Child Rights:- Although India has a large number of laws to protect and promote the rights of children, children’s concerns are viewed primarily as a welfare issue, rather an issue of rights. By developing a legal rights-based approach for children, the Child Rights Initiative combats the violation of children’s rights and increases their ability access to the legal system.
What We Do? CRI’s, major activity is to do Public Interest Cases in the Supreme Court of India and various High Courts on the issues affecting children. CRI provides pro-bono legal services to children in conflict with the law and children in need of care and protection in the Juvenile Justice Boards and Child Welfare Committees all over the country. CRI represents children who are victim of sexual abuse or victim of bonded labour during the trail proceedings in trial courts, assisting the prosecution in the trial.
Criminal Justice Two central philosophies anchor the commonly accepted notion of criminal justice. The first is a zealous requirement for increased conviction rates. The second is the perception that those people in prison deserve punishment rather than rehabilitation. Both of these philosophies have especially grave consequences for the poor and marginalized. In this context, the Criminal Justice Initiative provides pro bono and low cost legal aid service to undertrials and convicted prisoners who are unable to pay for their legal representation. Our work is to defend civil liberties and to create a more humane criminal justice system. The emphasis is on greater access to justice for the poor, workers, disabled, aged, sick, tribal, women, dalit, juveniles and other minorities.
Dalit Rights
DALIT AND ADIVASI RIGHTS INTIATIVE The Indian Constitution banned the practice of untouchablity under Article 17 and the Schedule Caste/ Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities Act), 1989 was introduced to combat persecution and discrimination against Dalits and Adivasi (tribal) people. Despite the existence of these strong legal provisions, Dalit and Adivasi populations have found it virtually impossible to access their rights through the legal system. In this context, the Dalit and Adivasi Rights Initiative provides legal aid and rights-awareness to members of Dalit and Adivasi communities and uses the law to ensure that the violation of Dalit and Adivasi rights are addressed through the legal system.
Disability Rights An estimated 70 million disabled Indians are treated as second-class citizens and are forced to confront segregation, discrimination, barriers and stereotypes. An entire range of disability issues -- such as the causes of disability, care, rehabilitation, empowerment, mainstreaming through education, employment, health care, and transportation – wait to be practically resolved. The Disability Rights Initiative is recognized as the only one of its kind in providing a comprehensive range of socio-legal support services to India’s disabled community.
Emergency/Disaster Most organizations intervene in cases of emergencies, disasters, and natural calamities only after the event has taken place. This post-disaster response is usually through partnerships with the governments of affected states. This often compromises an organization’s ability to question the state on its post-disaster response. HRLN’s Emergency and Disaster Response Initiative is unique in the sense that it is not bound any such limitation. As an independent organization, which takes a rights-based approach to post disaster relief and rehabilitation, this Initiative has the advantage of being able to ensure transparency and accountability in all relief work.
Environmental Justice Environmental Justice Initiative (EJI) attempts to make any intervention in environmental protection more sensitive to human well being without compromising on environmental protection and conservation strategies. Besides, the effective enforcement of environmental rights lies in equipping communities to take part in environmental decision-making. The EJI firmly believes that the right to a clean environment is a basic human right, and has been actively involved in fighting environmental degradation that affects the lives and livelihood of the poor.
HIV / AIDS India has one of the largest populations of HIV positive persons in Asia and the world. While it is generally accepted the world over that there must be a twin strategy for combating HIV/AIDS - prevention and treatment, the Indian government has focused largely on prevention, with far less emphasis placed on treatment. Furthermore, people living with HIV/AIDS are stigmatized and face significant discrimination. In this context, the HIV/AIDS and the Law Initiative at HRLN uses a rights-based approach to support people affected by HIV against all forms of discrimination by defending their fundamental human rights including their right to life, health, privacy, education, employment, housing, and other matters.
Housing Rights The right to adequate housing has been widely recognized and accepted as a pat of the right to life by international community as well as in India. Despite having ensconced the right to housing as a part of the larger right to human dignity, right to equality, social and economic rights, the basic provisions, which form the spirit of right to housing are blatantly violated all across the country. The objective of the initiative is to monitor and stop illegal/ forced evictions and network with other organizations to evolve a joint action campaign ensuring ‘right to Housing’ is at forefront.
Labour rights HRLN ‘s work in labor rights has its roots in the trade union struggle in Mumbai. In India only a minuscule fraction of the workforce is organised, most of which is in urban areas, leaving the rest of the working class vulnerable to blatant exploitation. As a result, closures and job losses, sub-minimum wages, bonded and slave labour, contract labour, discrimination against women and the siphoning away of money from the workers' funds characterize Indian labour.
Although Indian labour laws are amongst the best in the world, their implementation is slow and obstructed by corruption. Over the last fifteen years, under the impact of globalization, privatization and structural adjustment policies the situation is further deteriorating. Despite stiff opposition from trade unions the government succeeded in making major inroads into worker’s rights.
Anti-Trafficking In the past decade, the volume of human trafficking has grown to the extent that it is now the third largest form of transnational organised crime after firearms and drugs. In India, the scale of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking is steadily rising despite the existence of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956.
In the language of trafficking, India constitutes a country of origin, transit and destination for trafficked persons. In 1996, a report published by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Asia Pacific, reported that there were 2.3 million women in prostitution in India, a quarter of whom were minors, in over 1,000 red-light districts all over the country. Recent trends disclose the alarming fact that the age of entry into sexual slavery is rapidly decreasing, against the backdrop of steadily rising numbers of both women and children being inducted into commercial sexual exploitation.
Women’s Justice The violation of women’s fundamental rights through physical, mental, emotional, and sexual violence against women has become almost commonplace in the Indian context. Violence against women has taken particularly acute forms in circumstances where populations are already marginalized, such as in areas affected by armed conflict, areas undergoing mass displacement. Women in the Tribal belts and amongst Dalit populations are already vulnerable, and become even more so in areas affected by conflict. There is therefore a pressing need for the judiciary to recognize and address the particular forms of violence levied against women who are ‘doubly marginalised’ by caste, class, religion, or in situations conflict. Customary routinely laws discriminate against women, both by denying justice to victims of violence and by dispossessing women from their shares in land and property. A number of laws that protect women from discrimination have also either inadequate, or have not been properly implemented.
Reproductive Rights Sixty years have passed since the founders of the United Nations inscribed, on the first page of our Charter, the equal rights of men and women. Since then, study after study has taught us that there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women. No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, or to reduce infant and maternal mortality. No other policy is as sure to improve nutrition and promote health - including the prevention of HIV/AIDS...But whatever the very real benefits of investing in women, the most important fact remains: Women themselves have the right to live in dignity, in freedom from want and fear.' Kofi Annan, Secretary-General (1997-2006), United Nations
People's Heath RightsOne of the most critical challenges facing India today is reduction of funds allocated for the health of its people. In fact, the State has discreetly withdrawn from the public health system in the country, handing over more and more services, treatment and medications to the corporates, making it impossible for those with low incomes to pay their way through. Espousing the WHO’s broad definition of health as, “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”, the People’s Health Rights Initiative (PHRI) focuses on making the government invoke human rights enshrined in the Constitution of India and ensure the right to life and health through the use of law.
Refugee Rights Despite the fact that India is a host to diverse groups of refugees, the country has no specific laws or cohesive policy for refugees. India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention nor to its 1967 Protocol on the Status of Refugees. Therefore, the protection of refugees is confined to ad-hoc measures taken by the Government of India, leaving refugees with little protection for their civil and political rights and virtually no legal provisions for their safety and welfare. Against this backdrop, the Refugee Rights Initiative at HRLN works for the protection of the rights of refugees and to improve their situation in India with a mission to assist asylum seekers, refugees and other displaced populations in realizing their basic human rights and accessing the justice system.
Right to Food Although India is seen as a rising economic power and it is hoped that a trickle down will benefit the poor and marginalized; in reality the gap between the rich and the poor is growing. The National Sample Survey Data reported in 2004 showed that 70% of the population was at or below the poverty line in terms of consumption of food. The data revealed that 750 million persons were consuming less than 2,400 k calories per person per day which was the poverty line standard set by the Planning Commission of India in 1979. In her recently published book “The Republic of Hunger” Professor Utsa Patnaik of the Jawaharlal Nehru University concluded that on an average, a family of 5 consume 100 kilograms of grain less per year as compared to the consumption during the Second World War. This is the specter of starving India.
Sexuality Minority Rights
Secularism and PeaceAfter Independence, and with the adoption of the Constitution, secularism became a value of civil society in India. Even though Partition was a traumatic experience for many, the co-existence of religious communities was essentially peaceful. Then, in the 1984 anti-Sikh ‘riots’ (more aptly named ‘massacres’) 2,700 Sikhs were brutally killed and maimed. Eight years later 1,800 Muslims were massacred on the streets of Bombay, and in 2002 over 2,000 Muslims were killed in the state of Gujarat. Today, communalism in India continues in epidemic proportions as evidenced by the 2007-08 Orissa riots where over 20,000 Christians were forced into refugee camps due to burning and looting of hundreds of houses, churches, convents and seminaries. The struggle for justice in all these cases continues. Against this backdrop, HRLN’s Secularism and Peace Initiative works in solidarity with the victims of communalism to bring cases to courts, and educate people about their rights and dispel myths that fuel the rise of communal unrest
RTI
Right to Information