Child Born Out Of Wedlock ‘Can’t Be Called Illegitimate’: NCW Chairperson

New Delhi: “Children born out of non-marital relationships cannot be called illegitimate,” said Rekha Sharma, a Chairperson of the National Commission for Women (NCW). Endowing dignity and equality to the children of sex workers is important, Sharma said.

Addressing a seminar, Sharma pointed out various challenges faced by sex workers and their children. She touched upon legal, health, occupational, and educational issues that kids encounter. NCW organised the discourse and discussed existing laws, access to legal services, and how it can bridge the gap in securing the right to equality. Health-related issues were also discussed in the seminar, ShethePeople reported.

The seminar also had stories of sex workers and their children, showing hardships and how they are overcoming them for a better life. Deepak Pandey, IPS, Prevention of Crime against Women and Children, Maharashtra, along with Anup Kumar Yadav, Secretary, Women and Child Development (WCD), led the forum. NGOs such as  PARI (People Against Rape in India), VAMP, Kranti, PRERNA, and Aastha Pariwar, also participated and discussed challenges faced by HIV-positive sex workers and their children.

Maharashtra Minister of Women and Child Development Mangal Prabhat Lodha also recognised the potential role of the tourism and skill development ministries in rehabilitating these women and their children for a better future.

According to the report, when Rekha Sharma said children born out of non-marital relationships cannot be called illegitimate, she is talking from a boarder perspective. Probably, she is drawing inferences from the years of oppression women faced for having a child out of wedlock. How it gets carried with their children and hamper their future and life.

The seminar called for putting a stop to stigmatising it because the word doesn’t make sense since the child is legit, and to prove the legitimacy, one doesn’t require the father’s identity. It threw up questions such as – Isn’t a mother’s existence not enough for the illegitimacy of a child? Because when someone is tagged illegitimate, right at that moment, the person is confiscated of all his rights. Society also believes a person with a father’s name cannot be a  good human and does not deserve everything that the world offers to a legit child. Given the scenario, society sees the children of sex workers in a grimport, light. They don’t consider them human at all and are tagged to have impure blood, which is inhuman and insensitive.