KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 8

Reproductive health rights activists have said the government needs to have more legal, institutional, financial, and procedural arrangements in place to ensure women and sexual and gender minorities' reproductive health rights.

Speaking at a programme organised by Ipas Nepal and Forum for Women, Law and Development on gender violence here today, Policy and Governance Adviser of Ipas Nepal Madhavi Shakya Bajracharya said many people, including elected representatives were aware of one stop crisis management centre, a crucial tool to address gender-based violence.

Advocate Nabin Shrestha said gender-based violence covered all violence against women and children, including sexual and gender minority, but many people had misconception that only domestic violence was gender-based violence and that was main obstacle in addressing gender-based violence.

Advocate Shrestha said women had the right to seek abortion as part of their reproductive health right, but society still viewed abortion as a great sin.

'Women are indicted and put into jail for seeking abortion,' he said, and added that one woman who had miscarriage was indicted and put in jail.

OCMC Focal Person at Patan Hospital Pratiksha Nepal said that setting up OCMC at hospitals was a good idea as victims of violence felt secure in seeking treatment and other remedial measures from the centre. 'If such mechanisms are set up in the units of Nepal Police or local levels, women victims who are tormented by their male family members can muster courage to go and lodge complaints against them,' she argued.

Under-secretary at the Ministry of Health and Population Roshani Devi Karki said women and members of sexual and gender minority suffer gender-based violence at their homes as well due to ill practices and patriarchy. 'If a woman cannot protect her pregnancy and if she is forced by her husband to abort her foetus, that too is a gender-based violence,' she argued.

Karki said the OCMC was beneficial for all people, including women, sexual and gender minority and men. She said 27 members of sexual and gender minority sought service from OCMC in the last fiscal.

Deputy Superintendent of Police Chhiring Lama said police were trying their best to assist victims of sexual and gender-based violence. She said discriminatory behaviour and practices against members of sexual and gender minorities were also a form of gender-based violence and the police would take action against perpetrators of such violence.

Some participants said that OCMC should also take care of rape victims who give birth to children but do not want to keep the babies with them.

Transwoman Rubina Tamang said members of sexual and gender minority group were being forced to take off their clothes in front of doctors in government hospital to obtain their citizenship with their gender minority and that too was a gender-based violence.

Participants also said that women faced gender-based violence as they were asked by their job interviewer to commit they would not be pregnant for three or five years so that they could devote all their time to their offices.

They also said that sex-selective abortion was still practised across the country.

A version of this article appears in the print on December 9, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.