Caste discrimination outside India, and comparative/international caste-adjacent systems.
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Prime Minister Balendra 'Balen' Shah, whose cabinet's promised apology to Dalit and other marginalized communities lapsed unmet. — Metro News / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
A government that pledged Dalits a first-of-its-kind apology within 15 days of taking office let that pledge quietly lapse instead. By July, a woman had spent 96 days sitting on a Kathmandu pavement asking for something smaller and never delivered either.
Caste discrimination has never had its own line in international human rights law; it has always been argued in under someone else's, usually race or descent. A side event at the UN Human Rights Council just tested whether that is about to change.
Seattle became the first US city to ban caste discrimination in 2023. Months later, California's governor vetoed a state-wide version — the patchwork fight over caste protection in the US, explained.
A European Parliament hearing brought UN experts and Dalit activists to Brussels to lay out caste discrimination in concrete terms. The tools to act on it already exist — trade preferences, development funding, human rights dialogues. What's missing is the will.
Sixteen recommendations at Nepal's UN human rights review called for enforcing a 2011 anti-caste law that already exists. Six days after the review closed, a Dalit woman was beaten by neighbors for letting her goats stray. The gap between recognition and enforcement is the whole story.
