Law reform for gender equality: From where we left off…
As we speak of reform across all sectors today, it has become important to revisit and address the various forms of inequalities that have become ingrained at almost all levels of our society. As the glorious history of the very birth of our country owes it to the students' united voices, it is them who are once again inspiring us when the nation is at a crossroads. The spirit of the student-led mass movement was by all means fairness and equality. Hence, it is the right time to revisit the recommendations that women's rights advocates in Bangladesh have proposed time and again, demanding some law and policy reforms that are meant to remedy the age-old inequalities against women, but which have failed to see the light of day in the past decade.
One of the most critical recommendations for such a reform proposal has been regarding the vague and outmoded laws and practices around rape cases. Perhaps scrutinising our laws on sexual violence is even more crucial now in view of the horrific Kolkata rape incident. It is unacceptable that our law remains so outdated that the rape of a child bride as young as 13 years still cannot be considered as rape when the perpetrator is her husband—no matter how brutal the rape is or whether it causes the child's death. It is also unthinkable that because an adult offender used sharp objects to penetrate a child—as her body is incapable of penile-vaginal intercourse—his charge might simply be of an "attempt to rape" or "sexual assault" instead of "rape" due to the vague legal definitions.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Another demand from the women's rights activists that has remained largely ignored, despite several advocacy attempts, is the call for an anti-sexual harassment law for all workplaces and educational institutions. Time and again, several organisations, activists and legal researchers have proposed drafts of such legislation and related legal reforms. However, other than a token inclusion of a non-functional sexual harassment provision in the Labour Rules in 2022, no substantive steps have been taken to install a robust sexual harassment prevention and protection mechanism at workplaces and educational institutions.
Another demand from the women's rights activists that has remained largely ignored, despite several advocacy attempts, is the call for an anti-sexual harassment law for all workplaces and educational institutions. Time and again, several organisations, activists and legal researchers have proposed drafts of such legislation and related legal reforms. However, other than a token inclusion of a non-functional sexual harassment provision in the Labour Rules in 2022, no substantive steps have been taken to install a robust sexual harassment prevention and protection mechanism at workplaces and educational institutions. This was a crucial demand that found even stronger grounds when Nusrat was murdered in her madrasa premise, but our voices did not reach the lawmakers, and the educational institutions and workplaces still remain largely indifferent to sexual harassment incidents.
Undeniably, laws that are discriminatory should be amended and new laws should be passed where effective legal protection is lacking. However, in Bangladesh, passing of a new law to address some form of gender inequality is often presented as the only solution to a crisis, be it domestic violence, dowry violence or child marriage. Such new laws or changes in the law pledging to ensure equality for women are generally uninformed of the reality on the ground and overlook the need to evaluate whether there is an actual necessity of a new law on the subject. The result is several overlapping laws and policies creating a rather weak premise for ensuring justice to women. The key stakeholders, on whom the ultimate enforcement of the law depends, are also often not consulted with when laws are drafted.
For instance, the Dowry Prohibition Act ,1980 was repealed in 2018 only to be replaced with an almost identical law with few minor additions. There is no explanation as to why the legislature opted for a new dowry prohibition law without simply amending the already existing one. Rather, the 2018 law missed the opportunity to address the critical gaps that existed in the previous law, which were seemingly problematic for victims of dowry violence in getting effective relief under the law. This is also the case for the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act, 2000, which was hurriedly amended in 2020 in the face of public outrage triggered by a series of sexual assault cases. The amendment, which increased the maximum punishment for rape to death sentence, carried no impact on the existing injustice against rape survivors. Rather, the same amendment introduced mandatory DNA test to be done for all cases under the law, paving the way for further stretching the already delayed investigation process in rape cases.
While the problematic laws exist, seeking justice for rape and other forms of sexual violence is far more difficult, resulting in the extremely low rate of conviction in rape cases. Key barriers to such a delayed justice process have been identified time and again in the past several years raising alarms on issues such as the lack of witness protection mechanism, rape survivors having to battle with misogyny, and harmful stereotypes during investigation and trial, corruption, lack of effective legal aid, politically biased and largely inefficient public prosecution system, and so on. Nevertheless, other than removal of the provision relating to character evidence from the Evidence Act, no visibly effective steps have been taken to address the obstacles that make the process of seeking justice extremely gruelling for rape survivors.
Also, there is a lack of any systematic evaluation to monitor the newly enacted laws' progress, and it is commonly left for the activists at the end, to point out the apparent inconsistencies in the law that are blocking its implementation—including the crucial gap in budget allocation.
No doubt, these deep-rooted clogs in the justice system and the legal loopholes that have remained unheeded for years cannot be mended overnight. But as Bangladesh renews its pledge for equality and non-discrimination, what we can now hope for is a stronger political commitment to take the first and most crucial step towards meaningful reform for women's right to justice. Now is the time.
Dr Taslima Yasmin is associate professor at the Department of Law in the University of Dhaka. She can be reached at taslima47@yahoo.com.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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