KATHMANDU, APRIL 27
The government is mulling the establishment of new offices as service centres across the local government units in a bid to deal with issues related to women, children, and senior citizens more effectively.
Speaking at a programme organised today by Saathi, an NGO that has been working to eliminate sexual and gender-based violence, Nepali Congress leader and women rights activist Arzu Rana Deuba said the offices dealing with issues of violence against women and girls were removed following the implementation of federalism without making alternative provisions.
She opined that lack of offices with solid mandate to work for prevention of violence against women and girls at the local government units had posed obstacle in ensuring access to justice for violence survivors and hindered progress in terms of gender equality. She also informed that the government was trying to create Women, Children and Senior Citizen Centres in all 753 local government units through its upcoming budget so as to better deal with the issues of gender-based violence and to make necessary interventions regarding the matter.
Addressing the programme organised to review the implementation status of anti-domestic violence law, Deuba further underscored the need to foster behavioural changes in men and ensure their engagement in gender equality, women's empowerment and violence prevention.
Citing that girls' suicide rate had doubled during the COVID restrictions, she warned that it was indicative of harrowing situation of incest and sexual violence as well as domestic violence.
CEDAW Committee member Bandana Rana shared how all the civil society organisations had worked together in drafting and putting pressure on the government to adopt anti-domestic violence bill in the Parliament.
She said media advocacy was strategically being used to advocate the criminalisation of domestic violence in the country.
Advocate Sabin Shrestha listed the challenges of implementation of anti-domestic violence law enacted in 2009. He said the role being played by police in reconciling cases of domestic violence had led to such crimes remaining uninvestigated. He also stressed the need to ensure the provision of psychosocial counselling as well as to adopt minatory and punitive measures for both men and women in the case of domestic violence.
Saathi's founding president Madhuri Singh recalled that the family, society and system were against them when they started advocating against domestic violence in Nepal. "Back then, the society firmly believed that suffering was the fate of women and to inflict suffering on them was the right of men," she shared.
Joint-secretary at the Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizen Laxmi Basnet informed that domestic violence prevention fund had been set up in some local government units.
Saathi's Chairperson Sajani Amatya highlighted the need of synergy building among stakeholders to better respond to the diverse needs of women and girls who were being subjected to banishment from their homes and stigmatisation in their community owing to violence.
A version of this article appears in the print on April 28, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
