Sexual violence and harassment at workplaces needs Parliament’s attention | The Indian Express

Sexual violence and harassment at workplaces needs Parliament’s attention | The Indian Express

Written by Upendra Baxi |Updated: August 23, 2019 7:58:04 am

The writer is professor of law, University of Warwick,and former vice chancellor of Universities of South Gujarat and Delhi.

Sexual violence and harassment at workplaces needs Parliament’s attention

ILO convention on the human right to freedom from sexual harassment expands and deepens the rights of working people. The issue needs Parliament’s attention.

The importance of the Convention in reinforcing the rights of the working peoples in the world of work cannot be overemphasised, given the global conversations about making the planet safe for investors (C R Sasikumar)

Although India is among the very few erstwhile colonies to have signed the treaty that established the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the country’s Parliament, mass media, and human rights and social movement activists remain too preoccupied with other issues to pay attention to some of the landmark events associated with the agency’s centenary celebrations. Although in a welcome move last year, the Union home minister issued directions to states to ensure that Internal Complaints Committees to examine the issue of sexual harassment at the workplace are constituted, only benign neglect has so far greeted the ILO’s Convention and Recommendation on the human right to freedom from sexual harassment and violence in the “world of work”. Issues like national security are important but sexual violence and harassment at workplaces is so widespread that one hopes the issue will receive due, effective and expeditious attention in Parliament’s next session.