Ending violence against women must take priority
The government and non-state actors like NGOs have been trying to combat the scourge of violence against women in Bangladesh for decades but such crimes continue to cast a shadow on our development. Despite being armed with various laws, the fight against harassment and various acts of violence that include rape, murder and domestic abuse remains an uphill struggle. According to a report recently published by Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), a leading human rights body, at least 1,648 women faced six types of violence in 2018. And although the government has introduced a telephone hotline which has been receiving calls of an average of 2,000 complaints daily, the fight to curb violence against women remains a challenging one.
Women's rights activists believe that the state must do much more on this issue being a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In the backdrop of observing the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women yesterday, the fact remains that government-sponsored awareness campaigns have not done much to change societal prejudice that helps to perpetuate the malaise of violent crimes against women. In this regard, experts have pointed out that although speedy tribunals have effectively dispensed cases of violence against children, the rest of the judiciary, i.e. the regular tribunals, has lagged behind when it comes to the violence women face in society.
We all know about the massive backlog in cases that have been plaguing our judicial system. But given the fact that Bangladesh has ratified CEDAW, it is time to make the special courts dealing with such cases more effective as incidents of women-specific violence are far from decreasing. While that would significantly help in speeding up cases of women seeking justice against violence, the issue of making the police more friendly towards victims can be addressed by having more female officers at our police stations who will deal specifically with allegations of violence against women.
Comments