Human Rights NGOs in Jammu and Kashmir: Role and Functions

NGOs are non-profit organisations constituted with an aim to uplift the poor, marginalized, underprivileged, impoverished and the downtrodden groups of the society. They participate actively in various political, economical and social matters and work on their own, in conjunction with individual governments or with international organizations. These groups exhibit how the village and indigenous resources can be used and how human resources, rural skills and local knowledge, grossly underutilized at present can be used for their own development. The nation states across the world take numerous steps and programmes for the protection and promotion of human rights. The NGOs also help the governments in this venture. The grassroot contacts of the NGOs can effectively identify the human rights violations, articulate them and help the governments to prevent them. Here comes the importance of the human rights NGOs. These are the NGOs that specifically aim at the protection of human rights. They take effective measures to reduce the rate of human rights violations. A large number of human rights NGOs are working at the national and the international levels to help the governments to formulate policies and programmes for preventing the grave human rights violations. The universe of the human rights NGOs is highly diverse and all may not share the same common vision. The techniques adopted by the NGOs include information gathering, evaluation and dissemination of human rights violation, advocacy, developing human rights norms and lobbying, legal aids and humanitarian relief, building solidarity etc. In terms of the human rights, the NGOs were associated with providing information, rather than expertise in the past. Now they frequently provide both. This paper discusses the role and functions of human rights NGOs in Jammu and Kashmir.