A/HRC/16/63 important are the right to life, the right to be free from arbitrary detention, the right to a fair trial and the freedoms of expression and association. 52. The Human Rights Committee underlined the fundamental importance of the right to life in its general comment No. 6, in which it stated that the protection against arbitrary deprivation of life, which is explicitly required by the third sentence of article 6 (1), is of paramount importance. The Committee considered that States parties should take measures not only to prevent and punish deprivation of life by criminal acts, but also to prevent arbitrary killing by their own security forces. The deprivation of life by the authorities of the State is a matter of the utmost gravity. 53. Under the Covenant, peasants and other people working in rural areas also have the right to be free from arbitrary detention and to a fair trial if they are arrested (arts. 9 and 14). Anyone deprived of his or her liberty has the right to be treated humanely (art. 10) and everyone has the right to free expression and association, the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his or her interests and the right to peaceful assembly (arts. 19, 21 and 22). Arbitrary arrests and detentions and extrajudicial executions of peasant leaders are therefore serious violations of the Covenant, as are infringements on their freedoms of expression and association and on the right to peaceful assembly by peasant movements. C. Rights of women living in rural areas 54. One of the main aims of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is to put an end to discrimination against women living in rural areas. Article 14 of the Convention specifically protects the rights of women living in rural areas against discrimination in access to productive resources, including land, and in their access to work, adequate housing and programmes for social security, health, training and education. It also stipulates that States parties should take appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas and ensure their rights to organize self-help groups and cooperatives in order to obtain equal access to economic opportunities through employment or self-employment, to have access to agricultural credit and loans, marketing facilities, appropriate technology and equal treatment in land and agrarian reform, as well as in land resettlement schemes, and to enjoy adequate living conditions, particularly in relation to housing, sanitation, electricity and water supply, transport and communications. 55. In several of its concluding comments, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has stated that women in rural areas should be given priority in development programmes and that the State parties should protect women’s access to land against the activities of private business and against forced evictions. For example, in its concluding comments on India in 2007, it urged the State party to study the impact of mega-projects on tribal and rural women and to institute safeguards against their displacement and violation of their human rights. It also urged it to ensure that surplus land given to displaced rural and tribal women was cultivable, and recommended that efforts should be made to ensure that tribal and rural women have individual rights to inherit and own land and property.80 80 CEDAW/C/IND/CO/3, para. 47. 17