India

• August 2, 2020

With five months to go before India takes its elected seat on the Security Council for 2021-2022, the country’s foreign minister says it will stay true to its founding tradition of nonalignment and not take sides with any big power. “Nonalignment was a term of a particular era and geopolitical landscape,” the minister, Subrahmanyam …

India, Security Council

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Top UN Rights Experts Call Kashmir Blackout ‘Collective Punishment’

Barbara Crossette

• August 25, 2019

As a communications shutdown is still depriving people in the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley contact with the outside world, five eminent international human-rights advocates say that the Indian military chokehold may be obscuring continuing abuses against civilians, nearly three weeks after stripping the region of its political autonomy. Information has been slowly emerging. “The …

India

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India at the UN: Thorny Questions for the Ambassador

Soumya Shankar

• September 28, 2018

Now was supposed to be the first thaw in relations between Pakistan and India after talks have been stalled since 2016. But Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan recently tweeted about India’s “arrogant and negative response . . . to my call for resumption of the peace dialogue,” hours after India retracted its position …

India, Security Council

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The Heart of Ethnic Cleansing Has Moved to India

Barbara Crossette

• August 15, 2018

Harsh Mander had barely arrived in the remote northeastern Indian state of Assam when he was drawn into a humanitarian horror story years in the making. It was about to get exponentially worse. “The people of Assam are sitting atop a smoldering volcano, one that threatens to erupt into catastrophic suffering and injustice,” he …

Human Rights, India

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TOPIC: INDIA

Changing the Minds of Youths to Stop India’s Extreme Bias Against Girls

Ariel Sophia Bardi

• February 26, 2018

HARYANA, India — In 2014, Breakthrough India, an independent human-rights organization, launched a program to tackle gender discrimination throughout 150 schools in Haryana, one of India’s most gender-biased states. A 2011 census showed that Haryana, a primarily agricultural state bordering Delhi in northern India, had the worst child-sex ratio in the country, with only …

Gender Violence, Human Rights, India, Poverty

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Girl, Disrupted: How a Boarding School Shifted the Life of One Young Woman

Barbara Crossette

• December 13, 2017

Shilpa Raj is not a Bollywood name, though she has starred in a documentary. She is not a best-selling author — yet. But she has written a frank, soulful book that can contribute to important discussions about the human costs of a disrupted childhood, however well-intentioned, based on her own extraordinary story. At the …

Asia, India, Poverty

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TB in India: Drug-Resistant Strains Are ‘Out of Control,’ New Report Says

Barbara Crossette

• October 27, 2017

Stephen Lewis is an outspoken and often impassioned Canadian diplomat and former United Nations official with a lot of experience in tracking health crises in Africa. Now he has turned his attention to tuberculosis in India, where he made a fact-finding trip in early October. He was shocked and disheartened by what he saw …

Asia, Health and Population, India

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TOPIC: INDIA

In Lush Manipur, Women Work for Peace as Militarization Marches On

Binalakshmi Nepram

• September 5, 2017

Manipur, a state of exceptional beauty in a little-known corner of northeastern India, was an independent region until 1949 when, in a controversial move, it was merged into the Indian union. Situated in an emerald green valley surrounded by nine blue mist-covered mountain ranges, the state has been seriously affected since 1949 by many …

Asia, Disarmament, India

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A Special School to Help Special Children

Barbara Crossette

• March 3, 2017

Abraham George was a young officer in the Indian army when his postings around the country in the late 1960s exposed him to faces of India that shocked him. His comfortable home in a distinguished Kerala family had not prepared him for the misery he saw. His father was the dean of Kerala University …

Asia, India, Poverty

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Marriage Is Not for Her

Pushpa Achanta

• January 30, 2017

BANGALORE — Ask any woman to describe marriage in a few words, and she is most likely to say: romance, respect, understanding, support, care. The reality of this relationship for a sizeable number of women, unfortunately, is marred with violence, deceit, exploitation and other traumas. Yet a woman in India cannot imagine her life …

India, Women

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Amid Kashmiri Violence, a Rape-Murder Case of Two Women Goes Unsolved

Gulzar Bhat

• November 29, 2016

SHOPIAN, Kashmir — A strange quiet had fallen over the Eidgah, a sacred space and martyrs’ graveyard. The sadness was overwhelming, but there was also an underlying restlessness. A special prayer meeting had been organized by Shakeel Ahmad Ahanger and hundreds from this small town had gathered to remember two of its daughters, one …

Gender Violence, India

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Tribal Women’s Eco-Friendly Leaf Plates Head to Western Tables

Rakhi Ghosh

• September 30, 2016

KANDHAMAL, India — Sampati Kahanra, a woman from the Kandha tribal people of eastern India, has a deep connection with the forest. From as long as she can remember, she has been walking in the dense greenery to find food, firewood and leaves. It started when she was a child going out with her …

India

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At Going Rate, Government Goals for Family Planning Needs to Fall Far Short

Ajitha Menon

• August 29, 2016

DELHI — At the landmark London Summit on family planning in 2012, 69 countries pledged to enable fuller access to family planning services for an additional 120 million women globally by 2020. India committed to spending more than $2 billion toward family planning services for 48 million women by 2020, besides sustaining its existing …

India

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The Trials and Tribulations of Running a Woman-Led Dairy Farm

Taru Bahl

• July 27, 2016

DELHI — Bora Bai lives on the outskirts of Guwahati, a large city in the state of Assam located on a hillock, set against the backdrop of lush hills of the Shillong plateau. What looks like an idyllic setting is actually the opposite: life is tough for Bai, a single woman who runs a …

India

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Failing Public Schools Spur Global Boom in Private Education

Barbara Crossette

• May 16, 2016

While governments bask in data showing that the development goal of universal access to primary education has largely been achieved, attention is turning to what that really means in the classroom. Educators and human-rights advocates question whether acceptable standards are being met in many schools, as evidence mounts of the proliferation of private education …