Human Development and Violence Against Women

Abstract Human development is defined as the process of enlarging people’s freedoms and opportunities and improving their well beings. Human rights are the sign and symbol of human development and peace. The violation of the rights of women is a human rights violation of her body and her right as a person. Violence is an action or policy or an attitude that causes bodily or mental injury and debars or dehumanizes a person. In fact, women’s subordination throughout the world should be recognized as a human rights violation and with due account to those structures of oppression that intersect and compound such subordination. Full realization of women’s human rights requires the elimination of all forms of discrimination and achievements of equality for all women. It is persisted in different forms in times of peace as well as in conflict. Violence against women covered all forms of violence i.e, physical, mental and emotional. In such conditions, all the basic rights which are sanctioned/ guaranteed by the constitution and the laws of the country are violated. Provisions of the UN Charter, covenants etc are also meaningless for them. Gender stereotyping and violence at the domestic and social levels are some of the ongoing manifestation. The main causes of gender inequality are related to social and economic structure, which is based on informal and formal norms and practices. All the provisions of human development are meaningless for them. This small paper is an attempt to highlight that there is no meaning of human development in India, in a true sense because of the violation of the basic rights of the women, who constitute nearly 50% of the total populatio