WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY RESOURCES: INDIA

Civil Society and NGO Reports, Papers and Statements

Getting Away With Murder
Human Rights Watch, August 2008
This 16-page report describes how the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, or AFSPA, has become a tool of state abuse, oppression, and discrimination in India. The law grants the military wide powers to arrest without warrant, shoot-to-kill, and destroy property in so-called "disturbed areas." It also protects military personnel responsible for serious crimes from prosecution, creating a pervasive culture of impunity.

To read the full report, please click HERE

South Asia: Human Rights Index 2008
Asian Centre for Human Rights, August 2008
This report indexes the human rights records of the member States of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) - the subregional inter-governmental organisation. Indexing human rights records of the governments is a controversial exercise as there are no foolproof or universally acceptable yardsticks to measure records. Given the scale of the task, this report is not exhaustive but rather aims to chronicle patterns, practices and the implications for the concerned countries. While this report is an index, it also demonstrates that all South Asian countries have serious human rights problems. A regional analysis also shows a high level of commonality in human rights patterns. Discrimination is endemic, institutionalised and in many cases legalised. Human rights violations are integral to counterinsurgency operations conducted by the military in the sub-region. Human rights are routinely violated in police detention including the routine use of torture. National security laws tend to be poorly framed, routinely abused and used as blanket cover to silence legitimate dissent rather than tackle security. These are not the assertions of one organisation but repeatedly confirmed by national and regional and international NGOs and the various UN bodies established to monitor human rights.

Countries in the report: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka

To read the full report, please click HERE

Sakhi Saheli – Promoting Gender Equity and Empowering Young Women
A Training Manual
CORO for Literacy, Mumbai
Horizons/Population Council, New Delhi, Instituto Promondo, Rio de Janeiro, 2008
This Manual aims to promote critical reflection among young women to recognize and understand how gender normative attitudes and behaviors affect their everyday lives and can result in increasing their vulnerability to HIV and other reproductive health problems. This training initiative provides a space to young women and girls to question and challenge existing inequitable gender norms; promote positive constructs of gender and identity; improve their understanding about their body, their feelings and sexuality; and promote sexual and reproductive health.

Female Infantcide
National Foundation for India, May 2005
Gender Equity and Justice
The Declaration of 1990 as the SAARC Year of the Girl Child and the decade as the SAARC Decade of the Girl Child has helped in highlighting the multiple problems and discrimination faced by the girl child. The National Foundation for India therefore decided to focus on this much neglected issue and in the last three years of grant-making has concentrated its support in this area.

Naga Women Making a Difference: Peace Building in Northeastern India
Women Waging Peace Policy Commission, January 2005
By Rita Manchanda

Rape for Profit: Trafficking of Nepali Girls and Women in India's Brothels
Human Rights Watch, June 1995
Hundreds of thousands of women and children are employed in Indian brothels—many of them lured or kidnapped from Nepal and sold into conditions of virtual slavery. The victims of this international trafficking network routinely suffer serious physical abuse, including rape, beatings, arbitrary imprisonment and exposure to AIDS. Held in debt bondage for years at a time, these women and girls work under constant surveillance. Escape is virtually impossible. Both the Indian and Nepali governments are complicit in the abuses suffered by trafficking victims. These abuses are not only violations of internationally recognized human rights but are specifically prohibited under the domestic laws of both countries. The willingness of Indian and Nepali government officials to tolerate, and, in some cases, participate in the burgeoning flesh trade exacerbates abuse. Even when traffickers have been identified, there have been few arrests and fewer prosecutions. Rape for Profit focuses on the trafficking of girls and women from Nepal to brothels in Bombay, where they compose up to half of the city’s estimated 100,000 brothel workers.
To order the publication online, click here. The document number is HRW Index No.: 1-56432-155-X.

UN Documents

Child Exploitation: Stop the Traffic
UNICEF, July 2003
This report focuses on child trafficking and is the second in the series. It begins by dispelling confusion over the term itself by clearly explaining what is meant by “trafficking”, paticularly in regard to children. It then goes on to explore some aspects of the murky means by which the trade operates, involving, among others, recruiters, corrupt officials, truck drivers and brothel ‘madams’. Key factors that make particular children vulnerable to being trafficked are then examined, alongside some sobering statistics that give an idea of the sheer scale of the abuse.

Government Statements and Reports

India: Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor – U.S. Department of State
2003 Report
2002 Report
2001 Report
2000 Report
1999 Report

India's Initial Report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
Examined at the 22nd session, 2000

Books, Journals and Articles

Violence against Women in India: Evidence from Rural Gujarat
Leela Visaria, Gujarat Institute of Development Studies

Best Practices among Responses to Domestic Violence in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh
Nishi Mitra, Women's Studies Unit, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Responses to Domestic Violence in Karnataka and Gujarat
Veena Poonacha, Research Centre for Women?s Studies (RCWS), and Divya Pandey, SNDT Women's University, Mumbai

The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India
Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta (Eds.)
Published by Stree, Kolkata, 2003
Click here to read a review

Where Women Bore the Brunt
Raka Roy, In The Hindu, May 11, 2002
An analysis of state-sanctioned sexual assault and violence against women.

Fallen Angels: The Sex Workers of South Asia
John Frederick and Thomas L. Kelly. New Delhi: Lustre Press and Roli Books, 2000; 168p.
South east Asia's booming sex industry has been described by numerous authors and journalists, but the outside world has paid scant attention to the same problem in South Asia, where hundreds of thousands of young women and men are trapped in squalid brothels in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Part of the reason could be that it is mainly an internal problem, and, as the authors of this remarkable book point out, the South Asian sex industry involves more children than perhaps anywhere else in the world.
To purchase the book, click here to contact the Nepalese Ray of Hope Foundation. The foundation helps rehabilitate sex workers and works with young villagers in Nepal to teach them about the dangers of entering the sex industry.