Gender issues come to the fore at HRLN seminar

GANGTOK, 27 May: Gender-related issues, especially the blight of discrimination, were brought into sharp focus at a seminar organized here by the Human Rights Law Network yesterday. As the papers and experience presented and shared at the seminar revealed, early pregnancies among unwed women/ girls are emerging as a major challenge in Sikkim and triggering a slew of attended complications and denials. Trafficking is also growing in presence as a concern and the general lack of social responsibility towards victims [of both, unwed pregnancies and trafficking] has only made the situation worse.
The seminar on “Gender related issues and Discrimination” clearly underlined that a direct result of this largely unaddressed situation is an increase in the number of unauthorized, and thus also unsafe, abortions putting victims at even more risk and the social stigma which exposes victims to even more exploitation.
Compromising the situation further is the condition of healthcare facilities especially in the more remote districts of West and North Sikkim which already suffer connectivity problems due to their locational disadvantage and are also now dealing with limited facilities, manpower and medicines.
The two social workers from North Sikkim, one from Lachung and another from Dzongu, made their presentations on ‘Understanding the gender specific rights’ and urged all concerned to improve the healthcare infrastructure in North Sikkim.
Gyatso Lepcha from Dzongu detailed that healthcare facilities in Dzongu were dismal and in urgent need of special attention in terms of medical supplies and manpower deployment and pointed out that most villages cut off by the 18 Sept 2011 earthquake were still inaccessible.
Justice SP Wangdi of the High Court of Sikkim, who spoke on ‘gender aspect of coercive two child norm’, commented on the positive and negative aspects of the two child norm and expressed deep concern over the lack of proper reproductive health facilities for women in general.
He highlighted that laws do not need to be coercive and that it was more important for mindsets on the health rights of women which need to be changed.
Dr. Doma T. Bhutia of the Human Rights Law Network in Sikkim said that the seminar focused on gender issues in the hope that it was taken up in high priority in Sikkim before the situation worsened, adding that the issues of health rights and liberty and equality in society were being ignored despite several laws enacted to dealt them.
She called on members of the civil society to raise the issues of health and other rights as enshrined in the Constitution.
Dr. Meera Shiva from Uttrakhand, a leading health activist, in turn presented an outline on women’s health in India. She said that still more than 65 percent of women in India do not have access to proper healthcare. She said that the health issues of women, especially the girl child, need deeper understanding of gender healthcare.