▪️ International Widows Day is a United Nations ratified day of action to address the “poverty and injustice faced by millions of widows and their dependents in many countries.”
▪️ The day is commemorated annually on 23 June since 2005.
▪ On this day, world should remember the thousands of Kashmiri women who have been widowed in this continued conflict in the Himalayan region.
▪️ In addition to that, over 20,000 women have suffered enforced disappearances of their husbands – terming them as half-widows.
▪️ Furthermore, in recent months many Kashmiri women have been detained and several others prison have been killed.
▪ The poverty, powerless, ill health, physical and psychological of these women makes them vulnerable to ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
▪️ While the lives of these widows are wretched enough, those of the half-widows are even worse – but still, all of them continue their struggle against societal discrimination, poverty, marginalisation, abuse and violence.
▪ Not only have these women been subjected to violence by police but have also been harrassed by AFs.
▪️ The half widows suffer, as they have no closure to their grief as they continue to experience identity crisis from the uncertainty of whether they are married or not. This struggle reveals a cultural gap in Kashmir where the needs of women and the issue of their equality continue to go unrecognised. They have no rights to social security, pensions, inheritance, and land nor can they re-marry. They face harassment and violence from the police when they seek information from the police.
▪ India is signatory to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICCPED). Therefore, India is under international obligation to trace the disappeared. It must fulfil its obligations under international law.
▪️ Article 1 of ICCPED places a non-derogable prohibition against enforced disappearances and applies even in a state of war and public emergency. India cannot invoke such grounds as a justification for these actions.
▪️ Own media to highlight the dilemma of Kashmiri widows and half widows to expose the ugly face of the oppressive India whose democratic credentials are fallacious and human rights track record is abysmal.
