India has questioned the credibility of a UN panel that prepared a report on discrimination against women, claiming falsely that women community health workers in India do not receive social security benefits.
BJP MP Poonamben Maadam said on Friday that the approach of the working group which prepared the report “is misleading, to say the least, but more gravely, it questions the credibility and veracity of the information and recommendations” contained within it.
She made the remarks at the Interactive Dialogue on Advancement of Women held by the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social, humanitarian, and cultural issues.
The committee reviewed the report of the UN’s Working Group on Discrimination Against Women and Girls, which singled out India, claiming the nation’s women community health workers do not receive social security benefits.
“The Accredited Social Health Activist or ASHA programme is a cornerstone of India's community health system and is critical to taking basic health care facilities to every village in India,” she said.
Maadam emphasised that ASHA workers receive performance-based pay in addition to social security benefits.
“The Prime Minister's pension scheme provides a monthly pension to ASHAs after the age of 60,” she pointed out.
They also receive annual health coverage of Rs 500,000 and life insurance coverage of Rs 200,000 under the Prime Minister's insurance schemes, she added.
“I wish the working group had undertaken a proper study before singling out India in the report,” Maadam said.
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Claudia Flores, a Yale University law professor who chairs the working group that produced the report, ignored Maadam’s criticism when responding to observations by participants in the dialogue.
Reem Alsalem, the UN’s special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, also made an inaccurate claim about India while speaking towards the end of the session on surrogacy.
While cautioning about problems of exploitation with surrogacy, she claimed that while in Britain “altruistic surrogacy is legal, still British nationals are amongst the most frequent foreign clients in India.”
However, India banned commercial surrogacy and its use by foreigners under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act of 2021.
India now permits the use of altruistic, or non-commercial, surrogacy only by married Indian couples under stringent conditions.
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