The Caste System - UN to act  Nation magazine reported (26 Oct 2009) that the UN Human Rights Council is set to address the evils of caste at last. Navi Pillay, South African judge, 68 and of India descent, became the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2008. She is spearheading a campaign to address the brutalisation of more than 250 million people, nearly all Indians, through caste discrimination. She says: “It's time to move on this issue.": No previous commissioner has dared to openly take on this pernicious system. The government of India has argued at UN conferences that existing international conventions against human rights abuses do not apply to caste. So caste did not figure in the Conference on Racism in Durban in 2001 and a similar one earlier this year. The campaign is gathering momentum among a wide range of global NGOs, religious groups and a few governments working from a draft document on eliminating discrimination in work based on caste. She related the story about a group of women who came to her in Geneva recently with a brick from a latrine they had torn down in protest against being forced to carry away human excrement in their bare hands. There were still tens of thousands of such latrines in the country, and the filthy, soul-destroying work continues. Discrimination by caste is unconstitutional in India but it continues in practice. Nepal in September publicly joined the campaign against caste discrimination as has Sweden. Nepal, a majority Hindu nation like India, is home to 4.5 million Dalits, Women of lowly birth are also sometimes accused of witchcraft. Recently in India's Jharkhand state, the BBC reported that village women, apparently Muslims were labeled witches by accusers, beaten, stripped naked and forced to eat excrement, Dalits, regarded widely as unclean or polluted, can face death at the hands of upper caste Hindus for taking water from a forbidden well or entering a Brahmin temple. There have been lynchings for intermarriage with higher castes. In some places, particularly in north India, Dalits vote at segregated polling stations. At roadside cafes they often get separate utensils, if served at all. Pillay recalls how Indians in South Africa, suppressed black majority under apartheid. Caste and new forms of slavery are not unrelated, she argued in a recent op-ed article, where she wrote that landlessness, debt bondage and labor bondage, involving millions of young children, are the lot of the lowest castes. "As high commissioner I promised to be evenhanded and raise all issues affecting all human beings," Pillay said. "I can't flow with the political concerns of anyone who doesn't want one or another issue addressed because it embarrasses them or because they are dealing with it in their own way."