Vrinda Grover is a lawyer, researcher, and human rights and women's rights activist based in New Delhi, India. As a lawyer, she has appeared in prominent human rights cases and represented women and child survivors of domestic and sexual violence; victims and survivors of communal massacre, extrajudicial killings and custodial torture; sexual minorities; trade unions; and political activists. [1]
Focused on the impunity of the state in relation to human rights violations, her research and writing inquires into the role of law in the subordination of women; the failure of the criminal justice system during communal and targeted violence; the effect of 'security' laws on human rights; rights of undocumented workers; challenges confronting internally displaced persons; and examines impunity for enforced disappearances and torture in conflict situations. [1] Time magazine identified her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2013. [2]
Grover graduated from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, where she was a student in History. She obtained her degree in law from Delhi University and a Masters in Law from New York University. [3]
Grover has appeared for the victims in prominent cases such as the Soni Sori rape-torture case, 1984 anti-Sikh riots, 1987 Hashimpura police killings, 2004 Ishrat Jahan case, [4] and the 2008 anti-Christian riots in Kandhamal. [5] She contributed to the drafting of the 2013 Criminal Law Amendment to the law against sexual assault; the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, and the Prevention of Torture Bill, 2010, a law for protection from Communal and Targeted Violence.
In 2001 Parliament Attack case, she served as counsel for S.A.R. Geelani, one of the main accused. [6] In the aftermath of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar Massacre, she represented seven of the gangrape survivors of communal violence. [7]
She worked as the executive director of Multiple Action Research Group (MARG). [8] She was a Research Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, Delhi. She serves as a trustee at the Centre for Social Justice and board member for Green Peace. [9] She has actively engaged with UN human rights mechanisms including the Universal Periodic Review and UN Special Rapporteurs, UN Women India Civil Society Advisory Group; is a bureau member of South Asians for Human Rights (SAHR); a founder member of the Working Group on Human Rights in India and the UN (WGHR). She is also on the global board of The Fund for Global Human Rights. She has associated with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists on responses to torture, arbitrary detention, sexual violence and extra- judicial killings.
In the 1980s, when Grover was a student at St Stephen's College, a 'tradition' existed of rating the female student population according to their physical attributes; the final calibration was summed up into a top 10 'chick chart' and pinned on the official noticeboard. A group of students, including her, decided to protest this. They were told they were breaking 'family tradition' and even threatened with expulsion. But they refused to back down. Ultimately, the institution banned the practice. [10]
She, along with a group of feminist lawyers and activists demanded that documentary India's Daughter be put on hold till the legal process was complete. However, this group of activists clarified that they did not endorse the Indian Government's move to ban the film. [6] She has been vocal in speaking out against the death penalty in India. [7] She spoke out against the appointment of Rajendra Kumar Pachauri as executive vice-chairman of TERI University, who was accused of sexually harassing a research scholar. [11] Pachauri, in turn, filed a civil suit against Vrinda Grover for pursuing the allegations of sexual harassment against him. [12]
She speaks critically of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, [13] the two finger test, [14] and other issues at various events and on news channels.
Grover is on record as opposing rape laws in India being gender neutral, and denying that men can be raped. In 2012, she stated “Why should rape laws be gender neutral? There are no instances of women raping men.” [15] In reality, there are numerous cases of female on male rape, like the Manacled_Mormon_case and the rape of James Landrith.
Some victims of rape or other sexual violence incidents are male. It is estimated that approximately one in six men experienced sexual abuse during childhood. Historically, rape was thought to be, and defined as, a crime committed solely against females. This belief is still held in some parts of the world, but rape of males is now commonly criminalized and has been subject to more discussion than in the past.
Sexual violence is any harmful or unwanted sexual act—or attempt to obtain a sexual act through violence or coercion—or an act directed against a person's sexuality without their consent, by any individual regardless of their relationship to the victim. This includes forced engagement in sexual acts, attempted or completed, and may be physical, psychological, or verbal. It occurs in times of peace and armed conflict situations, is widespread, and is considered to be one of the most traumatic, pervasive, and most common human rights violations.
Human rights in India is an issue complicated by the country's large size and population as well as its diverse culture, despite its status as the world's largest sovereign, secular, socialist democratic republic. The Constitution of India provides for fundamental rights, which include freedom of religion. Clauses also provide for freedom of speech, as well as separation of executive and judiciary and freedom of movement within the country and abroad. The country also has an independent judiciary as well as bodies to look into issues of human rights.
Indira Jaising is an Indian lawyer and activist. Jaising also runs Lawyers' Collective, a non-governmental organization (NGO), the license of which was permanently cancelled by the Home Ministry for alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act in 2019. The Bombay High Court later passed an order to de-freeze NGO's domestic accounts. The case is ongoing in the Supreme Court of India.
Bolivia's constitution and laws technically guarantee a wide range of human rights, but in practice these rights very often fail to be respected and enforced. “The result of perpetual rights violations by the Bolivian government against its people,” according to the Foundation for Sustainable Development, “has fueled a palpable sense of desperation and anger throughout the country.”
The Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) is an Indian non-profit organisation founded in 1989 to protect the fundamental human rights and civil liberties of the most marginalised and vulnerable members of society. Working on the intersection of law, advocacy, policy, and education, HRLN is organised as a collective of lawyers and social activists dedicated to providing legal assistance to vulnerable and disadvantaged individuals, advocating for the implementation of structures to safeguard human rights and fight systemic oppression, and educating the public on their rights and remedies. HRLN provides pro bono legal services to marginalised groups, conducts investigations into human rights violations, and undertakes high-stakes impact litigation in service of the public interest. The organisation operates across the spectrum of public interest law, focusing specifically on children’s rights, rights of disabled persons, rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, prisoners' rights, refugee rights, rights of indigenous people, workers' rights, rights of minorities, and the protection of victims of sexual violence or trafficking.
Corrective rape, also called curative rape or homophobic rape, is a hate crime in which somebody is raped because of their perceived sexual orientation. The common intended consequence of the rape, as claimed by the perpetrator, is to turn the person heterosexual.
Angana P. Chatterji is an Indian anthropologist, activist, and feminist historian, whose research is closely related to her advocacy work and focuses mainly on India. She co-founded the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir and was a co-convener from April 2008 to December 2012.
Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir range from mass killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and sexual abuse to political repression and suppression of freedom of speech. The Indian Army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and Border Security Personnel (BSF) have been accused of committing severe human rights abuses against Kashmiri civilians. According to Seema Kazi, militant groups have also been held responsible for similar crimes, but the vast majority of abuses have been perpetrated by the armed forces of the Indian government.
Rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India. According to the 2021 annual report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 31,677 rape cases were registered across the country, or an average of 86 cases daily, a rise from 2020 with 28,046 cases, while in 2019, 32,033 cases were registered. Of the total 31,677 rape cases, 28,147 of the rapes were committed by persons known to the victim. The share of victims who were minors or below 18 – the legal age of consent – stood at 10%.
Violence against women in Guatemala reached severe levels during the long-running Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996), and the continuing impact of that conflict has contributed to the present high levels of violence against women in that nation. During the armed conflict, rape was used as a weapon of war.
Prosecution of gender-targeted crimes is the legal proceedings to prosecute crimes such as rape and domestic violence. The earliest documented prosecution of gender-based/targeted crimes is from 1474 when Sir Peter von Hagenbach was convicted for rapes committed by his troops. However, the trial was only successful in indicting Sir von Hagenbach with the charge of rape because the war in which the rapes occurred was "undeclared" and thus the rapes were considered illegal only because of this. Gender-targeted crimes continued to be prosecuted, but it was not until after World War II when an international criminal tribunal – the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – were officers charged for being responsible of the gender-targeted crimes and other crimes against humanity. Despite the various rape charges, the Charter of the Tokyo Tribunal did not make references to rape, and rape was considered as subordinate to other war crimes. This is also the situation for other tribunals that followed, but with the establishments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), there was more attention to the prosecution of gender-targeted crimes with each of the statutes explicitly referring to rape and other forms of gender-targeted violence.
Nusreta Sivac is a Bosnian activist for victims of rape and other war crimes and a former judge. During the Bosnian War she was an inmate at the Bosnian Serb-run Omarska camp in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina where she and other women at the camp were raped, beaten, and tortured. After the camp's closure in August 1992 due to press coverage, she became an activist for victims of rape and is credited with helping in the recognition of wartime rape as a war crime under international law. She is a member of the Women's Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The term international framework of sexual violence refers to the collection of international legal instruments – such as treaties, conventions, protocols, case law, declarations, resolutions and recommendations – developed in the 20th and 21st century to address the problem of sexual violence. The framework seeks to establish and recognise the right all human beings to not experience sexual violence, to prevent sexual violence from being committed wherever possible, to punish perpetrators of sexual violence, and to provide care for victims of sexual violence. The standards set by this framework are intended to be adopted and implemented by governments around the world in order to protect their citizens against sexual violence.
Justice for Iran (JFI) is a London-based non-governmental human rights organization. The stated objective of the organization is to "address and eradicate the practice of human rights abuses and impunity that empowers officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran to perpetrate widespread human rights violations against Iranian citizens, and to hold them accountable for their actions."
Karuna Nundy is an Indian lawyer and a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of India. A dual-qualified lawyer in India and New York, she was designated Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court of India in 2024. Some of her notable cases include enforcing blockchain regulations against major telecom companies on behalf of Paytm. She also served as one of the counsels in a case concerning restrictions on online speech, including issues related to platform liability and website blocking. contributing to legal action that secured damages for a disability rights activist against SpiceJet. She has also been involved in efforts to bring safe water to the victims of the Bhopal gas disaster.
The Kashmir conflict has been beset by large scale usage of sexual violence by multiple belligerents since its inception.
Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka has occurred repeatedly during the island's long ethnic conflict. The first instances of rape of Tamil women by Sinhalese mobs were documented during the 1958 anti-Tamil pogrom. This continued in the 1960s with the deployment of the Sri Lankan Army in Jaffna, who were reported to have molested and occasionally raped Tamil women.
Shalu Nigam is an Indian lawyer, feminist legal scholar, and author. She was the petitioner in the landmark case Shalu Nigam v. Regional Passport Officer, decided on 17 May 2016, which held that passports can be issued without requiring the name of the father.
Sexual violence in the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been committed by Armed Forces of Russia, including the use of mass rape as a weapon of war. According to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the victims of sexual assault by Russian soldiers ranged from 4 years old to over 80 years old.