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How the Right to Education is failing the very children it was meant to benefit (Scrool.in)
More than 75% of those out of schools are either Dalits, Adivasis or Muslims.Over 32% of those out of schools are Dalits and over 16% belong to the Adivasi communities. On further bifurcation, 3.24% of all Scheduled Castes and over 4% of all Scheduled Tribes children are out of school nationwide. This divide gets even bigger in the eastern region where more than 6.78% of ST children are out of school and in Odisha the figure is a whopping 14.81%.
Diluting India’s child labour law will trap families in cycle of poverty (Op-ed in The Guardian – by IDSN and DNN)
An amendment to the act that was set to make child labour illegal will push millions of marginalised children in India into work rather than education
Shame! Dalit girl set on fire for pursuing education (Yahoo News India)
As per the victim’s statement to the police, the student was alone in her hut and cooking food when the accused— Dhiraj Yadav, his brothers Arvind and Dinesh, and their father Ram Pravesh Yadav— barged in, dragged her out, poured kerosene on her and set her on fire. “They didn’t like that I was pursuing my education because they were failing in school every year. A few months ago, Dhiraj somehow got a photograph of me and tried to blackmail me. A major altercation broke out between our families on the issue,” she was quoted as saying to the police in the community health centre. The victim was admitted with 70 per cent burn injuries.
Combatting the Vicious Circle of Child Rights Violation (The New Indian Express)
With widespread caste discrimination and branding of communities, the effect on the rights of children can be seen in instances across the country — Dalit children being made to sweep classrooms and clean toilets at schools, eat separately and face neglect. The constant branding by teachers and classmates as the ‘other’, besides affecting the psyche of the child has been shown to increase the number of dropouts and the cycle goes on — child labour, drug abuse, alcoholism and crime. The issue of child rights is universal but the discrimination is more in India because of the socio-religious philosophy that facilitates discrimination on the basis of caste, believes social activist Vasanthi Devi, former chairperson, Institute for Human Rights Education. “Dalit children have special needs and this is not accepted by most people. Children in schools face the same issues the adults of the caste face, ” said N Thayalan, director of Human Resource Development Foundation (HRDF). Pallar, Paraiyar, and Arunthathiyar are the major Dalit groups in the State. A 2010 survey was conducted among 200 Arunthathiyar families, the group engaged in manual scavenging and considered lowest, the ‘Dalits among Dalits’. This survey conducted by the Arunthathiyar Human Rights Forum revealed that 24 per cent of children dropped out from schools, starting from Class 1 and reaching a maximum at Class 8. The top reason given by students for dropping out was slow learning followed by peer group influence, family incompetence, teachers’ attitude and a difficult syllabus.
Video: Nepal’s Dalits face caste discrimination (Al Jazeera, 2015)
Despite caste based discrimination being illegal in Nepal, it continues to affect the country's 'untouchables'.
UNESCO’s 2015 Education for All Global Monitoring Report – references to caste
UNESCO’s 2015 Education for All Global Monitoring Report - References to caste
2014 Saw a Huge Increase in Dropouts (40% of them Dalit children) – Karnataka, India (The New Indian Express)
Report: School authorities in Rajasthan use Dalit children to clean the toilets (Deccan Herald)
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International’s 2015 reports raise serious concern over caste discrimination
The newly released Human Rights Watch World Report 2015 and the Amnesty International 2014-15 report find that caste discrimination persists with adverse effects to human rights on multiple levels. Serious obstacles to access to justice, discrimination in education and access to services and caste-based violence, including rape of Dalit women, are among the key themes addressed in the reports. These concerns are also noted in the latest India and Nepal reports of the US State Department.
Teenage Dalit girl raped, body found hanging from tree (ABP Live)
In a grim reminder of the infamous Badaun incident, a teenage Dalit girl was raped and her body was later found hanging from a tree in Nighasan area of the district, police said on Thursday.
Caste at the root of India and Mauritania’s position as top global slavery offenders
The Global Slavery Index 2014, released by the Walk Free Foundation, singles out India as the country in the world with the most slaves and sees caste at the root of slavery in India. Caste-affected Mauritania tops the Index on percentage of the population in slavery.
Children bear the brunt of caste abuses in rural MP – Hindustan Times
From being forced to eat mid-day meals in marked out plates to being asked to sit in the back rows of their classrooms, Dalit schoolchildren across rural Madhya Pradesh face dozens of grim abuses, a new study backed by rights group ActionAid has revealed.
Gender and caste discrimination linked to school dropouts in India: Experts (ummid.com)
New documentary on caste-based prostitution coming up (Video)
Bulbul: song of the Nightingale -
Report: Dalit girls in modern slavery in India’s textile industry
A report following up on modern slavery in Indian spinning mills, finds that despite initiatives launched to end conditions of forced labour, the situation remains alarming. Efforts of clothing brands and retailers to end this, lack scale and conviction. Due to their marginalised status and lack of alternative opportunities, the majority of girls working in these factories are Dalits.
Tamil Nadu’s exploited garment workers need help from British justice (The Guardian)
One hundred and fifty workers from five spinning mills were interviewed for the report, which reveals that girls as young as 15 are being recruited from marginalised Dalit communities in impoverished rural areas in India. They are lured with promises of decent jobs, good wages and a lump-sum payment. But the reality is a 68-hour working week, poverty wages, no contracts or payslips, and being locked inside factory and dormitory compounds during working and non-working hours.
Stopping the Small Hands of Slavery (Human Rights Watch)
Human Rights Watch South Asia Director, Meenakshi Ganguly,says caste discrimination is partly to blame for child labour in India, as discrimination pushes many Dalit children to drop out of education.
′Poverty and caste′ fueling child labor in South Asia (DW)
Harvard child labour expert, Siddharth Kara, comments that caste is a key factor underlying child labour in India. He says that, “Every single child labourer that I have documented comes from a highly impoverished family unit and belongs to a low-caste or minority community.”
Caste discrimination, child labour and the Nobel peace prize winner
Caste discrimination is a key factor behind child labour in India - is the message coming from experts on child labour. The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kailash Satyarthi, also explains how witnessing caste discrimination as a child spurred on his engagement with fighting for the rights of the most marginalised.