The Indian authorities’ arrest of a Border Security Force constable suspected of killing a Kashmiri teenager could be an important step to curtail security force abuses.

Western colonialism collapsed after the Second World War, leaving much of the world in shambles, resources looted, and people suppressed and impoverished. As Indians know all too well, borders of newly independent states were often carelessly drawn, leading to violence that plagues us generations later. Those most affected by these decisions never had a voice at the high table.

Irom Chanu Sharmila may be a world record-holder, but nobody is celebrating her milestone. She recently began her tenth year of a hunger strike -- more than 3,000 days. She can share credit for this unhappy achievement with the Indian government, whose abuses Sharmila was protesting when she was detained, and which keeps her alive against her will.

The government claims that the Maoists cannot be defeated just with force and that their threat must also be countered with development. If that is so then the government should remember that access to quality education for India's most marginalised children is an indispensable ingredient for progress. And if the Naxalites seek to justify their bloodshed by saying they are fighting for India's poor, then their destruction of one of the few services that can empower these communities is abhorrently perverse.

Both the Naxalites and the government need to recognize that the continued targeting and occupation of schools will neither protect the marginalized nor secure the state. Instead, these tactics cut off tens of thousands of Indian children and huge areas of the country from their hope for a better future.

The ongoing conflict between Maoist insurgents and government forces is disrupting the education of tens of thousands of India’s most marginalized children.

A vibrant democracy with raging debates about health care. A country that prides itself on pioneering medical treatment but continues to see shocking disparities between the wealthy, who can afford expensive, quality care, and the poor, whose access to health care is spotty or simply nonexistent.

In discharging the mandate contained in OP 6 of Human Rights Council resolution 11/8 to identify the human rights dimensions of preventable maternal mortality and morbidity, we encourage the OHCHR to include substantive as well as procedural human rights dimensions.