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
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rights that relate specifically to the ability to live in good
health. The legal obligations of governments under international human rights law have been used effectively all over
the world in many arenas: the rights of the child, the rights
of women, the rights of workers, and the rights of people in
development in general. These rights have been elaborated
on and strengthened in international human rights instruments, such as the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of
the Child, the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence
Against Women, and the Employment Policy Convention
(Convention No. 122).2
By adopting these conventions, declarations, and charters, individuals, civil society groups, and citizens' organizations are able to demand safer products, safer working and
living conditions, and a safer environment in which to live.
In response, governments and courts in many countries
have instituted safety standards, legislation, and enforcement mechanisms. These efforts to make life safer are not,
however, based on the same principles and theories as those
used to control malnutrition and infectious and contagious
diseases. Most efforts to promote safer products are correctional measures rather than policies based on a principle of
rights. Although the right to a life safe from debilitating
injuries may seem implicit in the right to life, decisionmakers and the public at large have yet to use this right to
influence policy in this respect. Therefore, it has become
necessary to promote in clear and explicit terms a right of
people to live in a world safe from harmful injuries as a fundamental human right.
The Need for a Right to Safety
The demand for establishing a right to safety emerges in
a society where people feel the need for a norm on which to
base an actionable claim for protection from physical,
social, or emotional harm. This need is also strengthened
when societal agreement and action take hold. In the past,
people used products and lived in homes and in an environment that they themselves, or local communities, participated in creating, and they blamed themselves if they suf162
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fered harm or injury from such arrangements. Modern systems, however, do not allow us to live in isolation or independently of others. Normal activities continually preclude
individual choices. For example, most of us cannot choose
the time at which we travel to work or the road we use to
do so. Most of us live in homes that are designed and built
by others and use technologies manufactured by powerful
organizations not necessarily under our control. And we
dare not guess the hazards found in chemicals and other
products we purchase. This is a new development in human
history, and for this reason we have to develop a new regimen of rights that protect us from unreasonable harm.
Systems that ensure a life safe from injury cannot be
put in place without a societal and political understanding
of the ethical and moral responsibilities of the state and
civil society to ensure all individuals a right to life, according to currently available knowledge and technology. This
need for a right is strengthened by research that has revealed
severe limits to ensuring individuals' safety by "educating"
them, and that there is a wide variation between people's
knowledge and their actual behavior.3 This is particularly
true for those situations in which we cannot specifically
select the people who will be involved in certain activities,
such as domestic work, use of the roadways, and in most of
our work environments. In addition, on any day, the population in those situations might include individuals preoccupied with any of the following:
*
*
*
*
*
Thosewho cannotconcentrateon thejob at handbecausethey
havesuffereda recent,personalloss or disappointment-suchas
deathof a lovedone,loss of a job, failurein an important
examination,monetaryloss, andthe like.
Thosewho arepreoccupiedwithproblemsin personalrelationshipswitha spouse,parent,sibling,or close friend.
Thosewho aretakingmedicationsor drugsthatalterbehavior
andperceptualabilities,or thosewho areunderthe influenceof
alcohol.
Childrenwhosecognitiveandmotorskills makeit difficultfor
themto understand
or followinstructionsgivento them.
Elderly people whose motor and cognitive functions are
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impaired.
Psychologicallydisturbedpersonswhomaynot be ableto functionas desiredbutwhocannotbe excludedfromparticipating
in
a specificactivity.
If we estimated the percentage of individuals who
might fall into one of the above categories on any given day,
that estimate would amount to a significant proportionpossibly as high as 20 to 30%. These individuals cannot
always be identified or prevented from participating in these
activities. Moreover, they have a right to lead healthy lives
and thus must operate in environments that give them a
reasonable opportunity to do so.
Therefore, we have a social and moral responsibility to
design our products, environment, and laws so that people
can easily and conveniently behave in a safe manner without sacrificing their right to earn a living and fulfill their
other societal obligations. Systems must be designed safely,
not only for "normal" people but also for those who might
belong to any of the groups listed above. Such designs, rules,
and regulations would reduce the probability of people hurting each other or themselves, even when someone makes a
mistake. Such changes will take place in a systematic manner only when safety is recognized as a fundamental right of
communities and is not dependent only on the goodwill of
powerful institutions. Perrow states this issue forcefully:
"Above all, I will argue, sensible living with risky systems
means keeping the controversies alive, listening to the public, and the essentially political nature of risk assessment.
Ultimately, the issue is not risk, but power; the power to
impose risks on the many for the benefit of the few."4 A
People's Right to Safety is likely to help us move in this
direction.
People's Right to Safety
Awareness of the above facts and of our responsibility
to move toward a world in which the right to a safe life must
be ensured for all resulted in a preliminary workshop on a
People's Right to Safety. The workshop, which was held in
association with the 5th World Conference on Injury
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Prevention and Control in Delhi, India, in March 2000, was
organized jointly by the Transportation Research and Injury
Prevention Program (TRIPP) of the Indian Institute of
Technology, Delhi, and the South Asia Forum for Human
Rights (SAFHR).Following discussions at the workshop, all
conference participants adopted the Delhi Declaration on a
People's Right to Safety on 8 March 2000.5 This first declaration endorses the notion of safety as a human right and as
an important policy tool for injury control and safety promotion. It outlines further steps that need to be undertaken
to develop a charter on a people's right to safety.
The draft was circulated to all participants and put up
on both the TRIPP and SAFHR Web sites for discussion
among human rights groups.6Based on comments received
on the Delhi Declaration, a draft convention on a People's
Right to Safety was prepared.7This draft was discussed at a
pre-conference workshop on a People's Right to Safety on 11
May 2002 held before the 6th World Conference on Injury
Prevention and Control.8 Workshop participants finalized
the draft, which was circulated to all conference participants for comment. Those comments were then used to
finalize the draft, which the conference participants then
adopted as the Montreal Declaration: People's Right to
Safety at the closing session.9
The Declaration (which can be read in its entirety at the
end of this section) is now available for discussion and
refinement. A "right" to safety can be possible only when a
relationship exists between those who use and those who
provide a product or service. The relationship between the
state and its citizens is enshrined in each country's constitution, most of which ensure that its citizens have a right to
life. It is this right to life that is translated into a right to live
free from debilitating injury. Similarly, when a private corporation sells goods or services, the buyer assumes that no
harm will come from using those products. Finally, all the
UN human rights agreements signed by different countries
bring the relevant international responsibilities into focus.
The Montreal Declaration only makes these implicit agreements explicit. This can help individuals and communities
understand that a right to safety is as valid as a right to dlean
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air or a right to live free of small pox. For injury control to
be taken seriously as an international public health issue,
the Montreal Declaration needs to be recognized as a starting point for establishing a people's right to safety as a fundamental right endorsed by individual states and through
the UN.
Discussion
There is general agreement on the urgent need to control morbidity and mortality, especially because injuries are
ranked as one of the highest causes of years of life lost in
most countries around the world.10Proponents of the right
to safety, however, differ on the priorities for action: the relative role that organizational structures and powerful elites
play in producing hazardous systems; the effectiveness of
approaches that give priority to technological fixes over
behavioral change; the relative roles of interventions by the
state and government and by civil society organizations; and
the need for creating regulations, setting standards, and
ensuring police enforcement. It is very difficult to resolve
these issues in the absence of a basic ethic that gives a
strong underpinning to the debate. Current efforts to reach
consensus on a document that spells out the rights of people to live lives safe from harmful injury are expected to
help reduce the differences in ideologies and priority setting.
References
1. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General
Assembly on 10 Dec. 1948, UN Doc. GA/RES/217 A (III).
2. United Nations, International Human Rights Instruments, available at
www.unhchr.ch/html/intlinst.htm.
3. L. S. Robertson, Injuries: Causes, Control Strategies and Public Policy
(Boston, MA: Lexington Books, 1983).
4. C. Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living With High Risk Technologies
(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
5. Delhi Declaration on People's Right to Safety, adopted at the 5th World
Conference on Injury Prevention and Control, New Delhi, 8 March 2000,
and Injury Prevention Program, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi,
available at www.iitd.ac.in/tripp/righttosafety/deldeclaration.pdf.
6. Draft Convention
on People's Right to Safety, available at
20CONVENTION% 20
www.iitd.ac.in/tripp/righttosafety/DRAFT%
PRTS %202002041 7.htm.2002.
7. See note 6.
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8. Sixth World Conference on Injury Prevention and Control, 2002, available at www.trauma2002.com.
9. Montreal Declaration: People's Right to Safety, available in its entirety
at the end of this section and at www.iitd.ac.in/tripp/righttosafety/
Montreal. %20declaration%201 5-05-02.htm.
10. C. J. .Murrayand A. D. Lopez (eds.), The Global Burden of Disease
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
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