NE seminar recommends strengthening SCWs

Itanagar, June 11: The two-day regional seminar on 'Land and Resources Rights of Indigenous Women in North East' held here recently have drafted recommendations to be discussed in the state commission for women in North East India on the role of State Commission for Women(SCW).

The recommendations included strengthening capacity of SCW members and exposing them to various alternatives structure and responsibilities due to unique situation and challenged across the region including Sikkim.

It recommended that women commissions play a role in defining gender guidelines, gendered codification of customary practices to study efforts of other states and the advantages and disadvantages of codification of customary laws, gender sensitisation of community decision makers, need for inclusion of women in tribal councils, publicisation cases in which decisions were taken to encourage them as precedence and similarly publish unjust cases by being careful in camouflaging identity, facilitate public debate on such cases and take stand as women's commission.

The seminar also recommended fair and timely panchayat elections and activate 'mahila sabha' for women's representation in governance.

Among others, the recommendations also included promoting women's control within the community over productive resources like water, forests, seeds to maintain food sovereignty, regulate market-assisted land reforms as it disposses the small farmers of the land, support low external input agriculture free of pesticide and genetically modified seeds and ensure gender equality in tenure and inheritance laws.

The seminar was organized by the Arunachal Pradesh State Commission for Women(APSCW) in collaboration with Consult for Women and Land Rights (CWLR) and sponsored by National Commission for Women (NCW).

UNI