Sexual Exploitation in Bangladesh
The types of sexual exploitation those women are experiencing by the women in Bangladesh are sexual harassment, pole marriage, rape, sexual slavery, force prostitution and trafficking. The Government of Bangladesh are not able to provide necessary security to all the women and children. The Government signed to the Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) except those articles where the men and women's equal rights are clearly mentioned. This is the great sorrow for the women in Bangladesh.
There is a law to protect women from violence. But if it is family violence, even it is severe, the law enforcement agencies are not taking those cases as violence cases. Women are being sexually exploited in the family, in the work place. Even the neighbours are sexually exploiting children. But they cannot open their month; they must be auspices. Their family, as well as the society will neglect them times they will be thrown to the brothels.
The government of Bangladesh is also the signatory of Beijing Platform of Action. Here the Government has to guarantee the right of women to be protected against violence through its policies, plan of action, departments and programmes, whilst the government recognized the seriousness of this problem it has not adequately fulfilled its responsibilities in this women's convention in particularly general recommendations 12, 14 and 19 where protection of violence against women is clearly mentioned. To protect women from different sorts of violence and to implement the platform of Action, the government constituted a committee. But the committee is not active and not yet in a position to develop a strategic and co-ordinate action to be undertaken by the government to eradicate violence against women. The problem is everywhere but sufficient support services have not been put in place to assist victims/survivors of rape, domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment etc. No preventive measures have been taken in the community.
The department of justice has made the most positive attempts to address violence against women. But the implementation of law is very difficult due to different circumstances to support the law to establish the rights of the victims of sexual exploitation. The situation is very difficult for the victims to prove themselves as victims of sexual violence in front of court and also difficult to give evidence against offenders.
Gender is not being practiced in all the departments of the government. Under some of the departments there are some gender cells. The chiefs of those gender cells are junior level officers, they have no voice in policy planing or decision making. Except the department of women affairs, all the departments think that, gender is the subject for the department of women affairs. So there is no co-ordination among the ministries and the directorates. Even a few numbers of NGOs are practising gender in their organization.
It should be mentioned that the resource allocation to the department both in terms of financial and human resources is very limited. The government has the political commitment to eradicate all sorts of violence women. In absence of budget allocation the government with continue to fail in addressing violence against women effectively. To reduce this problem the government needs co-ordinate and integrated strategic policy. The government also needs to work with the community based NGOs to ensure the support for the victims of sexual/general violence and to prevent all sorts of violence in the community level. In order to eradicated violence against women and children the government needs to mainstream gender into all government policies and also need to increase fund allocation.
Priority Areas for Action to Reduce Sexual Exploitation Against Women: Recommendation
1. Service for Prevention and Care
The government should:
- Provide effective and appropriate training for the police, social workers, prosecutors, magistrates judges, district surgeons, doctors and other people involved in dealing with cases of abuser.
- Provide health and counseling facilities by trained staff, where women can report cases of abuse, undergo examination and treatment should be given emotional/family counseling.
- Set up accessible, shelter homes for the victims of rape or any other violence cases as a matter of priority.
- Set up accessible, affordable and secured hostel for the working women and girl students. Affordable secured housing should be provided for the women whose are single, husband left, widow.
- Provide safe transport network for women.
2. Policy/Plan:
The government should set up a national planning, meeting among all the ministries and the NGOs, working on this issue to develop Five Year plans and working strategy to action to raise public awareness on sexual and other sorts of violence. The strategy developed in participatory way with the participation of the personal from deferent ministries NGOs, CBOs and representatives from the community in urban and rural areas.
3. Public Awareness:
- The awareness programme should be integrated in the relevant government department whose are dealing with public. The local or national level should have to inform about the nearest service facilities, whether they can refer the victims for help in emergency basis and this activity should be part of their job.
- To integrate the awareness programme the government should work in partnership with the community based organizations which can reduce establishment and manpower cost.
- Most of the people are illiterate. So deferent media should be used to aware the people like radio, television, folk song, drama, film etc.
4. Education and Training:
- Adequate resources for training need in every department (priority basis) should be allocated by the government.
- The training should be given to the relevant role players working in this area on priority basis in government and NGOs.
- The relevant government department should come up with National Policy Guidelines on sexual exploitation prevention and care.
- Sex Education chapter should be included in the education materials for the adolescents.
- Training should be given on the relevant area like prevention, treatment/care-management, counseling facilities for the victims and their families legal support etc.
5. Research:
The government should:
- conduct National Prevalence studies in sexual exploitation against women and this data should be circulated all of the key players working in this area including NGOs and CBOs.
- conduct research on "the impact of sexual exploitation against women and children on economy, social development, environment, human psychology etc."
- conduce research to find out the root causes and factors of sexual exploitation and needs for action to prevent the problem and support the victims in effective way.
6. Political Commitment:
- The government should begin to show their commitment to shifts in policy, programmes and service delivery to the victims/survivors of sexual exploitation by shifting current budgets to accommodate them.
- The department of law and justice civil defense should be recognized VAW a 'priority area' and redistribute or allocate funds to implement the policy and strategy have recommended regarding sexual exploitation in programme delivery.
- Without sanctioning specific budget items to address women's development and programme and ensuring security to protect women and children from sexual exploitation, the promises of effective change for women will not be considered as political commitment if the commitment is only oral commitment.
7. Legislation:
The government should:
- send directive to all police stations and courts desegregate statistics on sexploitation including other sorts of violence against women and children including a separate register on femicide victims.
- provide substantive access to justice for victims/survivors by the provision of victim services at all court and police stations.
- provide training for all service providers in conjuction with relevant NGOs, in gender-sensitivity and the related laws and its implementation.
- disseminate information in plain and essay language through accessible media for all.
- ensure ongoing reform of all legislation pertaining to sexual offenses in family community and the work place.
- should provide accessible and affordable legal service with paralegal to assist women with to claim their rights.
- provide necessary security support to women and children to protect them from all sorts of violence.
Monitoring and Evaluation
Performance of the key players be strictly monitored by the selective committee which will be developed in participation with NGO, CBOs, community leaders, religious leaders. The committee will develop their strategy monitor.
Nari Unnayan Shakti is a member-organisation, CATW-Bangladesh.
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