"It has been wonderful spending these days together. This conference has greatly contributed to enhancing our capacity and building a strong network for working together to defend the human rights and dignity of Dalit and marginalized people in South Asia"
— Participant from Nepal
Through four days of interactive workshops and sessions, leading Dalit justice actors engaged in robust conversations with each other and with international and local experts. The participants took part in interactive workshops on trial monitoring, evidence-based advocacy, and anti-bias and anti-discrimination education. The participants discussed the challenges of ineffective enforcement of hate crimes and discrimination legislation, explicit and implicit biases against the Dalit community, and criminal proceedings initiated against Dalit defenders. The participants then engaged in dynamic discussions on how to counter these challenges, developing national and regional strategies to improve Dalit rights and access to justice.
Conference sessions were led by international and local human rights experts, including Paulette Brown, the first woman of color to be ABA President and anti-racism expert; Jessica So, ABA CHR International Legal Advisor and trial monitoring expert; Oliver Windridge, international human rights attorney; Tek Tamrakar, UNDP Nepal Program Manager and Dalit human rights lawyer, and Shankar Limbu, human rights lawyer working on indigenous issues in Nepal.
The first day of the conference featured two interactive workshops. The first workshop, led by Jessica So, introduced trial monitoring and fundamental fair trial rights and how they are applicable in monitoring cases involving the criminalization of Dalit justice defenders. In this session, participants shared situations where trial monitoring may be useful and engaged in a collaborative discussion on designing a trial monitoring program to further their work advancing justice for the Dalit community. The second workshop, led by Oliver Windridge, detailed best practices in evidence gathering and using evidence to engage in multi-track advocacy with different international mechanisms and stakeholders.
The second day of the conference delved into a series of dynamic activities and discussions on anti-bias and anti-discrimination led by Paulette Brown. Participants discussed the impacts of implicit and explicit bias, how to identify different types of biases, and strategies for communicating the importance of discussing bias to various audiences. During these sessions, participants shared their personal and professional experiences of bias and how micro-inequities have impacted members of Dalit communities. Participants also explored strategies on how to facilitate conversations with others on the impacts of biases against Dalit communities.
The third and fourth days of the conference drew upon the sessions of the prior two days and delved deeper into strategies and action plans for addressing anti-discrimination and anti-bias and building effective networks to implement these strategies both nationally and regionally. Sessions on days three and four included discussions on strategies to engage with the private sector on advancing Dalit rights; strategies to create an effective network of Dalit rights advocates across South Asia; strategies to increase sensitivity and anti-bias training among justice sector actors; and small group exercises to create action plans for each country represented.
