London: India must set up a commission to protect the well-being of its nearly 48 million widows, an Indian-origin member of Britain's House of Lords has said.
Raj Loomba, founder of the Loomba Foundation which campaigns for widows' rights around the world, was speaking at the press launch of a new 'World Widows Report', which will be officially presented at a United Nations meeting in New York on Friday.
"A commission for widows is an ideal forum to shelter and protect widows in India...it (a commission) will be a deterrent to people who abuse widows," said Loomba, the 72-year-old founder-chairman trustee of the Loomba Foundation.
Loomba said he will be presenting the new report to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who has been a supporter of the foundation's efforts to put the plight of widows on the global map.
The report highlights that discrimination against widows is not confined to India or South Asia but is "deep-rooted feature of gender discrimination all over the world, though its form and impacts differ".
It calls for the issue to be addressed with specific action in order to meet the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.
The Loomba Foundation, which led a mission for June 23 to be recognised as International Widows' Day by the UN, recently raised funds to empower 5,000 widows in Varanasi, which is home to an estimated 38,000 widows.
In the first phase, the Loomba Foundation aims to provide for sewing machines and garment making training to the widows in Uttar Pradesh.
"It is appalling to note that the largest percentage of widows of child bearing age and the largest percentage of widows under the age of 60, are in the 49 poorest or most under-developed countries identified by the United Nations as the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
"Their national priorities force them to further ignore the cause of marginalised widows, which is why the strategic focus for the Loomba Foundation will be to try and secure specific recognition for widows in the UN's post-2015 sustainable development agenda," said Lamba.
