In our very first episode, we sit down with Claire Thomas, Executive Director of Minority Rights Group International (MRG) to explore what it means to advocate for caste-affected communities within the international human rights space.
Claire shares insights into her work at MRG, including the tensions that can arise between donor priorities and the needs and priorities of minority communities. We discuss where caste justice currently sits within human rights frameworks, the absence of dedicated legal protections in many contexts, and the disconnect between how caste is experienced and addressed nationally and how it is discussed internationally.
We also explore why caste is so often treated as a niche or regional issue, despite ongoing efforts by anti-caste actors to bring caste discrimination into international human rights conversations.
References:
What is Caste: https://www.equalitylabs.org/what-is-caste/
About Minority Rights Group: https://minorityrights.org/about-us/
Lack of accountability around sexual violence cases against Dalit women: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/sexual-violence-dalit-community-haryana-report/
Discriminatory recruitment practices for sanitation work: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/pakistan-sanitation-workers-face-caste-based-discrimination-unsafe-working-conditions-denial-of-labour-rights/
Have a question for us? Write to us by email: [email protected]
Important note: Building Power of the OutCaste (BPO) recognises that the name of the podcast, 'Visibilising the Invisibilised, may raise concerns for some. We chose the name intentionally. It speaks to the ways caste power deliberately and continuously makes caste-affected people, histories, experiences and knowledge invisible. Naming that process is a first act of refusing it. The word is meant as an accusation aimed at those who look away, not as a description of the people they refuse to see. We do not believe that any community is inherently invisible, we resist that idea as a collective!
