UN Commission on Human Rights, 59th Session

25 March 2003

Joint Statement by The Lutheran World Federation, the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR) and Minority Rights Group International and Anti-Slavery International

In an incident in December 2002, a Dalit - or so-called 'untouchable' - woman was beaten by two upper caste people because she had agreed to prepare a midday meal for school children. In October 2002, five Dalits were beaten to death because they were thought to have killed a cow. [The five men made their livelihood from skinning dead cows and selling the hides. They were attacked because they had been seen skinning a dead cow by the roadside.] The body of the cow was sent for a postmortem, but not the bodies of the Dalits. In June 2002, a young woman was raped on the orders of the members of a local council as punishment for her brother's alleged affair with a higher caste woman.

These are only three isolated examples, but they are emblematic of the problem of caste-based discrimination and similar forms of inherited social exclusion which, despite the efforts of some governments to address it, continues to affect the daily lives of an estimated 250 million people in this the 21st century. [People and communities suffering this form of discrimination continue to be regarded as 'polluting', to live segregated from others, to be subjected to the most extreme forms of violence and exploitation, and to be required to perform society's most menial and hazardous tasks.]

In August last year, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination held a thematic discussion on 'descent-based discrimination', in which NGO representatives from Japan and several parts of Africa, as well as from South Asia, spoke about the discrimination experienced in their own communities on the basis of caste or similar forms of inherited status. The Committee subsequently adopted General Recommendation no. XXIX on 'descent-based discrimination' on 22 August 2002.

In this General Recommendation, the Committee made it clear that 'descent-based discrimination' includes discrimination based on "forms of social stratification such as caste and analogous systems of inherited status [which nullify or impair their equal enjoyment of human rights]", and condemned such discrimination as a violation of human rights law. The General Recommendation recognizes and commends the efforts of those States which have taken measures to eliminate descent-based discrimination and remedy its consequences, and encourages affected states who have yet to recognize and address this phenomenon to take steps to do so". It concludes that "fresh efforts, as well as the intensification of existing efforts, need to be made at the level of domestic law and practice to eliminate the scourge of descent-based discrimination and empower communities affected by it".

The sponsors of this statement call on the members of this Commission, even as you reflect on the acute violence that is taking place in the Middle East, to remember those millions of people around the world who continue to suffer the daily effects of the institutionalized violence of centuries-old systems of inherited social exclusion.

We call on you to acknowledge this unacknowledged challenge to human rights, and to take your first steps as the peak international body on human rights to address this challenge. It must by now be obvious, even to those governments that have taken the most extensive measures to eliminate caste-based discrimination and similar systems of inherited social exclusion, that the support and assistance of the international community will be required to achieve this aim in a reasonable period of time. The human rights consequences of these structures and attitudes are too grave, and affect too many human beings, to allow them to persist for another generation, or two or three.

We hope that this Commission can take appropriate steps to support and advance the recommendations contained in the CERD General Recommendation, and to integrate this concern - which has remained untouchable and invisible for too long - in its own work and in the mandates of its relevant special procedures.