"How are we going to uphold human rights fully, or fufill the people`s civil and political rights, if they are still backward, l poor and uneducated," the vice president said in his remarks at a workshop on human rights here on Saturday.
Respect for human rights must be integrated into all aspects of development, and a proper balance among those aspects must be maintained, he said.
"So, there must always be balance, none of those aspects should advance faster than the others, not a single aspect should lag behind. And on the other hand, we must be able to improve our living standards," he said.
As a country that gained its independence 66 years ago, Indonesia still had many things more to achieve in the field of human rights, he said.
Besides, up to now, Indonesia was still in the process of achieving complete national integration, he said.
"This process is still going on in arious fields, in the economic, social, political fields. Don`t ever think that the process has been completed, so what we need to do is just to implement it," he said.
The workshop was organized to mark World Human Rights Day 2011 and attended by among others the chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights Ifdhal Kasim and Law and Human Rights Minister Amir Syamsudin.
International Human Rights Day is celebrated annually on December 10 to remember the issuance 63 years ago of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Many of the people seeking their legitimate aspirations were linked through social media. Gone are the days when repressive governments could totally control the flow of information.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in his message on Human Rights Day said governments must not block access to the internet and various forms of social media as a way to prevent criticism and public debate.
"Yet at the end of an extraordinary year for human rights, let us take strength from the achievements of 2011: new democratic transitions set in motion, new steps to ensure accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, new and ever-spreading awareness of rights themselves," Ban said.
(Uu.F001/HAJMB003)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
