Gender Justice, Criminal Law, and Curricular Reforms Conference

Media coverage: Harvard to Launch Gender Justice Bid, Times of India

Read Jacqueline Bhabha’s interview with the Harvard Gazette on the death penalty sentences for the four men in the Delhi gang rape case.

FXB Director of Research Jacqueline Bhabha with Diane Rosenfeld, Director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, and Gopal Subramaniam, former Solicitor General and member of the JS Verma Committee.
FXB Director of Research Jacqueline Bhabha with Diane Rosenfeld, Director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, and Gopal Subramaniam, former Solicitor General and member of the JS Verma Committee.

(July 12-13, 2013) – The Harvard Gender Violence Project, in conjunction with Viswanathan & Co., Advocates, hosted the Gender Justice, Criminal Law, and Curricular Reforms Conference in Delhi, a groundbreaking convening of key stakeholders to examine issues related to sexual assault and gender violence in India and South Asia.

The Harvard Gender Violence Project was created to assess gender-based violence prevention and intervention in the aftermath of the December 2012 Delhi gang rape that set off protests across the country and drew widespread international condemnation. The project is a collaboration between Harvard’s South Asia Institute, the Harvard Law School, the FXB Center, and experts in the region.

Members of the JS Verma Committee, the judicial body that investigated the Delhi rape and issued recommendations for forceful corrective action at the state and governmental levels, participated in the conference, including retired Justice Leila Seth and former Solicitor General Gopal Subramanian.

Additional panelists included, among others, Jacqueline Bhabha, FXB Director of Research and Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights; Colin Gonsalves, the Founder of Human Rights Law Network (HRLN), India’s leading public interest law group; Dr. Jaya, Senior Program Officer, Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health at United Nations Population Fund’s Delhi office; Naina Kapur, who framed and acted as lead instructing counsel before the Supreme Court of India in the landmark 1997 case Vishaka v State of Rajasthan, which led to the creation of binding laws regarding sexual harassment in the workplace; and Ved Marwah, the former Governor of Manipur and Jharkhand with additional charge of Mizoram and Bihar.

For a full list of panelists, the conference agenda, and more information, please visit the South Asia Institute conference page.