Reducing Domestic Violence and Upholding Women Rights

Violence against women is a common occurrence in Bangladesh. The nature of violence is both physical and mental.  It is a daily and often deadly fact of life for thousands of women and girls in our society. Women and People with disabilities are the most vulnerable amongst the disadvantaged groups of people in Bangladesh. The availability of supportive policies and therapeutic services are also remarkably limited. The people with disabilities are kept out of the development process mainly due to lack of consciousness of people who devise and put into practice development programs, negative approach among general population prevalent towards people with disabilities, insufficiency of resources and lack of understanding and skills on how to deal with needs of people with disabilities inside development programs. Very limited numbers of people with disabilities are caught up in mainstream employment activities. One of the key reasons is that a limited number of disable people have the necessary professional skills to be mixed up in economic activities. Vocational training centers scarcely offer tailored skill training to the people with disabilities. The development organizations also lack the proper initiatives, knowledge or skills to incorporate disable people in their skill producing training. Besides inadequate services like Braille, sign, speech therapy, etc touches limitation of the inclusion scopes. The organization has been implementing a project titled “Disable Development, Rehabilitation and Primary Aid Support” from July, 2005 in partnership with National Disable Development Foundation, Dhaka with financial assistance from Manusher Jonno Foundation-MJF, Stichting Liliane Fonds, Netherlands, Taiwan Foundation for Democracy and European Union, Light for the world, The Netherlands through Centre for Disability in Development (CDD). Primary rehabilitation therapy, parents meeting, vocational training, health and nutritional supports, arranging sports for disable children and distributing assisting devices are main activities of the project. The organization also puts high emphasis on the inclusion of disable children into formal and non-formal education. Also, PSUS organizes art competition, music competition and sports for the disable children. girls are generally looked down upon, trapped within cultural framework and molded by rigid perceptions of patriarchy. As a result, multiple forms of violence including domestic violence, rape, dowry deaths, sexual harassment, suicide, forced marriage, coerced prostitution, and psychological oppression evident in the society. Actually, the incidence of domestic violence against women directly involves husband, wife and other family members. It possibly perpetuated by the societal context. Women of all socio-economic strata are vulnerable to maltreatment and abuse by husbands, family members, relatives and others. Available data suggests that the number of the cases of domestic violence is increasing day by day. Many people recognize women as their better half of men but they subordinate women and oppress frequently in different context. The organization is implementing “Increasing the Responsiveness of the Urban and Rural Service Delivery Institutions Project” in partnership with Steps Towards Development, Dhaka for preventing early marriage, reducing girl drop-out rate, ensuring marriage registration, encouraging extracurricular activities  and creating awareness on violence against women & upholding rights of the women in the society.