Shillong July 04: The 58th Session of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has considered the combined fourth and fifth periodic reports of India on its implementation of the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
“We welcome India’s commitment to continue the work on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, and it would seek to advance the legal framework and its effective implementation with civil society and private sectors as equal partners in this process” said Dino D.G. Dympep, Chairman, Meghalaya Peoples Human Rights Council(MPHRC).
Presenting the reports, Shankar Aggarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Development of India, said that over the last few years, new legislation had been enacted, such as the 2013 amendments to the criminal law which included new offences, widened the definition of rape and the provisions for aggravated rape, and increased the penalty, including capital punishment, for gang rape. Other legislation addressed food and nutritional security, manual scavenging, protection of children from sexual offences, and sexual harassment of women in the workplace.
A High Level Committee on the Status of Women had been set up in 2012 to undertake a comprehensive study into the status of women and develop appropriate policy interventions, while the National Commission for Women had been mandated to review constitutional and legal safeguards for women and recommend remedial measures.
Committee Members asked about the status of the Convention in domestic legislation, budgetary allocations for women, and the temporary special measures to improve the representation of women in political life. Violence against women in conflict situations was cited as an issue of great concern, as was the enforcement of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act which provided impunity to members of the armed forces. Experts were concerned about violence against women of disadvantaged backgrounds, such as Dalit, and asked what was being done to address this violence and ensure access to justice for victims. Trafficking in persons, although criminalized, remained a significant problem, with 90 per cent of cases being internal trafficking. Women and girls were trafficked for forced labour and forced marriage, organ harvesting and commercial sexual exploitation.
The delegation of India included representatives of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Ministry of Human Resource Development, and the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations Office at Geneva.
Nicole Ameline, Committee Chairperson, in her concluding remarks, encouraged India to take all necessary measures to implement the provisions of the Convention, including through strengthening its legal framework, particularly in the field of violence.(SP News)
Lets see till when India complete its Commitment….
And for the completion of this commitment all of us should work in the right direction.