The FEDO quarterly Post Nov-Dec 2021
FEDO newsletter
FEDO newsletter
Following his visit to Nepal that started on 29 November, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, Olivier De Schutter, released a statement highlighting the persistent interconnections between caste and poverty in Nepal. The Rapporteur also raised issues of caste violence and the need to do more to ensure meaningful political representation of Dalit women in Nepal.
Ms Narkar is one of dozens of women Ms Pradeep has been training to help rape survivors - especially those from the Dalit community - get justice.
Most of the 100 Dalit representatives of the people in the three tiers of government, who have gathered in Kathmandu to share their four years of experience, have said that the discriminatory attitude towards the community still remains deeply rooted in society and this is affecting their performance.
The trial for the Rukum (West) mass murder is still underway, more than a year since the incident. The families of the victims are getting increasingly worried if justice will ever be delivered.
The gang rape and murder of a 19-year-old Dalit girl in a village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh last September had caused a public outcry and weeks of protests. But a year on, the family of the victim has told Al Jazeera that their hopes for justice are fading as the case has dragged on. Of the 104 witnesses only 15 have deposed in the court so far, said Seema Kushwaha, the victim’s lawyer.
Narendra Jadhav, author of Untouchables: My Family’s Triumphant Escape from India’s Caste System, observes that every sixth human is an Indian and every sixth Indian is a Dalit. The simple fact that over 16% of India’s population were historically excluded by caste-based cruelty — one of the world’s oldest forms of discrimination — from holding power in society and were cruelly called and treated as “untouchables” is sufficient to value the importance of taking a Dalit perspective today.
A three-part report examining the challenges and opportunities available for the Dalit justice defenders’ community across South Asia in Nepal, Bangladesh, and India.
In the present case of gang rape and murder of 19 years old girl of Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, every statutory provision prescribed by law of the land (especially PoA Act) to ensure relief and justice to the victim’s family was set aside by the police and administration of the State.
In connection with their participation in the 48 th Human Rights Council session, states are encouraged to consider the ongoing and systemic practice of discrimination based on work and descent, also known as caste-based discrimination, affecting more than 260 million people globally.
Contribution by the International Dalit Solidarity Network The nature of poverty and inequality in Nepal, including how poverty is or should be defined and measured, its prevalence, and its distribution. In the specific context of Dalits, poverty walks hand in hand with the practice of untouchability, affecting access to work and meaningful income possibilities. Caste based discrimination affects 13.8% of the total population of Nepal,i comprised of seven Hill Dalit castes and 19 Madhesi Dalit castes. Caste based discrimination and untouchability (CBDU) continue to be deeply entrenched in Nepalese society.
Indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately
After details of a violent gang rape in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, were released to the public last year, protests broke out all over India. The story of four upper-caste men brutalizing a 19-year old Dalit woman, and her subsequent death from injuries sent shock waves throughout the country. It set off new conversations about violence against marginalized women in India, challenging both traditional spaces and the urban middle- to upper-class Me Too movement.
In India, women and girls from the Dalit community experience incredibly high rates of sexual violence. India’s caste system, which functions like a social hierarchy, imposes positionality at birth and has been in place for thousands of years. Dalits are at the bottom, outside the caste hierarchy, leading to discrimination at the intersections of caste, class, and gender.
A Joint Civil Society* Contribution to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for the adoption of the List of Issues Prior to Reporting on India has regretted that despite the abolition of untouchability enshrined in the Indian Constitution, and a constitutional formal prohibition of discrimination on the ground base of race or caste, under the Constitution, Dalits and other communities affected by discrimination based on descent, including Adivasis, still face de facto discrimination.
A minister’s involvement a high-profile caste discrimination case raises questions of state complacency
According to the latest census, conducted in 2017, approximately one million people were counted from the Dalit community in Pakistan, most of them living in Sindh, especially Tharparkar. A chunk of these – approximately more than 15,000 of them are dwelling in Karachi’s dilapidated, ramshackle houses in the Hindu Para locality of Chaneser Goth.
Caste is not well understood in the United States, even though it plays a significant role in the lives of Americans of South Asian descent. Two recent lawsuits make caste among the South Asian diaspora much more visible.
At just eight years old, Jasvinder Sanghera was already promised to an older man who she had never met before. One day after school aged 14, her mother sat her down at their home and showed her the picture of a man they'd decided she would marry. Ms Sanghera refused, and fled home at just 16-years-old with a man outside of her caste. Her conservative Sikh family disowned her and she has now been estranged from them for 42 years.
Profile on Beena Pallical from ADRF-NCDHR.