-Scroll.in It is important that forest policies are formulated through a gender-sensitive lens and that women are included in the conversation. A few weeks ago, when Google India marked the 45th anniversary of the Chipko movement with a doodle, it was a refreshing flashback to forest communities sacrificing their lives to protect trees from being felled for timber use. One of the first such recorded community protests was at Khejarli village in...

-The Hindu The focus must be on enhancing rape conviction rates and taking steps to rehabilitate and empower survivors Amid belligerent demands for capital punishment for rapists, on Sunday the President signed an ordinance that introduces the death penalty for those convicted of raping girls below the age of 12. But this clamour for introducing the most stringent punishment has conveniently sidestepped the more cogent criticism of the systemic failures in addressing...

-The Indian Express The poor conviction rate in cases of child rape goes to show that death penalty - which comes at the sentencing stage, post-convictions — will mean little to a vast majority of the victims. Two telling sets of figures from the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) put a question mark on the effectiveness of death as a deterrence for child rape. In 2016, of the 64,138 child rape...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A group of 637 academics from India and abroad have come out in solidarity with the 49 retired civil servants who recently expressed their outrage at the Kathua and Unnao rape incidents blaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi for belatedly speaking up on the issue and claiming his dispensation wasn’t doing enough to stop the “pattern of repeated targeted attacks on minority religious communities, Dalits, tribals...

-The Hindu Ordinance on rape a knee-jerk reaction, says activists Death penalty for rape of girls upto 12 years will deter the victim and their families from reporting such crimes instead of acting as a deterrent for criminals, said activists who slammed the government for its “knee-jerk reaction” in bringing an ordinance on the issue. “In cases of child sexual assaults we know that most of these crimes are committed by people...