NEW DELHI (TrustLaw) - A university in southern India has reserved a number of places, with discounted fees, for women who have been victims of sex crimes or human trafficking in the first policy of its kind in the country, the Times of India has reported.
Mysore University, located in India's Karnataka state, has introduced a special quota where it reserves two places in undergraduate and one in postgraduate courses for students who have been sexually harassed or trafficked. The students also only pay half the tuition fees.
"This is the university's effort to encourage victims of various circumstances to purse education and bring them to the mainstream," Mysore University Registrar P.S. Naik was quoted as saying.
There are currently about 18 students benefiting from the initiative and are enrolled in courses such as commerce and social welfare. The students are pooled from a local charity Odanadi Seva Samsthe which works to rehabilitate girls and women rescued from trafficking.
India's girls and women face a barrage of threats, including sex crimes such as rape, trafficking for sexual and domestic slavery, harassment and stalking.
Yet the majority of crimes are not reported, say activists, largely due to stigma associated with such crimes where conservative patriarchal attitudes often place the blame on the victim rather than on the perpetrator and can often to lead to victim and her family's ostracism within a community.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
