Police reached out to communities in Nepal and increased efforts to make women and children feel safe and secure. Initiatives of the police in Nepal against domestic violence have helped women feel more comfortable reporting gender-based crime and domestic violence. Women police officers in Nepal are trained to deal with such crimes.
Gender-based violence is frequent in Nepal, pushing women and their children to greater poverty and isolation. A World Bank study in 2017 showed a dismal situation: 149 people were killed because of gender-based violence in the country in 2017. One hundred forty of the victims were women, 75 of whom were victims of domestic violence.
Women in the country are vulnerable. According to the UN Population Fund, about 27% of women in Nepal have experienced violence and about 15% have experienced sexual violence some time in their lives. What makes this situation even bleaker is that about 61% of survivors of gender violence never report what happened to them, nor tell anyone about their experience.
Interventions
In 2009, Nepal embarked on a project that addresses this issue head-on with the project Establishing Women and Children Service Centers. Cofinanced with the Gender and Development Cooperation, Government of the United Kingdom, and the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, this project provided women with a haven where they can report any violence they experience.
This project improved women’s access to effective protection measures against violence by providing women and children service centers (WCSCs) in Nepal. The WCSCs are part of District Police Office specifically designed to serve women and children survivors of crimes and violence. It operates under the supervision of the Women and Children Service Directorate of the Nepal Police.
This intervention developed the capacity of the Nepalese police to respond to gender-based violence and to provide proper care and support system for survivors. It strengthened the network between the WCSCs and the stakeholders on issues related to crimes against women and children. The stakeholders included nongovernment organizations (NGOs), local governments, and civil society.
Results
To date, the project has established 20 WCSCs in 20 districts. These centers serve as a facility where women can report any crime or violence committed against them to trained women police officers. The centers also serve as a temporary shelter where they can stay for a few days when they cannot return to their homes immediately. WCSCs also offer them private spaces for interview and counseling. These centers helped increase the number of reported crimes against women in children by about 46% in the districts where they were established.
The centers do not only cater to survivors. They also host gender-based violence control networks and offer investigators training in handling cases of violence against women. These networks implement community awareness activities that aim to reduce gender-based violence and encourage women to report the violence done to them. These helped build people’s confidence in going to the police.