Views of a Nepali Economist

No Country for Women

It wasn’t long ago when Nepalis read and watched numerous rape-related news coming out from India. We sympathized with the Indian victims, but were thankful that rape was not as big a problem in Nepal. That is true no more. Puja Shah, a seven-year old from Kailali, who was raped on February 21, has since died. Her case has caught the country’s attention. However, as the country demands justice for Puja, it has come to light that another six-year old had been raped in Tehrathum on March 2. The case was kept secret until now because locals were trying to settle the case locally. It eventually became public after 11 days when the six-year old girl’s health began to deteriorate.

Violence against women has gone from bad to the worst in recent times. In the past, Nepali women were ill-treated by their husbands and in-laws. They suffered harassment for not bringing enough dowry. Girls were not sent to schools, and women lacked work opportunities beyond the confines of their homes. As years passed, we believed we were making progress by educating our girls and increasing female labor force participation. A recent study named Nepal as the country with the highest female labor force participation in the world, with 80 percent of working age Nepali women being employed.

However, violence against Nepali women has changed its form in recent years. Rape has turned out to be the most common violence inflicted upon not only Nepali women, but women in general, all over the world. Bringing the culprits to justice has been difficult because most rape cases go unreported and undocumented. It is a problem even in developed western societies. For example, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice reports that around 75 percent of rape cases in the UK go unreported. In the United States, a woman gets sexually assaulted every two minutes. Those are sobering statistics.

What do these numbers look like for Nepal? We don’t know. We will never know if we do not improve our way of dealing with the victims. In the past few days, the acid attack victims have told the media that they have been harassed by the Nepali police. They accuse the police of putting more effort in questioning the victims than finding the perpetrator. Similar reasons cause rape and other sexual assaults to go unreported in Nepal. Victims fear coming forward. They are afraid of going public because they will be asked to relive their experiences again and again in interrogations. Their families aren’t helpful either. Victims’ families are more worried about losing the family izzat than getting justice for their wives and daughters. Instead, victims’ families and the local society often engage in monetary compensation negotiation with the perpetrators. The case of the six-year old from Tehrathum is an example.

Incidence of sexual assaults on Nepali women increased during and after the conflict. Research has shown that the Nepali Army and the Maoists used ‘rape’ as a tool to teach the other side a lesson. Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organization, reports that the Nepali Army raped female relatives of suspected Maoists. On the other hand, the Maoists raped women who refused to join the insurgency or support it. Life after the assaults has not been any better for those victims. Many of the stigmatized victims have suffered further domestic violence from their own families. These findings suggest that ours is no longer a country for women, especially not for victims of sexual assaults.

In addition to a change in mindset of how we view the victims, we also need better legislations and policies. Victims of sexual violence often take a long time to come forward. However, the 35-day statute of limitations prevents them from filing reports. How many perpetrators of sexual violence roam our streets free because they were never charged due to limitations imposed by the statute of limitations?  Does that mean rape victims of the insurgency can no longer pursue their attackers?

Poor policies and legislations have meant that the mob often takes justice in its own hands. For example, earlier this month, a rape accused was dragged out from his jail cell in Nagaland by a mob, and was killed. Newer details about that case reveal that the man was probably innocent because the allegation could have been fake. A week ago, a drunk man in Agra exposed himself indecently to a girl from the neighborhood. The mob learnt of it, and hanged the man dead in an example of mob justice. Many among us believe that mob justice is a swift solution to rape and acid attack incidents. However, mob justice is fraught with danger and is not ‘just’.

Similar danger lies ahead in Nepal because there is a sizable crowd that has been demanding the acid attacker from last month to be found and hanged. If that’s the going standard for criminal punishment, I think the mob wants death penalties for the rapists, too. Even the victims of the acid attacks have been demanding their attacker be hanged. I feel that everyone needs to take a step back and dial down on their rhetoric. The whole country agrees that current provisions of punishment for sexual assaults are weak. They do not fit the crime. However, the Nepali State has not executed anyone since 1979, and the Nepali Constitution of 1990 abolished the death penalty. The death penalty robs people out of an opportunity to prove themselves innocent if fresh evidence presents itself anytime in the future.

We decided in 1990 that executing people was not a just punishment, no matter what the nature and extent of the crime. We settled on that ‘value’ as a society. To bring back the death penalty would be to give up on those values. If we don’t stick to our values when they are challenged, then they’re not really our values. They’re hobbies.

Acid Attacks and Violence against Nepali Women

Three girls studying in a tuition center at Basantapur, in preparation of their SLC exams, had acid thrown at them by a masked man on February 22, 2015. The main victim of the attack appeared to be Sangita Magar, a sixteen-year old. All she wanted was to get good grades in the upcoming SLC exams. Instead, she got acid thrown at her face by some unknown person. The police say that they have identified the suspect of the crime, but are yet to confirm in public who the perpetrator was.

The world today continues to prosper and reach greater heights through education, civil rights and political rights. However, we have yet to make considerable progress in reducing violence against women. In fact, the events and incidents around us suggest that we are regressing on the issue instead of making progress. In India, for example, five women suffer acid attacks each day. In Bangladesh, a woman suffers from such attack each day. Majority of such attacks on women occur when they reject the romantic or sexual advances or marriage requests from men.

While the incidence of acid attacks in Nepal is not as severe as in India or Bangladesh, there are areas in the terai where acid attacks continue to be perpetrated against Nepali women. The acid attack in Kathmandu is notable because it occurred in the capital. That makes the incident difficult to ignore for the intelligentsia and the Nepali state. It occurred at the heart of a city at the heart of the country. I believe that this is an isolated incident in the valley. However, for the sake of those in the periphery who suffer from such violence every day, I hope the incident in Kathmandu sparks a dialogue to address the issue of violence against women in the Nepali society.

Societies have been busy over the years in creating a system of hierarchy in which women have been reduced to a lower tier through systematic exclusion and discrimination. Patriarchy originated in Mesopotamia around 6000 years ago, and spread all over the world. Thus, women have been struggling against patriarchy and male dominance for over 6000 years now. Marilyn French, in her book “The war against women,” claims that all states in history had laws saying women’s bodies, sexuality and reproductive capacity were property of men. Things haven’t changed much. Even in the most developed western countries, such as the United States, women continue to wage wars against men to retain the rights to their own bodies. Patriarchy continues to be used to justify violence against women over the years. At the same time, women’s movement for equal rights has made women a target for further violence.

As with women elsewhere, there are all sorts of violence—physical, emotional, social and economic—that have been perpetrated against Nepali women. Long ago, Nepali women were forced to die alongside their dead husbands in their pyres. The society no longer considered that moral, and it was abolished. There was a time when women were not allowed in the workplace or in politics. That changed, too. Nepali women have more opportunities to work today than ever before. The last parliament had around 30 percent women representatives. There was a time when sons were sent to school but daughters weren’t. Years of efforts in increasing girls’ enrollment has meant that over 85 percent of Nepali girls of primary school age are now enrolled in schools compared to 90 percent of boys of the same age.

Despite all that progress, violence against Nepali women continues. In fact, it has actually increased over the years as Nepal has grown more progressive socially and economically. Even during the Maoist conflict, a movement against the status quo, rape was used as an instrument of war by both sides of the conflict. The security forces, especially, captured women from the opposing camp and rape them to teach the other side a lesson. Even when a rape does not damage the woman’s body physically, it leaves emotional scars. Those are difficult to heal. Acid attacks do the same. They result in more than a disfigured face or body. These attacks weaken the human spirit. They weaken the women’s confidence and their trust on others. They are an extension of the broader violence against women that exists in our society.

Violence against women is not a distinct Nepali phenomenon. Failure to address it is worldwide. The much touted Millennium Development Goals look into a variety of problems and wish to correct them, but violence against women is sorely missing from the list of problems that the MDGs wish to tackle. There is no denying that Nepali women today enjoy more rights and responsibilities than any other time in history. Compared to women in other regressive countries such as those in the Middle East or Africa or even some Asian countries, Nepali women today enjoy much personal and civil liberties. However, much remains to be done. Let us hope that the attack in Basantapur results in a renewed call for addressing violence against Nepali women.