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She is carrying a baby of
just seven days on her lap. All of a sudden, the baby starts crying. She
attempts to breast-feed the baby. Watching her, a woman constable of the
Women Cell utters, "Poor woman! She has just given birth to a baby,
but instead of giving rest to her body, she has to wander with her old
mother weeping." So, why Samjhana has gone to the Police Women Cell?
Samjhana is just 20 years old now. She had been working as a housemaid
in a home at New Road, Kathmandu from her childhood. The married brother
of her mistress, Deepak, who was a resident of Barabise, also lived in the
same house to work in his sister's shop at New Road.
Attracted towards the youthful charm of Samjhana, Deepak used to give
several kinds of gift to her. One day, taking advantage of no one in the
home, Deepak forcefully made physical relation with Samjhana. Samjhana
threatened him to tell about this incident to everyone. Deepak promised to
Samjhana that he would marry her later. Believing him she continued to
make relations with him. In due course, she became pregnant. Knowing that,
Samjhana's mistress ousted her from the home. |
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Thus, the demand that living
free from violence is women's human rights had been raised globally.
Women's and human rights organizations when internationally raised the
voice that it's the moral duty of family, society and government to foster
the gender equality and justice in society for eliminating gender-based
violence, the UN promulgated the Declaration of the Elimination of
Violence Against Women in 1993. Most of the countries of the world,
including Nepal, have ratified this Declaration.
Considering this interpretation of the UN as a
yardstick, women and men activists globally started to dig out the types
and conditions of violence against women in their society. In Nepal also, Sathi,
an organization working in the sector of domestic violence and sexual
abuse since 1992, brought to light the types and forms of violence against
women in Nepali society for the first time. The types and forms of
violence against women identified by Sathi were as follows:
domestic violence, sexual slavery (prostitution and trafficking in women),
incest, violation of reproductive rights, rape, sexual exploitation,
gender discrimination, medical malpractice, abuse of mentally and
physically handicapped people, the harms on women by cultural customs and
rituals, abuse based on religious beliefs, marital rape, abusing women's
image in the media, abuse in the police station, female feticide,
dowry-related violence, etc.
The above types are only the titles of the acts of
violence against women. Some of the titles should further be split and
clearly depicted into several categories because the common people still
may not be informed that what topics come under the violence against
women. For instance, they may not be more aware about the violence based
on cultural customs and rituals and religious beliefs. There are many
customs and rituals in Nepali society which are practiced according to the
community and religious beliefs. The customs and rituals identified as the
practices that originate violence against women in the Sathi Report are:
deuki (the system of offering a woman to a god in which she is
expected to devote her whole life to the god), jhuma (the system of
offering a woman to the monastery practiced in a Buddhist sect), kumari
(the system of making a very young girl the virgin goddess), child
marriage, polygamy, unmatched marriage (marriage between partners of a
very large age difference), polygyny (the marriage of one man to two or
more women at a time), jari pratha (paying fine to the husband of a
woman with whom one marries), badi pratha (traditional practice of
prostitution in the Badi community), dowry system, tilak pratha
(fulfilling the demand of a groom during marriage ceremony), practice of
living isolated during menstruation and post-delivery, bonded labor,
violation of reproductive rights (e.g., demanding women to give birth to a
son), discrimination of widows, etc.
The above mentioned religious customs and rituals
considered as violence against women are also protected by the
Constitution of Nepal to some extent. On the rights related to religion,
the Constitution of Nepal states: "Every person shall have the
freedom to profess and practice his/her own religion as coming down to
him/her from perennial past having due regard to the traditional practices
[Art. 19 (1)]". In the same manner, the Constitution has given right
to every citizen and community to practice their own cultural customs and
rituals. Though the Constitution has given such rights, the laws of Nepal
have legally prohibited some customs and rituals considering them harmful
practices. For instance, deuki, child marriage, badi,
polygamy, unmatched marriage, dowry, and jari are prohibited by the
laws.
However, there still are some customs which the laws
have not been able to prohibit such as kumari and jhuma. It
is not easy to prohibit these customs because both customs are based on
the religious beliefs of the Buddhist community. Likewise, practice of
menstruation and post-delivery rituals cannot be termed violence against
women directly because these rituals are not observed by all the
communities of Nepal, and those who have adopted these rituals are also
gradually leaving them in accordance with their comfort and necessity.
There is also a dubiousness about other acts of violence against women
like sexual abuse, gender disparity, marital rape, violation of
reproductive rights, and medical malpractice etc.
A question raises here - Are the social structure, men
folk and legal system in Nepali society in such bad conditions that such
varied forms of violence against women have appeared? Sociologist Dr.
Chaitanya Mishra says, "Violence is committed against every weaker
group. Accordingly, violence is committed against women also. We have to
see the reasons behind the advent of any kind of violence, strife and
offense. In the present situation, we can only imagine a violence-free
society, but we cannot find it in reality. The main thing is that we have
to think about how to work for ameliorating the present situation."
Accepting the opinion of Dr. Mishra, we can only
imagine about a violence-free society. Similarly, we cannot deny the fact
that violence has been committed against every weaker group. The analysis
of some statistics indicates that men are suffering from violence more
than women are. For instance, the number of men victimized in the violent
suppression by any state, has been found to be far greater than that of
women. But the violence committed against men and the whole society is
beyond the limitation of this article. The second important thing is that
many of the acts of violence against women can be reduced to minimum just
by simple legal reforms, right enforcement of laws and people's awareness.
For that matter, we have to find out the types and degrees of violence
against women. Thus, several available statistics on violence against
women in Nepal are endeavored to analyze in the following section.
The Picture Shown by the Statistics
In fact, any scientific study, which could explicitly show the extent
and situation of violence against women in Nepali society, has not been
done until today. Therefore, whenever there is a need to discuss about the
situation of violence against women, the discussion is generally based on
the statistics provided by these four sectors: (1) the study of the
non-governmental organization Sathi on the evaluation of the
situation of violence against women and children executed in five
districts of Nepal in 1996; (2) the forms and data of the incidents which
are recorded in the police annually; (3) the annual number of forms and
data of the news on violence against women published in newspapers; and
(4) the Yearbook published by the INSEC, an non-governmental
organization working in the field of human rights. But in this articles,
only the statistics provided by three sectors are used: (a) the statistics
of the events registered as violence against women in the years 1996, 1997
and 1998 provided by the Central Police Women Cell of the Central Police
Office; (b) the statistics of the cases registered in the district courts
of Nepal; and (c) the incidents included in the Yearbook published
by the INSEC.
The Central Police Women Cell conducted by the Crime Investigation
Department of the Central Police Office is a separate department operated
by women police who look after the crimes and violence related to women.
This cell was established in 1995 BS. At present, the Women Cells are
conducted in 14 districts of Nepal. The statistics of three fiscal years
presented in the table below show that among the cases of violence against
women registered in the Women Cell, polygyny, trafficking in women, rape,
abortion and child marriage are most prominent. According to these
statistics, polygyny is observed as the most prevalent among the crimes
against women.
Though it seems to be decreased in the fiscal year 1997-98, it was in
the highest level in previous years. Similarly, trafficking in women seems
to be the second most prevalent crime. The registered incidents of
trafficking in women were 130 in 1996, 117 in 1997 and 147 in 1998 BS.
These data indicate that the incidents of trafficking in women are
increasing. After the incidents of trafficking, the crimes of rape are
found to be increasing. The registered incidents of abortion were 76 in
1996, 74 in 1997 and 101 in 1998. The data indicate that abortion had
increased in 1998 in comparison to the past two years. The data show that
the incident of child marriage still exists in the society, though in a
small scale. |
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