Therapeutic techniques work on the assumption that the cause of distress is only within the individual. However, an individual’s mental health is also affected by various forms of systemic discrimination. So for Dalits, therapy involves narrating trauma from one therapist to another, in the hope that they will eventually find a caste-sensitive professional.
The EU should take a strong stand and press India to immediately end systemic human rights violations, seven organizations said today, ahead of the European Union-India Human Rights Dialogue scheduled for January 12, 2021. India should also free all detained human rights defenders and others arrested on politically motivated charges.
Historically disadvantaged castes typically overlap with low-income communities who have a 40% higher rate of depression than the national average.
Belongg Mental Health Collective has curated resources on the intersection of caste and mental health.
Documentary about manual scavenging in India.
Report by CREID Intersections series Religious Inequalities and Gender. Nov 2020. The theme of this special collection of papers, the lived experiences of women who belong to religious minorities, has been a blind spot both in international development policy engagement and in much of the international scholarship on women, security and peace.
Caste references in Human Rights Watch's World Report 2020.
22nd EU NGO Human Rights Forum - The Impact of New Technologies on Human Rights
Amnesty International, WaterAid and the International Dalit Solidarity Network call on authorities in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan to take immediate action to protect sanitation workers who are risking their lives on the COVID-19 frontlines.
Webinar on the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, organized by the UN Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, the Geneva Human Rights Platform and the UK Mission in Geneva.
Women engaged in manual scavenging face the double burden of caste and gender-based discrimination. Let us pledge to support their dignity, health and rights. A film by Nirman Chowdhury, produced by Sudharak Olwe, for WaterAid India.
An initiative to bring together various important resources on the issues of manual scavenging and sanitation work
India’s Sanitation Workers seek immediate help from the government, as they fight for better safety gears and equal treatment.
Sanitation workers’ vital roles put them on the frontline – often forgotten – during COVID-19 lockdowns. Already marginalised in many societies, how has the pandemic affected their safety and wellbeing? Shahrukh Mirza and Andrés Hueso discuss our research with sanitation workers across South Asia, highlighting how to support them through the pandemic and beyond.
Women engaged in manual scavenging face the double burden of caste and gender-based discrimination. Let us pledge to support their dignity, health and rights. A film by Nirman Chowdhury, produced by Sudharak Olwe, for WaterAid India. The first part of a series.
Sanitation workers have long been marginalised across South Asia because of stigma around the nature of their work and discrimination based on caste, ethnicity and religion. The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the considerable occupational and health hazards they already faced, leaving many working with limited protection and almost no formal guidance or support. To understand the nature and extent of the challenges sanitation workers have faced during lockdowns, we facilitated studies in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, through telephone interviews with sanitation workers and key informants. The study revealed common insights
“the ‘Beijing Platform for Action’… laid the roadmap for ‘gender mainstreaming’ in public policies, recognising the distinct disadvantages faced by women from marginalised communities.”
The International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), delivered a general statement about racial discrimination in the United States.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) hosted the global webinar “When language excludes and discriminate”, focusing on descent-based discrimination and words that serve to discriminate, in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The event took place on 12 October and was co-organised by IDSN.
IDSN Members respond to the extremely vulnerable situation of Dalits during the Covid-19 lockdown and pandemic. We have collated some examples of reports, relief and other initiatives undertaken by IDSN members over the past two months. Read the IDSN round-up of Member initiatives