India's human rights record to come up for UN review on May 4

India's human rights record will be examined by the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Working Group on Thursday in a meeting in Geneva that will be webcast live.
"India is one of the 14 (member) states to be reviewed by the UPR Working Group during its upcoming session taking place from May 1-12 which also marks the commencement of the third UPR cycle," the UN Office in New Delhi said in a statement.
India's first and second UPR reviews took place in April 2008 and May 2012 respectively.
The documents on which the reviews are based are national report; information contained in the reports of independent human rights experts and groups known as the Special Procedures, human rights treaty bodies, and other UN entities; and information provided by other stakeholders.

The issues raised in these documents include addressing discrimination, stigmatisation and violence against Dalits (Scheduled Castes); limits on free speech and on the work of human rights defenders; attacks on religious minorities; reports of excessive use of force by security officers, including in Jammu and Kashmir.
Other issues include eliminating criminalisation of same- sex relations; and tackling harmful traditional practices such as 'honour killings'; combating violence against women, human trafficking, early and forced marriages, violence against children and child labour; ensuring business sector complied with human rights and labour standards, it said.

The delegation of India will be headed by Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi.

The three country representatives serving as rapporteurs (troika) for the review of India are Latvia, the Philippines and South Africa.
The UPR is a unique process which involves a periodic review of the human rights records of all 193 UN member states.
"Since its first meeting was held in April 2008, all 193 UN member states have been reviewed twice within the first and second UPR cycles.
"During the third UPR cycle, states are again expected to spell out steps they have taken to implement recommendations posed during their previous reviews which they committed to follow up on, as well as to highlight recent human rights developments in the country," it added.