Just a few months before the outrage over brutal gang-rape of a 23-year-old in the national capital woke up the government to the inadequacy of laws to protect women, India rejected the United Nations Human Rights Council’s recommendation for comprehensive legal reforms to more effectively deal with violence against women.
The UNHRC on May 24 last year recommended that India should “enact comprehensive reforms to address sexual violence and all acts of violence against women, including honour crimes, child marriage, female feticide and female infanticide, and to remedy limitations in the definition of rape and the medico forensic procedures accepted for rape cases”.
However, on September 20 the government rejected the recommendations, which was among the ones that came out of the second “Universal Periodic Review” – a UNHRC mechanism to assess human rights records of all UN member states.
India also rejected the UNHRC recommendation for establishment and implementation of a National Human Rights Plan covering access to education and health, including aspects of sexual and reproductive health, as well as, concrete measures to eliminate violence against women.
The public outrage over the brutal gang-rape of the young physiotherapist in a moving bus in Delhi on December 16 and her death about a couple of weeks later prompted the UPA government to start reviewing existing laws to deal with crime against women.
The Ministry of Home Affairs constituted a three-member panel headed by Justice J S Verma to suggest possible amendments in laws to provide for quicker investigation, prosecution and trial as also enhanced punishment for criminals accused of committing sexual assault of extreme nature against women.
“It is shocking that it took such a horrendous incident to wake up the government to the inadequacy of existing laws to deal with crime against women,” Miloon Kothari, former Special Rapporteur of the UNHRC, told Deccan Herald.
“This exposes the lack of sincerity of the government as it had summarily rejected the UNHRC recommendations to review the laws just three months ago,” added Kothari, now convener of the Working Group of Human Rights in India and UN.
The WGHR last month came out with a report on New Delhi’s actions on the recommendations that came out of the first and second Universal Periodic Review of India at the UNHRC in Geneva.