Experts on Saturday urged the government to ensure people’s rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.
Speaking at a function following a rally ‘Walk for Water’, they said the government was not serious about people’s rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.
“If the government wants to meet the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG)-2015 and national goal of providing safe drinking water to all by 2017, it should formulate a concrete action plan,” said Ashutosh Tiwari, the country representative of Water Aid Nepal. Under the MDG, the government has to provide sanitation facility to at least 53 percent population of the country by 2015.
Over one crore Dalits in Tamil Nadu would vehemently disagree finding space for their dead in the “common burial/cremation ground”.
Though Article 17 of the Constitution abolishes all forms of untouchability, the reality is otherwise even when it comes to burying the dead. In hundreds of villages and hamlets across the State, Dalits are not only denied access to the common burial/cremation ground but not even provided separate areas.
A petition that alleges the misuse of Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, which has been admitted by the Rajya Sabha Committee on Petitions, has become an object of concern among leading women’s organisations in the country.
The petition claims that the law, dealing with dowry-related torture and acute domestic violence, is being misused. The existing law provides for a punishment of up to three years.
The petition, filed by one Dr Anupama Singh, ostensibly on behalf of many people, has demanded that the said section be made non-cognisable, bailable and compoundable.
London, 21.02.2011: ARTICLE 19 welcomes the Indian government’s initiative to reform its penal code and decriminalise defamation, used to harass and censor journalists and political figures.
“We welcome the Indian government’s initiative to decriminalise defamation, following the example of other countries such as the UK and Sri Lanka. Criminal defamation is one of worst forms of state suppression of free speech,” says Dr Agnes Callamard, ARTICLE 19 Executive Director. “ARTICLE 19 is ready to support the government in creating a new defamation code in line with international standards.”
Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Ambika Soni, and Minister of Law and Justice, Moodbidri Veerappa Moily, have publicly stated over the past month that the government are actively looking to decriminalise defamation. Both members of the Indian Union Cabinet have agreed that the criminalisation of defamation in India has produced “malicious prosecution” of journalists.
About 2,000 Indian farmers could lose their livelihoods in the next month if a proposed US$12 billion steel plant operation involving South Korean steel giant POSCO goes ahead, Amnesty International warned today.
The Indian authorities have given POSCO conditional clearance to establish a steel plant and port operation on about 4,000 hectares of land in the coastal Jagatsinghpur district of the eastern state of Orissa.
The area includes land on which local farmers are dependent for their livelihoods, and to which they may have rights under Indian law.
The farmers’ claims to the land have not been properly settled, despite the fact that official investigations have raised serious concerns about the failures of Orissa State to protect land rights in the context of the steel project.
The political leadership of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) [1] is engaging in unconditional peace talks on behalf of the decades-old Assamese insurgency with India’s central government. Assam is considered vital to the Indian economy due to its crude oil, coal reserves, vast tea industry and its geographical connection to the rest of northeast India’s isolated states to the Indian “mainland.” The Delhi-initiated peace talks have caused a grave split within the ULFA movement between its Chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and its military commander Paresh Barua who is protesting the negotiations from exile in either China or Burma. Rajkhowa along with Pradip Gogoi, ULFA’s vice chairman, and six other members of the outfit’s leadership have been released from detention in Guwahati, the northeast Indian state of Assam’s commercial capital, to meet with top officials from India’s Home ministry as well as leaders from the Assam state government (The Telegraph [Kolkata], February 9). For the time being, ULFA has been divided by what the Indian government dub’s “pro-talk” and “anti-talk” factions led by Rajkhowa and Barua respectively.
The International Labour Organisation has done well to include a draft convention on decent work for domestic workers in the agenda for the 100th session of the International Labour Conference, scheduled for June. For centuries the domestic workers have lived along the margins of the international workforce. Well-documented reports by the ILO and other organisations point to the universality of their woes. Entirely informal in nature, domestic work, as its most anguished state, is nothing but a form of slavery, at its best, it is dogged by uncertainty. The most common failing by societies is the exploitation of this ubiquitious group of workers. Data available with the ILO suggest that domestic work ranges from four per cent to 10 per cent of total employment in developing economies and between one per cent and 2.5 per cent in industrial countries. As the ILO’s 2010 report, ‘Decent work for domestic workers’, points out, this section of the workforce is “undervalued and poorly regulated” and a major part of it is “overworked, underpaid and unprotected.” An international convention backed by the ILO is an overdue move towards mainstreaming this long-neglected workforce.
South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR), a regional network of human rights defenders, joins the messages of solidarity expressed throughout the world to mark International Women’s Day on March 8th, 2011.