South Asia Citizens Web

Members of Samaj Parivartan Shakti Sanghathan (SPSS) / MGNREGA Watch, a collective of about 10,000 rural workers of Muzaffarpur, Bihar have been facing continuous harassment at the hands of the local administration because of their fight against corruption in government programmes. So far the harassment has taken the form of threats, violence, false FIRs and under-payment of NREGA wages.

The CNDP hereby joins the various streams of global peace movements striving for complete abolition of nuclear weapons from the face of the planet in heartily welcoming the adoption of the ’Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’ by the UN with 122 nations voting for the motion and one (Netherlands, a NATO member) voting against and another one (Singapore) abstaining.

A treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons was adopted by an overwhelming vote and met with loud cheers this week at the United Nations. More than 70 years in the making, the treaty offers widely agreed principles, commitments, and mechanisms for ending the nuclear weapons age. Getting here was not easy, and achieving nuclear disarmament will still be a long struggle. But the new treaty creates space and means for a creative new disarmament politics based on law and ethics and democracy that go beyond well-trodden debates on the dangers and costs of nuclear weapons and traditional practices of arms control based on step-by-step reductions that limit only the size of arsenals.

Born in Lahore in 1948, Lala Rukh was for decades an active member of the Women’s Action Forum (WAF) — one of South Asia’s most significant platforms for women’s rights.