G20 Presidency urged to champion elimination of caste discrimination globally

Toronto — As South Africa hosted the historic G20 Summit in Johannesburg on 22–23 November 2025 — the first G20 gathering ever held on African soil — global civil society groups have called on the Presidency to integrate caste- and descent-based discrimination into the Summit’s core agenda on inequality and justice.

In a detailed memorandum addressed to the Government of South Africa, Sahayatra International Alliance, together with the leadership of the Global Conference for a Caste-Free World 2025, urged President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration to use its influential presidency to highlight one of the world’s most entrenched but often overlooked human-rights challenges: caste-based discrimination affecting more than 260 million people globally.

The memorandum, signed by Dr. Drona Prakash Rasali, Chair of the Toronto Global Conference, and Santosh Bishwkarma, President of Sahayatra International Alliance, praises South Africa’s moral authority as a nation that has confronted racial apartheid and continues to champion human dignity, equality, and structural justice. The 2025 G20 theme — “Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability” — offers an ideal platform to integrate caste injustice within the broader global inequality debate, they said.

The memorandum positions South Africa as uniquely placed to elevate this issue, recalling the landmark 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban. That conference was the first major international forum to explicitly recognize descent-based discrimination, including caste, as a structural human-rights violation comparable to racism.

According to the memo, the Durban Declaration established a “race-plus” framework that acknowledged how caste hierarchies function as inherited systems of exclusion embedded in education, economic life, and social structures. “The G20 Summit provides a rare opportunity to revive this legacy and connect Durban’s vision to global economic governance, urging leaders to confront “inherited hierarchies that perpetuate exclusion,” Dr Rasali and Mr Bishwkarma said, in their memo.

Momentum From the Toronto Declaration 2025

The call to action is further reinforced by the Toronto Declaration 2025, adopted during the Global Conference for a Caste-Free World held in May 2025. The Declaration outlines a comprehensive strategy for dismantling caste discrimination worldwide.

Key recommendations highlighted in the memorandum include:

• legal recognition of caste discrimination on par with racial discrimination;

• constitutional and legislative reforms to include caste as a protected category;

• education reforms introducing anti-caste curricula and public awareness programmes;

• development of a Global Caste Discrimination Index;

• reparative justice measures involving community empowerment and political representation;

• partnership with global platforms, especially the G20, to advance caste justice.

The memorandum stresses that these recommendations align tightly with South Africa’s G20 priorities on diversity, inclusion, and equitable development.

Referring to the stark findings of the G20 Global Inequality Report, prepared under the leadership of Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Dr Rasali and Mr Bishwkarma said that the report warns of an emerging “inequality emergency”, noting that:

• the richest 1 percent captured 41 percent of all new wealth generated between 2000 and 2024,

• the bottom 50 percent gained only 1 percent, and

• 83 percent of countries, representing 90 percent of the world’s population, now experience high inequality levels.

The report also projects that USD 70 trillion in inherited wealth will shift hands in the next decade, a trend the memo notes “poses a structural threat to social mobility, equality of opportunity, and justice”.

The Stiglitz Committee’s recommendations — including reforms to international tax rules, curbs on corporate concentration, and substantial investment in public services — are described as essential foundations for addressing caste-based inequities. The Committee’s proposal for an International Panel on Inequality, modeled after the IPCC, is especially endorsed as a mechanism for monitoring caste-based inequality alongside economic inequality.

A Caste-Justice Imperative for the G20

The memorandum states that the G20’s overarching theme can only be fulfilled if caste-based discrimination — one of the oldest surviving systems of inherited inequality — is addressed squarely.

It argues:

• Solidarity cannot be achieved while millions remain segregated by birth;

• Equality requires dismantling hierarchical systems that deny opportunity based on ancestry;

• Sustainability is incomplete without social justice and full participation of oppressed communities.

The authors also emphasize the intersectional nature of caste, which interacts with inequality in income, wealth, education, political representation, and gender.

Given the presence of caste-affected populations across G20 member states and global diaspora communities, the memorandum says the G20 has both a responsibility and an opportunity to set new international standards, particularly in anti-discrimination law, data collection, and accountability.

A Historic Opportunity

The memorandum concludes by describing Johannesburg as a symbol of resilience and renewal. It argues that the 2025 G20 Summit offers a historic moment to link Durban’s legacy, Toronto’s global vision, and the Stiglitz Committee’s inequality framework into a decisive shift in global governance.

“The South African Presidency,” Dr Rasali and Mr Bishwkarma wrote, “could catalyze a historic turning point: embedding caste justice within global economic governance.”