Children - Terre des Hommes

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Uranium Corporation of India Limited: Wasting
Away Tribal Lands
by Moushumi Basu, Special to CorpWatch
“I have had three miscarriages and lost five children
within a week of their births,” says Hira Hansda, a
miner’s wife. “Even after 20 years of marriage we have no
children today.” Now in her late forties, she sits outside
her mud hut in Jadugoda Township, site of one of the
oldest uranium mines in India.
The Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL)
operates that mine, part of a cluster of four underground
and one open cast mines and two processing plants, in
East Singbhum district in the Eastern Indian state of
Jharkhand. The deepest plunges almost one kilometer
into the earth.
Radiation and health experts across the world charge
that toxic materials and radioactivity released by the
mining and processing operations are causing widespread
infertility, birth defects and cancers. A 2008 health
survey by the Indian chapter of International Physicians
for Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), found that
“primary sterility was found to be more common in the
people residing near uranium mining operations area.”
Jadugoda residents Kaderam Tudu and his wife, Munia,
considered themselves fortunate when their infant was
born alive, until, “I found that my baby son did not have
his right ear and instead in its place was a blob of flesh,”
says Tudu, a day worker in his late thirties. Their son, Shyam
Tudu, now eight, has a severe hearing impairment.
Even children who appear healthy are impacted. “The
youths from our villages have become victims of social
ostracism,” says Parvati Manjhi, and cannot find spouses.
“And a number of our girls have been abandoned by their
husbands, when they failed to give birth,” Now middleaged,
Parvati and her husband, Dhuwa Manjhi, who used
to work for UCIL, are childless.
Child labour used in cosmetics industry
The Sunday Times, July 19, 2009
Nicci Smith
Deep in the jungle of Jharkhand state in eastern India,
at the end of a rutted track passable only by motorbike,
a six-year-old girl named Sonia sat in the scorching
midday sun, sifting jagged stones in an open-cast mine
in the hope of earning enough money for a meal.
Sonia was halfway through her working day and she was
already exhausted and dishevelled. Her hair was matted
and her pretty flower-patterned dress spoilt by dust.
If the girls spotted enough mica, they might earn 63p
each for a 12-hour day. If they found none, they would
probably go hungry.
She barely had enough energy to glance at her eightyear-old
cousin Guri, toiling intently beside her as they
searched the stones for pieces of mica, a shiny material
whose many uses include putting the sparkle into makeup.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6719151.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1
http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/
view/2360/59/
Tribals make poor progress, stay at bottom of heap
New Delhi, January 16, 2010 : The first ever UN State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples Report (2010) finds that indigenous
people across the world suffer disproportionately high levels of poverty, illiteracy, poor health and human rights abuse.
The poverty levels of India’s tribals have remained persistent over time and are lower than those of Scheduled Castes,
on a par with those of sub-Saharan countries, says the report” “Indigenous children face obstacles in their access to
education and the teaching in schools is often irrelevant to their culture, while traditional knowledge is not respected by
educators. Large dams and other big infrastructure projects have displaced indigenous peoples across the world without
adequate compensation, the report notes, citing the example of the displacement of tribals in Manipur by the building of
hydroelectric dams and of Santhal adivasis in Jharkhand by mining companies.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Tribals-make-poor-progress-stay-at-bottom-of-heap/articleshow/5450938.cms