The United Nations has declared some Human Rights, yet are they accessible to all women? Let us find out here!
The long-living history of a patriarchal society can be a lullaby which would be most uncomfortable to sleep with. A history filled with domination and oppression of men over women and society over women’s voices is a brutal question on various fundamentals of a nation. Where on a national level, we have several fundamental rights that are should accessible to all sections and genders of the society, there are several human rights declared by The United Nations too, that are basic and likely to be accessible to everyone. But considering the present times, we don’t see all the communities having an access to these basic human rights.
While it’s just not women who don’t have access to human rights but several other communities like the LGBTQ community, Dalit Community, class, caste and religious minorities, etc., which don’t have access to several basic human rights, yet women for the marginalised of the margins. Here, we have compiled a few human rights on the lines of right to live free from violence, slavery, and discrimination, to be educated, to one property and earn a fair and equal wage. How many women have access to them? Let’s check.
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Basic UN declared Human Rights which not all Indian Women have got easy access to –
1. Right to Life
This right simply suggests that nobody can try to end your life.
Researches have estimated that more than 500,000 girls were being killed annually due to female foeticide and more than 10 million female foetuses may have been illegally aborted in India since the 1990s. Where infanticide has been criminalized, there are still a lot of unreported cases of female infanticide curbing their right to life.
2. Right to Freedom from Torture and Degraded treatment
Article 3 protects from inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, torture (mental or physical) and deportation or extradition. It states that “no one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The fourth most common crime in the country is rape. One woman gets raped every 15 minutes. According to 2018 report of National Crime Records Bureau(NCRB), each day, 91 rape cases get reported and there is no count for unreported cases. A total of 33,356 rapes were recorded in the latest available report of 2018.
As per a report by The Hindu, there have been more than 1477 complaints of domestic violence in a span of between 25 and May 31. The report says that about 86% of women who experienced violence never sought help, and 77% of the victims did not even mention the incident(s) to anyone. There is obviously no record for marital rapes, which comes under torture and degrading treatment.
3. Right to Freedom from slavery and forced labour
Not considering the cases of forced labour enforced on women post marriage, the girl child trafficking and victims of human trafficking are enough to advocate for the women who are not so free from slavery and forced labour.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, in 2016, more than 20,000 women and children were trafficked in India which is a sweeping rise of 25 % s compared to 2015. India forms homes to the largest number of slaves globally.
4. Freedom from Discrimination and Right to Equality
We wonder how to put in stats, the discrimination the women are subjected to. The crime against women, the imposition of gender roles, moral policing, controlling, liberalising and legitimising the toxic masculine behaviours and acknowledging the faulty idea of men as the primary gender is nothing but a violation of the right to freedom from Discrimination and Right to Equality.
5. Right to liberty and Personal Security
We wonder how many women are safe when they step out of their houses at odd hours, or in fact, not just at odd hours, at any hour of the day, there is no guarantee that the women out will get back home safe. While eve-teasing, molestation, rapes and other crimes against women are one thing, the right to liberty is something all women fear to access because of the societal judgements and the misconceptions.
Where these are the broad and the most noticed ones, the Right to adequate living standards and the Right to Education also comes in the picture when the access to a quality life and education facility is not accessible to all women of the society. And if they have, this is not easy access. Women have to fight, have been fighting for some basic fundamental rights that every human has a right to access.
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