In a report stressing the need for better protection against discrimination for Roma and victims of caste systems, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Mr. Githu Muigai, warns that the rights of an estimated 250 million people across the globe are at risk because they are subjected to discrimination on the basis of caste or other social systems based on inherited status.
The National Human Rights Commission in India has directed the Tamil Nadu government to compensate five Dalit human rights defenders who were unlawfully arrested in August 2010. The Commission has held that the police officers have committed grave human rights violations against the victims, and that it is a case fit for payment of compensation to the victims. The five human rights defenders were trainees at People’s Watch Tamil Nadu and where on a fact finding mission regarding allegations of torture. The NHRC has also found that the torture allegations they were investigating were true.
’Outcast’ – the repressed people of Asia', released in May 2011, depicts the destitution, injustice, poverty and exclusion suffered by hundreds of millions of people in South Asia, as well as small glimmers of hope and empowerment. The photographs and stories about Dalits in Asia were collected by the Danish photographer Jakob Carlsen, over several trips to the region. It is a haunting read, presenting images of a human rights situation so dire you cannot help but reflect on how this could still be taking place in the 21st century.
The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) recommends the Government of Yemen to adopt a national action plan to combat the social discrimination and marginalization faced by the Al-Akhdam people, considered 'untouchable' in Yemen.
The National Conference of Dalit Women organised by the Feminist Dalit Organisation (FEDO) took place in Kathmandu from the 11-13th May. The conference brought together Dalit women activists from 75 districts of Nepal; Human Rights activists, constitutional assembly members, researchers, representatives from UN and bilateral agencies and I/NGOs, members of the media; and international delegates from, India, Bangladesh, UK, Sweden, Hongkong, and Denmark.
Press Release - Copenhagen, May 30, 2011 (IDSN) --- The Caste-based Discrimination and Untouchability Crime Elimination and Punishment Act, which was adopted unanimously by Nepal’s interim Parliament on May 24, prohibits the practices of ‘untouchability’ both in the public and private sphere. Dalit groups have advocated for two years to ensure that the law did not only extend to the public sphere, but also to the private. It is the first time that a law, which criminalises ‘untouchability’ practices in the private sphere, has ever been introduced.
Urgent appeal from the Asian Human Rights Commission:
Multinational clothing brands are sourcing from cotton spinning mills in Tamil Nadu that exploit teenage girls, subjecting them to what the ILO terms the ‘worst forms of child labour’.
India is failing to address its farmer suicide crisis, says the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ), in a report released yesterday that has indentified an agrarian crisis in India where farmer suicides are on the rise and caste discrimination only exacerbates the problem.
Even a Dalit millionaire in India can’t buy a house for his mother in the ‘upper caste’ part of her village, or see his son marry an ‘upper caste’ girl. Despite the economic success of a small fraction of India’s Dalits, discrimination prevails and a top economist argues that in fact discrimination and repression are what underpin India’s economic growth, forcing the majority of Dalits into low paid and insecure labour situations.
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