More than 20 states referred to caste discrimination in their interventions during the Universal Periodic Review of Nepal. The Nepali government has expressed its support for a number of the recommendations made on 25 January in Geneva.
The National Dalit Commission of Nepal (NDC) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal (OHCHR-Nepal) have called for improvements in a draft bill on caste discrimination.
The issue of caste discrimination is receiving welcome and significant international attention in a number of places. The IDSN November newsletter is reflecting this trend.
The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, Githu Muigai, has expressed his serious concern about the continuing existence of the caste system and described caste discrimination as a form of “societal” structural racial discrimination.
IDSN urges President Barack Obama to raise the issue of caste discrimination on his upcoming visit to India
Two United Nations Independent Experts have published a joint report from their visit to Bangladesh in December 2009. The experts note that Dalits suffer from "terrible living conditions."
Nepalese NGOs have prepared a joint submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The report includes a number of recommendations to the Nepalese government on how to address caste discrimination.
UN Special Rapporteurs and other human rights experts are meeting this week in Geneva. IDSN has called on these mandate holders to strengthen their efforts to address caste discrimination.
IDSN has issued a position paper on the interrelations between caste, descent and race. It argues that the debate on whether caste is similar to race is unproductive and that it is time to move beyond semantics.
A prominent UN expert considers the draft UN principles and guidelines on caste discrimination an 'important contribution' to the global struggle against this form of discrimination.
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