Geneva report exposes systematic abuses against Dalit, Adivasi and minority women in India

Speakers at a press conference in Geneva on Friday called for urgent international action on the plight of Dalit, Adivasi and minority women in India, as the Geneva Nations Institute presented its report “Broken Promises. Denied Rights.: State Violence, Systemic Discrimination and Impunity – Human Rights Violations Against Dalit, Adivasi and Minority Women in India”.

UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues Prof. Nicolas Levrat described the report as “a very important piece for the work of the UN human rights system” and found its use of detailed official statistics “quite remarkable”. Existing legislation, he said, is “certainly not enough”. He called for education of law enforcement, judicial authorities and the public, and said he would raise the issues with Indian government representatives through UN channels.

Presenting the findings, doctoral researcher Ms Anna Christina Kattou opened with the report’s foreword: “Every figure in this report belongs to a woman.” Police data show twelve Dalit women and girls raped every day, she said. Recorded crimes against them rose 46 percent in six years, against under two percent for all women, and more than 92 percent of rape cases with Scheduled Caste victims were still awaiting trial. The report makes 22 recommendations; acting on them, she said, is vital to stop these violations.

Dr Iqtidar Karamat Cheema, a member of the UN Global Steering Committee (Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect), said the report was far more than numbers, because every figure belonged to a human being: a Dalit woman chased away from a police station, a 14-year-old girl in Shopian left without sight by metal pellets, a mother in Punjab handed a box of ashes. The pattern of violations against Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, Christian and Sikh women, he said, is “structural, documented, and escalating”.

India has ratified the major human rights treaties and its Constitution bars discrimination on grounds of sex, caste and religion, Dr Cheema noted, yet the report exposes an “appalling gap” between those promises and lived reality. UN treaty bodies reviewed the record in 2007, 2014, 2024 and August 2026, he said, and their findings keep repeating. Tracing what he called a four-decade pattern of impunity, he cited the 1984 Sikh genocide, the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Hathras case in 2020 and the parading of Kuki-Zo women in Manipur in 2023.

He called on the UN to issue urgent appeals, set up independent fact-finding missions and secure unimpeded country visits for Special Rapporteurs, and urged governments to build human rights benchmarks into bilateral and trade dialogue. “A promise made by a state… is meaningless if it can be broken without consequence,” he said, adding that it is time for the international community to move “from observation to action”.

Researcher and international relations expert Dr Mohamed Shareef Asees said the international community must step in and press India to respect human rights.

Journalists put questions to the panel, and several participants praised the report for its thorough research and documentation.