UN Minorities Forum 2025 Intervention

Dr Asang Wankhede’s engagement with the UN Minorities Forum at Palais des Nations, UN Office, Geneva

Here is the full speech of my intervention at the UN Minorities Forum 2025, representing Ambedkar International Mission, Australia

Thank you, Madam Chair

Hon’ble chair and excellencies,

I rise today to make an intervention on the rights of the Communities Discriminated against based on Caste and Descent in the diaspora. With over 280 million individuals globally who belong to these communities, including the Dalits, the Roma, Hratin and Quilombola, they continue to face discrimination, social stratification on the discriminatory principle of purity-pollution.

Hon’ble Chair, caste and descent-based discrimination is a lived reality of millions around the globe and not only in the geographical locations of origin of these practices. As new emerging evidence-based empirical studies have indicated, such discrimination migrates with the diaspora population to foreign lands. The Australian Human Rights Commission recognised caste discrimination as a form of intersectional racial discrimination in its National Anti-Racism Framework 2024. This development was an outcome of grassroots minorities’ engagement and research through the empirical evidence-based report, “Caste in Australia: A Phenomenology of Casteism” which documented evidence of casteism in Australia as systemic and pervasive in all aspects of life.

With some member states continuing to deny the existence of caste and descent discrimination in diaspora globally, we, the caste oppressed community members from Australia and around the world, have a question for the panel: Could you please share best practices and strategies for enabling evidence-based, empirical reporting on caste and descent discrimination to inform future policy and legal reforms?

I, thank you.