Following a targeted campaign by the National Campaign for Dignity and Eradication of Manual Scavenging and other activists, Indian Parliamentarians are now taking the issue of manual scavenging up in Parliament.
A Motion in the Dutch Parliament on full supply chain transparency in the garment industry in India has been adopted in the wake of the report ‘Maid in India’ by SOMO and the India Committee of the Netherlands
Bangladesh Dalit Excluded Rights Movement (BDERM) demanded specific allocations development of Dalit communities in the upcoming National Budget. BDERM raised the demands in a seminar organized at Dhaka Reporters Unity on May 5th.
On April 24th thousands of Dalits marched towards the Indian Parliament to reclaim their rights to vast funds meant for Dalits, which have been diverted or misallocated, to benefit other sections of society. The funds could help lift millions of Dalits out of extreme poverty but are instead being used on general schemes, hardly benefitting Dalits. On the 9th of May, Dalits across several states in India, will also march to put pressure on the Government to ensure that funds allocated for Dalits actually benefit Dalits.
These past months have seen a flurry of activity to support the struggle to end the abhorrent practice of Dalits being employed to remove human waste from dry latrines manually which persists despite having been officially abolished by law in India since 1993. In India, the ILO has organised a conference to address this problem, a National Public Hearing has been held by the National Campaign for Dignity and Eradication of Manual Scavenging, reports have been released and media have reported widely about the persistence of the practice.
In the European Parliament’s resolution on the Annual Report on Human Rights in the World and the European Union’s policy on the matter, the European Parliament highlights caste discrimination and, “Recommends initiatives for EU legislation to ensure that attention is paid in EU human rights policy and cooperation instruments to eliminating caste discrimination, and action in caste-affected countries, including Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Yemen.”
After recently visiting India, the UN expert on extrajudicial executions, Mr. Christof Heyns, expressed concern about the plight of Dalits in India and called on the Government of India to continue to take measures to fight impunity in cases of extrajudicial executions, and communal and traditional killings.
The UN Expert on Human Rights Defenders, Ms. Margaret Sekaggya, spoke out against the unacceptable situation faced by those defending Dalit human rights in South Asia, at a UN side-event, held on March 9th in Geneva, where panellists also included Dalit human rights defenders from several caste-affected countries in the region.
Follow-up report highlights improvements but warns that root problems remain and bonded labour continues to exist in the cotton indsutry.
The IDSN Annual Report 2011 sums up the many positive developments in the struggle to end caste discrimination that the year has brought and outlines some of the remaining challenges that will keep us all engaged in this struggle for many years to come.
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