Day 14: Domestic violence and access to justice: Regional perspectives

On the 14th day of the 2022 Prajnya 16 Days Campaign Against Gender violence, we organised the "Domestic violence and access to justice: regional perspectives" panel discussion. South Asian states have passed laws on domestic violence but survivors still struggle to access justice. This panel brought together the experiences of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India. Watch a saved copy of the recording here.

Panelists: Sara Hossein, Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust; Saba Shaikh, Dastak, Pakistan; Ermiza Tegal, lawyer, Sri Lanka; Shazia Choudhry, Oxford University and Philippa Williams, Queen Mary University of London. The session was facilitated by Suneeta Dhar.

This panel is part of the project Surviving Violence: Everyday resilience and gender justice in rural-urban India funded by the British Academy Heritage Dignity and Violence Programme HDV190009. Research partners: Queen Mary University of London, Chaitanya-The Policy Consultancy, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Institute of Development Studies Kolkata, Nari Samata Manch and University of Oxford.

"It almost seems like the COVID  pandemic underscored the structural nature of gender inequalities within and across countries, and it essentially brought to light the invisible, unrecognised pandemic of gender-based violence, domestic violence and intimate partner violence. I hate the word shadow-pandemic; I think that domestic violence is not a shadow pandemic. That it was given visibility during this time by the UN and other agencies speaks of how little attention this issue has got over time", Dr. Suneeta Dhar said, as she opened the session.

Shazia Choudhry, Oxford University and Philippa Williams, Queen Mary University of London:

• "PWDVA (2005) encompasses the broader definition of violence; it is not just about physical violence, but also about emotional, psychological, financial and sexual violence as well."
• "There were also problematic attitudes in terms of lawyers, unfortunately. Survivors' opinions about lawyers were actually mixed. In a few cases, survivors found their lawyers to be helpful, didn't charge them high fees and followed up their cases. Survivors who accessed their lawyers through NGOs had fairly positive feedback about their lawyers."
• "There are huge barriers to accessing formal justice. And, as a result, women, therefore, are more likely to turn to the informal mechanisms that actually exist. And, the most commonly accessible and prominent body was the panchayat."

Sara Hossein, Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust

• "I think some of the crucial points about our (Bangladesh's) framework is that although we have this strong, constitutional mandate for equality, we, of course, know that, there lives, alongside, a lot of very contradictory, continuing, persistent discrimination in terms of the legislation, and that we have a legislative framework which inhabits three different centuries."
• "One of the really challenging limits of our legislation, in addition to the exclusions already mentioned about people with disabilities and sexual minorities is the exclusion of divorced women from the ambit of the protection of the domestic violence law."
• "While there is an increased awareness of domestic violence as a wrong, for which remedies are available, there is very little awareness of what those remedies are and very little awareness of where you can go to access services for remedies and protection."

Saba Shaikh, Dastak, Pakistan:

• "Mostly, women in Pakistan resolve issues by going to the locals or elders in the community. If, for example, that doesn't work out, then they will reach out to relatives or friends within the community who can possibly link them to other possible options."
• "Women's rights of freedom and choice and movement are severely restricted in the name of modesty or protection and they consider to epitomize honour and therefore any sort of measure that they take for their rights seems like they are bringing dishonour to the family."
• "Oftentimes there are judicial pronouncements which reflect the negative bias; we have had a lot of cases and judgements where you see the judges are using their own sort of subjective morality instead of really looking at the law."

Ermiza Tegal, lawyer, Sri Lanka

• "During the COVID pandemic, for example, and the lockdown restrictions, we only noticed that advisory services was what was possible. And then, all of the actual services required, even to come out of the house, to come out of your environment of abuse or environmental violence was not possible for women."
• "Sri Lanka also needs to be considered in its socio-political context of violence and impunity so there's a long history of violence, even today, with the Prevention of Terrorism Act being used against protestors in Sri Lanka."
• "Laws are really imperfect tools because they are products of our socio-political systems and we recognise this when we work with it. The Domestic Violence Act sits amongst laws that are very unfair on people, and they don't recognise the experiences of women, like cyber violence, care work is not recognised, abortion is an issue that still needs to be addressed, marital rape is explicitly recognised."

About the Speakers:

1. Sara Hossain is a Senior Advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, practicing in the areas of constitutional, corporate and family law. She is a partner at the law firm of Dr. Kamal Hossain

and Associates, and also serves pro bono as the Honorary Executive Director of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST). She is currently a Professor of Practice at SOAS, University of London. She is a Bencher of the Middle Temple. Sara was educated at Wadham College, Oxford (1988), and called to the Bar from Middle Temple (1989), then enrolled in the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh (1992) and the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court (2008). She has been involved in landmark cases and campaigns on gender equality (‘fatwa’ violence discriminatory rape laws,sexual harassment), prohibition of corporal punishment in schools, protection against torture and freedom of expression. Sara has received awards for her work from the Lawyers’ Committee for Human Rights, the US State Department (Women of Courage), ‘Ananya’ magazine (Top Ten), and was selected as a World Economic Forum Fellow and an Asia 21 Fellow.

2. Saba Shaikh is trained as a lawyer and also holds a degree in public policy. She works as a human rights advocate with over 14 years of experience in implementing and improving response strategies for those facing abuse, gender based violence or denial of their fundamental rights through provision of legal aid, training and community awareness. She is currently the Executive Director of Dastak Charitable Trust, an access to justice center for women and children that, among other programs, runs the only private shelter in the country for women and girls at extreme risk of violence. Saba has executed projects for a range of international organizations including Oxfam, Open Society Foundations, DFID, KIOS Foundation, and USAID among others. Saba is an Atlantic Council Emerging Leaders of Pakistan (ELP) Fellow 2012, Asia Society (India Pakistan Young Leaders Initiative) Fellow 2013 and US State IVLP Fellow 2019.

3. Suneeta Dhar is a Gender and Development Specialist with over four decades of experience on advancing women’s human rights. She has worked with community based civil society organizations as well as with international organizations. She is an external member of a few Internal Committees on Sexual Harassment of government and civil society organizations. Suneeta holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and has been a recipient of the Fulbright and Advocacy Institute Fellowships for Development Practitioners. She has co-authored research studies, training manuals, and papers on women’s safety, gender and SDGs, transformative governance and women’s rights. Suneeta was recognized by Apolitical’s 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy in 2021.

4. Philippa Williams is research and teaching intersects political, economic and development geography, with a focus on everyday political life in India and its transnational community. More specifically, she interested in questions concerning how the state is experienced, how citizenship is articulated and how marginality, particularly in the context of violence/nonviolence is lived and increasingly how digital technology is mediating everyday political life in India. In the UK research she has also explored the lived implications of the Indian emigration state and the UK government’s hostile immigration policy for recent South Asian migrants.She is Primary Investigator on two live projects:1) Social media and everyday life in India with Lipika Kamra examines how WhatsApp is shaping everyday political life from the family to political party and the nation. The initial phase of this research was funded by WhatsApp. We are now embarking on a second phase focused on lived experiences of digital privacy in India.

5. Shazia Choudhry is Professor of Law and the Jeffrey Hackney Tutorial Fellow in Law at Wadham. She is also an Academic Bencher and Associate Academic Fellow at the Inner Temple.Her research is focused on gender, human rights and violence against women and seeks to examine various dimensions of these areas from an interdisciplinary and feminist perspective. In doing so she employs doctrinal, theoretical and empirical methods. Her scholarship sits at the interface of criminal law, human rights law and family law.She has published three books. 

6. Ermiza Tegal has a Masters in Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She has 15 years of litigating in public law, fundamental rights, land, labour and family law. She has served as a legal expert on State advisory committees on law reform. Her recent advocacy and research work involves law reform relating to family law, domestic violence, protection for victims of torture, counter terrorism and human rights, gender based violence and a people’s land policy. She is a founder member of Muslim Personal Law Reform Action Group advocating muslim family law reforms. She is also currently a visiting fellow with the Harvard Law School Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World and a member of the Feminist Collective on Economic Justice in Sri Lanka.

Day 6: Is Justice Too Distant? Report Presentation and Discussion

 [This blog report was contributed by Bruno Richardson of Gram Vaani who generously shared his meticulous minutes with us.]

The objective of the Meeting

As part of The Prajnya Trust’s "16 Days activism against Gender Violence," Gram Vaani, Prajnya & TLRF (Tamil Nadu Labour Rights Federation) invited Tamil Nadu State Women Commission (TNSWC) Chairperson, District Social Welfare Officers (DSWO), and Members of Local Committee for online consultation on Making Local Committees Functional across Tamil Nadu on 30th November 2021.

Meeting Proceedings

The meeting was preceded by Com. Sudaroli from Prajnya Trust and then followed by a presentation from TLRF and Gram Vaani where it exhibited the works that have been undertaken as part of the campaign to strengthen the Local Committee across Tamil Nadu.

Campaign Presentation

Com. Richardson from Gram Vaani presented a detailed presentation on what pushed the organizations to begin a campaign on Local Committee (Committee to redress sexual harrasment at the unorganized workplace) and the various stages that the campaign has traveled and what it strives to achieve. Please find a brief report on the presentation below

• TLRF and Gram Vaani are existing partners who work for the welfare of the laborers working in the unorganized, spinning mill, firecrackers, and match stick industries. By deploying IVR (Interactive Voice Response) technology GV and TLRF have established a community media platform called Namma Kural. Through this awareness created on the workplace entitlements of the laborers.
• People working in the unorganized sector register and voice out their grievances on sexual harrasment at the workplace in the IVR platform. To address these grievances we explored the existing redressal mechanism and we identified that the existing committee has not been functional and it has not served its purpose
• -This pushed us to initiate a campaign by bringing in various stakeholders (NGOs, Government agencies, Researchers, Labour Unions...etc) to make the committees functional.
• 
  The campaign had traveled through various stages. Beginning from collecting data through RTI, doing Survey with unorganized women labors (Quantitative Study), Interviews with women Labourers (Qualitative Study), Consultation with stakeholders to propose recommendations to the government, and then finally sharing our findings and proposing the recommendations to the women commission and district social welfare officer through this event.  

Then Com. Priya, President of TLRF shared the union officials’ experience in Interviewing with unorganized laborers and she said that the interview with the women laborers helped them to understand their work environment better. She also said that the survey results mentioned that about 80 percent of the women have not experienced sexual harrasment in the workplace but the interview with women laborers has helped them to expose the ground realities and found that almost all the women interviewed had experienced some form of harrasment at the workplace.

Com. Jayasudha, Treasurer of TLRF shared the recommendations gathered from the previous consultation with various stakeholders (Unions, Advocates, Professors, Researchers, NGOs) and requested the government officials to implement these recommendations.

(To know about the results of each stage of the campaign click here)

Following the presentation Com. Gowri, Chairperson, Tamil Nadu State Women Commission shared her thoughts on the campaign and how we can ensure a harassment-free workplace for women. Some of the points that she shared during the meeting

She began her speech by quoting, “Real Injustice happens when Justice gets delayed’. Begin a lawyer she said there is ample law in our constitution which gives solution to all harassment and violence against women. But it is the implementation part that we really lack. Government officials, the Police departments are also one of the reasons for the lack of implementation of these laws. 

• She emphasized the implementation of these laws and it is our collective responsibility to monitor and make sure these laws are being served their purpose
• Com. Gowri also requested the event organizers to share all the recommendations to  the women commission which they will forward to the State Government following which these recommendations can be implemented
• When requested about the list of LC officials across the state com. Gowri has assured her support that the commission will share these details with us
• She also offered her support for our campaign and has agreed to work with us in addressing issues on sexual harassment across the state. She insisted that we file harrasment cases with the women’s commission so that the commission will also follow up on it and following which the government officials hold accountable for the reporting on the grievances to the commission.
• She also said the commission will support the event organizers in creating awareness on sexual harrasment at a workplace with the women laborers and she also asked her to invite her for the awareness meetings with women.

Com. Poongothai - Erode District Social Welfare Officer

Com. Poongothai thanked the organizers for the detailed research on LC and said that the research will help them to implement and further take up the functioning of the committee in the Erode District. She also invited all the NGO’s and Labour Unions to work with the district welfare department in creating awareness on sexual harrasment committee among women laborers 

Com. Indira Jayasheely - Virudhunagar District Social Welfare Officer

-       Com. Indira from Virudhunagar District shared about the works they are currently carrying out in the Virudhunagar district. She said the department is creating awareness among firecrackers/ Match stick/ Spinning mill industry women workers and also insisting factory owners implement sexual harassment committee in the workplace. Besides this, she also said they are creating awareness on 181 - toll-free no to report violence against women, across the district

-   And besides this, our department is also working on installing complaint boxes in district collectorate, Railway/bus Station, Government offices to make sure women report issues when such incidents occur

Com. Rega J Deeb - Dindigul District Social Welfare Officer

-       Com. Rega the Dindigul District Social Welfare Officer said that the department is currently focused on ensuring the LC and IC (internal Committee) is formed and its members are renewed and make sure the committee is updated

-       She emphasized that there is a need for more awareness among the women workers on these committees.

-       She said that when we review the sexual harrasment committee we do not see any cases being reported in it and this is due to the lack of awareness among the women workers to report issues in the committee. To address this we are creating awareness among the women workers

-       Besides this, she shared that her department is currently working on insisting all the factories especially the spinning mill factories to implement these committees inside the factory.

-       Finally, she said her department is ready to collaborate with the NGO’s, Labour Unions to implement the redressal committees and also requested the need of guidance from these stakeholders for the better implementation & functioning of these committees 

Com. Alagesan - Local Complaint Committee Member, Madurai District

-       Mr. Alagesan applauded the works of TLRF for the campaign that they have initiated on strengthening the Local Committee across the state

-       Mr. Alagesan said there is a need for creating awareness among the women laborers and also there is a high need for the government to create awareness among Grass root level officials and panchayat leaders. Since our districts are huge in landscape it becomes difficult for women to travel from one place to another for reporting issues on sexual harrasment and this is also one of the factors for women not reporting

-       To address this the government must form committees and make sure the grassroots level officials and stakeholders are well informed and trained in handling these issues

-       He also said the government must be very transparent in these matters with respect to publicizing the details of the committees and their members to the public. Based on this Mr. Alagesan also requested the women commission chairperson to provide details of the local complaint committee members across the state.

Com. Palani Bharathi - Pen Thozhilar Sangam

-       Com. Palani Bharathi from Pen Thozhilar Sangam (PTS) shared the experience of the PTS union in handling workplace sexual harassment grievance and how the government officials delayed the process even after receiving the court judgment and so she said there is an urgent need for the proper and speedy implementation of law and provide justice to the victims

Following the speeches by important stakeholders Com. Ponnuchamy the state advisor of TLRF summarised the event and thanked the state women commission chairperson for accepting our invitation and supporting our cause in strengthening the Local Committee across the state.

To know more about how the campaign was shaped up and rolled out with the collaboration of various stakeholders click here. To read the complete report click here for Tamil & English.