Sexual violence among girls in 10 districts of Nepal
Over the past four decades, violence against women and girls has been recognised as a serious violation of human rights and as an important concern for social policy making. This study report explains the situation of sexual violence among girls in Nepal, especially in the 10 districts: Banke, Jumla...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Kathmandu, Nepal ;
Himal Innovative Development and Research Pvt. Ltd. (HIDR) ,
c2015.
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| Online Access: | Visit NHRC Library |
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| Summary: | Over the past four decades, violence against women and girls has been recognised as a serious violation of human rights and as an important concern for social policy making. This study report explains the situation of sexual violence among girls in Nepal, especially in the 10 districts: Banke, Jumla, Makawanpur, Rautahat, Kapilbastu, Kailali, Achham, Dhankuta, Myagdi and Sunsari. Nepal is a country with the population of 28 million and child population shares 42 percent (CBS 2011). This study report provides an analysis of the estimation of scale of sexual violence, causes and effect on the victims and family, efforts made to identify vulnerable groups, challenges and realities of access to justice and perspectives for future intervention and collaboration on addressing sexual violence against girls in the study area. This study has highlighted the challenges of child survivors of sexual violence and reviewed the related laws, policies and their implementation and gaps, status of access to justice situation and has provided recommendations accordingly. The study was an explorative research that explains an existing phenomenon of sexual violence and access to justice among girls, vulnerable groups, offenders, rationale behind and possible interventions for promoting safer environment for girls. In general, the entire study was vested upon the focused group discussions, district consultation and an interview with key informants of the respective places. The study had sessions with 190 participants in focused group discussion from all the ten study districts, likewise, 144 participants' during district consultation and 43 in key informant interview. The findings of the study are extracted as listed below: Understanding of sexual violence: The main finding is that the definition of sexual violence varies amongst the civil society actors, key informants and girls and boys. Key informants' understanding is highly confined within the domain of existing domestic legal definition and limited understanding of various aspects of sexual violence and its determinants. Acceptance of sexual violence in the community: The conventional beauty concept and masculine socialization of sex has enabled wider social acceptance of cases of teasing, early child marriage, touching forms of sexual abuse and unsafe touches. Community people, girls and their families are being seen as playing an ignorant role in the non-touching form of sexual violence. Even child marriages are taken as the traditional practices and cultural norms. The ways of looking at the victims of the age above 15 years do vary from the perception towards child victim; adolescents are taken as a subject of sympathy whereas adolescents are directly poked on her character and her previous behaviour. Prevalence of sexual violence: Cases of rape and attempt to rape were found to be the most prevalent forms of cases of sexual violence which were reported. Also few of the cases are emerging as new forms such as cyber crimes including sexual violence through the use of ICT. Basically, the nature of cases like sexual harassment, teasing, molestation, non-touching sexual violence, and sexual violence conducted by largely powerful and influential people go underreported or are mostly inclined towards the hostility. |
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| Item Description: | Research Report: |
| Physical Description: | 87p. |