“Widows should be treated as women. Unfortunately, they are not. They are victims of double discrimination – first, as a woman, and second, as a widow. We need to put a stop to this,” said Lord Raj Loomba, chairman of the Loomba Foundation, in London last Wednesday.
He was speaking at Chatham House at 10 St James’s Square, at a press briefing for a preview of a major research study on discrimination and prejudice against widows worldwide.
World Widows Report – the comprehensive study compiled by the Loomba Foundation on the plight of widows – was presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a meeting in New York on December 18.
According to the Report, the UN-initiated Sustainable Development Goals – like ending poverty in all its forms everywhere; ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages; ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all; achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls – won’t be achieved unless specific action is taken to address the discrimination against widows.
The Loomba Foundation has been campaigning for widows’ rights around the world and has also been instrumental in declaring June 23 as International Widows’ Day by the UN.
Lord Loomba said along the lines of the National Commission for Women, the Government of India must set up a national commission for widows to provide a voice for their issues and concerns, apart from protecting and promoting their interests.
According to the Report, India is home to nearly 47 million widows – as per 2015 estimates.
He said the state governments in India must authorise a person who can take up and attend to widows’ issues. Seventy per cent of India’s population lives in rural areas. Widows don’t have a job and they are wholly dependent on family members. They are abused physically, psychologically, emotionally and sexually, and treated like slaves. They don’t know whom to turn to with their problems. So, if there is a person or official in a village or town to lodge complaints, it will act as a deterrent, Lord Loomba added.
In its bid to empower widows economically and break the shackles of poverty, the Foundation has launched a project in the City of Widows – Varanasi, which incidentally happens to be Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency.
“The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is very keen to address this issue. Of the 39,000 widows living in Varanasi, we have selected 5,000 of them and are providing them tailoring training to help them stand on their feet. A foot-operated sewing machine is also provided to them. The beneficiaries cannot sell the machine as an agreement prevents them from doing so. A staff from the Foundation inspects them every six months regarding their achievements and any support they need. We have done a similar project in Punjab earlier and have supported widows with sewing machine projects in Bihar, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh and others,” Lord Loomba said.
According to the Report, there are 258 million widows in the world with 585 million children. Of these, 38 million widows live in extreme poverty. One in seven widows lives on less than a dollar a day.
“Widows have been suffering in silence for centuries, but no government, not even the UN has ever attended to this problem. There is a grave need to address this issue. We need to link this issue to sustainable development goals. The first goal is the elimination of poverty and the last goal is to leave no one behind. So I want to make sure widows are not left behind,” Lord Loomba said.
He said it is sad that the widows’ number is increasing. This is happening because of conflict in different countries, diseases like Ebola and others and of course, poverty. So the need of the hour is to remove poverty.
“The Loomba Foundation has educated over 10,000 children of poor widows across 29 states in India,” he added.
When asked how to tackle the issue, Lord Loomba, speaking to Asian Voice, said, “If they work, earn money and are independent, they won’t become victims of other people. Nobody will be able to exploit them. Poverty is the main culprit of the problem. Removing poverty is the key to tackling the issue.”
