In October 2010, the UN Human Rights Council working group on the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action held a two-week workshop which discussed, inter alia, “structural discrimination”. The report of that workshop was presented to the plenary of the Human Rights Council on 22 March 2011. Strangely, the report contained no mention of what is unquestionably the most widespread, pernicious and deeply-rooted example of structural discrimination on Earth: I refer of course to the caste system.

Dalits are the people formerly known as untouchables. The largest population of Dalits is in India, where Hinduism and the caste system are traditionally associated with the evil practice of untouchability.

Discrimination against "untouchable castes" afflicts nearly quarter of a billion people around the world. Although many people assume "untouchability" is restricted to communities with a Hindu background, this dehumanizing tradition is found in cultures as different as Japan and Nigeria. In an article this week in a leading Nigerian newspaper, Leo Igwe explained how the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is working to overcome "untouchability" in Nigeria, despite the government’s official denial of the problem.

Following intensive lobbying by the National Secular Society (NSS, an IHEU member organization), the UK’s House of Lords on 2 March 2010 adopted an amendment to the new UK Equality Bill, paving the way for caste discrimination to be made illegal. Lobbying by the NSS was given a new focus by the first international conference on untouchability hosted by the IHEU and held in London last summer.

Around 100 participants came from around the globe to IHEU’s first “World Conference on Untouchability” to share successful strategies to combat a problem they described as “the most widespread, pernicious and intractable form of discrimination on Earth.” The conference, held in London’s Conway Hall Humanist Centre on June 9 and 10, brought together politicians, academics and grassroot

I am very honoured to have been invited to speak at the World Conference on Untouchability, and to add my congratulations to the IHEU for highlighting an issue which affects 250 million people, mainly in the Indian subcontinent but as you have noted, Mr President, also in Nigeria, Yemen, Gambia, Japan, and Korea.

India became a nation under the British regime after 400 years of Mughal rule. Despite many changes during this long period, one unchanging phenomenon was caste discrimination.

Bangladesh embodies a combination of Bengali society and culture, a Hindu and Buddhist heritage and later Muslim traditions. The caste system and prejudice against “untouchables” are part of Hindu culture. Although Hindu in origin, work-based discrimination and social exclusion have been a reality in both the Hindu minority and the Muslim majority communities in Bangladesh.

If this conference had been held 300 years ago, nobody from my continent would have attended, and if ever such a person set foot on the shores of this country, he or she was on their way to the “New World”, victim of the international slave trade and of racism that accorded black people inferior and untouchable status.

The term buraku literally refers to a small, generally rural, hamlet. Burakumin are a Japanese social minority group: Japan’s “invisible race.” No physical characteristics distinguish them, unlike other main minority groups, from the majority population. There are about six million burakumin in modern Japan (about 2 per cent of the population).