The One-Million Signature Campaign is a timely and innovative initiative by the International Council for Human Development (ICHD) that has succeeded in getting widespread attention and support from across the sections of the European society. The campaign draws its justification from the provision in the EU system that any organisation or initiative with the European Union can bring any issue on the agenda of the EU if it shows that it has the support of one million citizens of the Europe. Though a gigantic task, the ICHD started this campaign considering the huge number of its members and sympathisers as a basic asset for such an effort. The campaign is by large a big success and brought unprecedented applause from not only Europe but also from the people and activists of IHK, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan and the Kashmiri diaspora communities from all across the world.
The basic argument of the campaign relates to the question of peace in South Asia, in particular, and the peace in the world, in general. The thousands of the people, in different cities of the Europe, endorsed the call for the peace and justice for the oppressed Kashmiris victimised by the Indian forces. The campaign pleads to end the sufferings of the Kashmiri people and seeks the support by the general masses, intellectuals, journalists, civil society organisations, artists, women, labours and lawyers to come forward and support the cause of justice, and peace in South Asia.
The International Council for Human Development (ICHD), through the One-Million Signature Campaign, expresses its deep trust on the EU institutions and their mechanisms that support the oppressed nations, communities and individuals across the world. In fact, the EU has always acted in the favour of the oppressed nation of Kashmir through its many resolutions, statements and other acts of solidarity. The reason why CHD applies so much efforts and resource to lobby its cause in EU parliament is that the words of support from the RU mechanism receive attention from all across the world. We believe that the EU institutions are the forums that are following the ideals and values described in UDHR and numerous other Human Rights based documents.
The campaign started with a camp in front of the European Parliament at Place Luxemberg. The campaign has successfully organised the camps in different countries of Europe such as Holland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, & UK. Already, a large number of the EU citizens have endorsed the campaign. After collection of one million signatures, they will be presented to the ‘European Parliament’s human rights committee’ to emphasise the violations of human rights in IHK Kashmir.