EDITORIAL: It is one of the most common human rights violations in the world. According to a UN report issued last Friday to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and kicking off 16 days of activism against gender-based violence, every 11 minutes a woman or girl is killed by an intimate partner or a family member.
Over one in three women experience gender-based violence during their lifetime. In 2021, nearly one in five women, aged 20-24, were married before turning 18. These deeply disturbing statistics show how pervasive are gender-based rights violations.
Behind each statistic is a person who has been denied the chance to order her life without fear and social pressures. The report goes on to note that global emergencies, crises and conflicts further intensify violence against women and exacerbate the drivers of risk factors.
Women in this country, especially in the under-privileged sections of society, can easily identify with these risk factors having experienced different forms of violence first during the Covid-19 stay-at-home restrictions, and then the recent floods that forced them to find refuge on overcrowded, unsafe small patches of dry lands.
Even in normal times in this patriarchal society as per traditions and social norms, men have a higher status than women. In many parts of the country, women and girls as small as five or six, are used as a commodity given in marriage to much older men to settle blood feuds. And yet they are killed in the name of family honour for contracting a marriage of choice.
Domestic violence is seen as a family matter, in fact, permissible even in well-educated upper classes. And more often than not, the victims suffer in silence. All life changing decisions, such as acquiring education, taking up a job, and who to marry or not marry, are made by male members of a family, father or brothers.
Underage marriages are widespread, especially in the least developed rural areas. Spearheaded by female legislators across party lines, a slew of laws, including prevention of domestic violence, anti-women practices, and harassment in the workplace, forced marriages, and honour crimes, have been enacted to protect the rights and safety of women.
Laws by themselves are never enough unless backed by a strong resolve to implement them. Standing in the way are age-old traditions and social practices.
However, it needs to be acknowledged that a change, though slow, is under way as more and more girls and women are acquiring education and entering professions previously regarded as male domain.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022