Sunday Times 2
Gender based violence and your role
Zonta Club III of Colombo presented a programme titled ‘Unite to stop Gender based Violence and child abuse” on June 12 at the Auditorium of the Bar Association.
Zonta International is a leading global organisation of women in business and the professions empowering women worldwide through service and advocacy.
It envisions a world in which women’s rights are recognised as human rights and every woman is able to achieve her full potential on an equal basis with men. The Zonta International motto for the biennium 2014-2016 is ‘Conviction Commitment and Courage
‘Conviction’ of our capability and ability to create an awareness of the statutory rights for the protection of women and girls, ‘commitment’ to build on the initial platform of awareness with regular training intervention to educate and create awareness and ‘courage’ to forge through and ensure that women are aware of their fundamental rights in order to protect and empower themselves.
In order to do this, the Zonta Club III of Colombo in partnership with the Bar Association of Sri Lanka and the John Keells Foundation through their CSR initiative “Project Wave” organised a programme facilitated by Hans Billimoria of the Grassrooted Trust on general awareness of GBV for a target audience of law students and lawyers due to the gaps and obstacles in enacting these laws fully at different levels.
In Sri Lanka there are laws and regulations relating to the protection of women and children. These include fundamental rights, state policy, Penal Code amendments to include rape, unnatural offences, publication of offensive material, kidnapping or abduction, compelling a woman to marry, cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief in lawful marriage, causing miscarriage to an unborn child.
The Factories Ordinance and amended Shop and Office Ordinance relates to employment of women as well as persons under 18 years of age and focuses on the violation of their human rights.
At the level of law enforcement, starting with the police, there is often a delay in inquiring into the facts of a case once it is reported. It is important that in order to facilitate immediate action and follow-up, a gender based anti- violence desk should be set up at every police station in the country manned by female police officers. Under-reporting is often due to their reluctance due to shame and fear as well as fear of repercussions.
Having such a desk is of no use if police action is not taken immediately when a case is reported. This issue needs addressing in our country.
Delays occur at the level of the legal procedure, dealing with the problems of rape and gender-based violence. This is due to the prolongation of cases – often it takes 9-10 years for legal action to be meted out to the perpetrator. These cases should be fast tracked so that the perpetrator is punished and the punishment acts as a deterrent to others.
In south Asia, cultural and religious backgrounds lead to a scenario of male dominance where women willingly take on the role of being an inferior in marital and other relationships, and thus accept abuse which is meted out to them. This leads to men taking on the role of superior beings who find excuses for the violence shown to a woman focusing on it as punishment for a fault committed by her.
This plus other attitudes could only be changed by stakeholders, other organisations and individuals who work with commitment towards empowering both men and women and making them realise that they are both equal and have equal rights, in their relationship with each other. Equal respect for one another is important.
Women need to realise that violence against them should not be tolerated in any situation.
In Sri Lanka it is important that all parties interested in solving this problem should unite to achieve the objective of at least reducing gender based violence in our country to a lesser level from what it is today
This was the message conveyed to the audience at the programme organised jointly by Zonta club III of Colombo the Bar Association and John Keells Foundation.
Hans Billimoria, the facilitator focused dynamically on all aspects of issues with respect to gender-based violence and sexual abuse and motivated the entire audience on the importance of all levels of society joining together and collaborating with each other to achieve this end.
The well compiled programme held the audience spellbound and brought out a message very strongly.
(Dr. Abeywardene is Past District Governor, ZI District 25)