Durban | Wednesday
APARTHEID may have ended in South Africa, but at least 250-million people worldwide were still living in segregation and servitude because of caste-based discrimination, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.
The international rights body released a 60-page report, ”Caste Discrimination: A global concern”, accusing India of trying to censor discussion of caste at the World Conference Against Racism and preparatory committees leading up to it.
The report was released on the second day of the WCAR’s NGO forum in Durban.
It focuses on the Dalits or so-called untouchables of South Asia including Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
In a statement, HRW said the Baraku people of Japan, the Osu of Nigeria, and certain groups in Senegal and Mauritania also suffered from caste-based discrimination.
It called on the WCAR to put the issue squarely on its agenda at its meeting from August 31 to September 7.
”The racism conference cannot ignore this global phenomenon,” Smita Narula, a senior researcher for HRW and author of the report said.
India had used political and economic influence over other countries to pressure them into a partnership of silence so that the issue was not discussed at the racism conference, HRW said.
”They have sent numerous people to non-governmental meetings who had clearly received a brief to argue the government’s side, and have used influence with UN human rights bodies to sabotage any reference to caste in conference documents.”
The report argues that caste discrimination is a significant bar to basic human rights worldwide.
More than 160 Dalit activists from India are attending the conference as well numerous advocacy groups from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Japan and Senegal.
In a declaration handed out in Durban before the start of the NGO Forum on Tuesday, India’s National Federation of Dalit Women said Dalits were forced into dehumanising jobs like manual scavenging and garbage picking.
About 78% of Dalit households had no electricity and about 90% no sanitation facilities. Nearly half of the Dalit population lived below the poverty line, about 60% of their children under four years suffered from malnutrition and the infant mortality rate exceeded 90 per 1000 live births. – Sapa