Kathmandu, May 2

Media monitoring of 15 national dailies including The Himalayan Times, conducted by Sancharika Samuha Nepal (SAS) from March 14 to April 12, 2016 has shown that 27 girls and women were raped in a month.

It said that 13 of the rape victims were aged between 10 and 15.

Besides Sports and Entertainment news other contents were monitored by the SAS. The cases of Violence Against Women were segregated into 13 types: rape, sexual harassment/torture, domestic violence, dowry-related violence, trafficking in persons, murder, polygamy, witchcraft accusation, traditional and religious, economic, health and political rights violation and others.

SAS said that these newspapers had 51 coverages of 10 incidents of murder of women and girls. Among them most of the victims were of the age group 20 to 40.

Likewise, the newspapers had 14 coverages of sexual harassment with four cases, 51 coverages of human trafficking, 81 coverages of economic rights violation with two cases, 74 coverages of traditional and religious violence, 57 coverages of political rights violation, 19 coverages of domestic violence with seven cases, 56 coverage of health rights violation with one case, three coverages of witchcraft accusation with one case, three coverages of polygamy, three coverages of dowry related violence and 51 coverages of other kinds of violation.

The trend is satisfactory in terms of placement of VAW-related news, read a press statement issued recently by SAS.

It said that news related to serious cases of VAW appeared on the front page with 51 news items. The second page has the highest number of news coverage - 86 news items. Similarly, the fifth page has 65 news coverages.

“Improvements can be seen in terms of allocating more space to VAW news.”