From Tomorrow, A Fantastic New Law Will Help India's Acid Attack Survivors

The Indian government, in an outwardly positive yet characteristically confusing move has announced that new legislation is in motion that defines victims of acid attacks as ‘disabled’ - granting them access to government education and jobs through the disability quota under reservation. This information was announced by Meneka Gandhi, India’s Minister for Women’s Development.

While acid attacks are not technically disabilities as the term usually comes to mean, the rising numbers of victims with each year is alarming, and it is about time legislation takes this into account. The Guardian reported that “Indian government statistics show there were 249 attacks recorded in 2015, a rise of 11% on the previous year. Under-reporting means the figures disguise the true scale of the problem, according to the Human Rights Law Network – an India-based non-profit legal aid organisation – which estimates there at least 1,000 cases per year.” Victims of acid attacks suffer from far more than scarring - often times there is severe impairment of vision if not complete blindness, breathing problems and even physical disfigurement. The severity of these cases could in fact be, for arguments sake, counted as disabilities.

While we do believe that the best way to deal with this situation is to prevent access to chemicals that can cause damage of this nature, we will take any move that leads towards the right direction. For the most part, these measures have been taken but attackers have managed to cause large damage using home cleaning supplies. When lives are at stake, something really is better than nothing. The law goes into effect Friday, and we hope that this remains to be the first step in a much larger plan for the rehabilitation of victims of acid attacks.