HomeLatest NewsDalit women face worst risk of rape, hunger in India

Dalit women face worst risk of rape, hunger in India

Islamabad: India remains the most unsafe country for women in the world. Lower caste women in particular bear the brunt, with little to no access to justice. A 14-year-old Dalit girl of Mathura’s Kosi Kalan area was allegedly kidnaped and raped repeatedly in Delhi for resisting prostitution.

The captors wanted to sell her to a brothel for just Rs 3 lacs. This is the second incident of rape reported in Kosi Kaalan police station in past two weeks. Previously a 21-year-old woman was allegedly raped by a youth in a moving car on national highway. In UP, there are 36,467 registered crime cases against scheduled castes in the last three years. India has failed to oblige Article 2 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women which aims to protect women against any act of discrimination.

In India, which has been declared by experts as the most dangerous country in the world for women, Dalit women are at an additional risk of sexual violence and slave labour.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation in its 2018 survey of 550 experts on women’s issues, found India to be the “most dangerous nation for sexual violence against women, as well as human trafficking for domestic work, forced labour, forced marriage, and sexual slavery among other reasons”.

The survey said India is also the most dangerous country in the world for cultural traditions that impact women, citing acid attacks, female genital mutilation, child marriage, and physical abuse. Also, India was termed the fourth most dangerous country for women in the same survey seven years ago.

More than 60 per cent of Indian women are anaemic as they eat last and the least, rising hunger levels hit the marginalised most. In 2020, India’s Covid-19 lockdown resulted in a tremendous collapse of livelihoods.

According to a study by the People’s Archive of Rural India, 50 per cent of the households in rural India during the pandemic were forced to reduce the number of meals ever since the lockdown was imposed. About 68 per cent of the households reduced the number of items in their meals.

Research shows that Dalit women die younger than dominant-caste women as nutrition and health has always been a struggle for them.

Studies show that in India, 56 per cent Dalit and 59 per cent tribal women are anaemic, while the national average is 53 per cent.

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