Critical need for women’s community bathrooms
While construction of toilets has received a lot of attention in India’s sanitation campaigns in recent times, another important sanitation need, that of bathrooms, has not received the same attention.
India today highlighted at the 46th session of the United Nations Human Right Council (UNHRC) how the state sponsored terrorism by Pakistan was not a threat to India alone but to other countries in the region and beyond.
“Pakistan has been the home and patron to the largest number of internationally proscribed terrorist entities and individuals in the world. As many as 126 individuals and 24 entities, sanctioned under the UN Security Council 1267 and 1988 Committees’ Lists, are associated with Pakistan,” Seema Pujani, senior Indian official, pointed out as India exercised its “Right of Reply” in response to the statement by the representative of Pakistan during the high-level segment of the UNHRC in Geneva.
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Rejecting the charges levelled by Pakistan against India as baseless, she asserted that the entire Union Territories ofJammu and Kashmir and Ladakh were an integral and inalienable part of India.
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Pujani said that as a country with one of the world’s worst human rights records, Pakistan would do well to put its own house in order, before venturing to point a finger at India. “The violence, institutionalised discrimination and persecution faced by Pakistan’s minorities, including Christians, Sikhs and Hindus, has continued unabated. There have been frequent attacks on the places of worship of minority communities, a grave violation of their right to freedom of religion and belief,” she added.
The Indian diplomat said the condition of women belonging to minority communities, notably Hindus, Sikhs and Christians, remained deplorable in Pakistan.
An estimated 1,000 women from minority communities were subjected to abduction followed by forced conversion and forced marriage every year.
The Indian diplomat termed as ‘completely unacceptable’ the remarks made by Turkey about India, saying it was ironical that a country which has trampled upon its own civil society was passing unjustified comments on other’s internal matters.
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