In our country women are often oppressed and are deprived of justice against the brutal crimes and domestic violence that happen against them. All types of violence against women, particularly domestic violence, have increased across the country and worldwide since the outbreak of Covid-19. Experts opined that enactment of a unified law is required to resolve the problems.
The existing laws regarding violence against women and rape must be implemented first. Victim blaming should be stopped and the plaintiff should be exempt from bearing the burden of proof that the accused’s action caused injury to the plaintiff.
The formulation of a uniform
family law is necessary in order
to prevent violence against women
The formulation of a uniform family law is necessary in order to prevent violence against women and children as such a law will address the issues of uniform marriage, divorce registration, maintenance, custody and upbringing, adoption and inheritance properly.
Now there are questions there in the law reform like, if the law stipulates death penalty and the criminal doesn’t face punishment as it is not being implemented, then the provision is somewhat meaningless. Another thing is, compensation is important for rape cases. As per the existing law, the fine perpetrators are charged ranges from Tk 10,000 to Tk one lakh. However, sometimes the compensation process takes a very long time and also full of complexity. Therefore, ensuring justice is needed by removing loopholes and complexity in the law and the new law draft should also make sure of that.
We as a nation are making great strides to become a middle-income country. However, we must remember that development does not only come with economic terms. As long as the women in this country are being tortured and even killed by their partners and as long as we continue to term domestic violence on women as "personal matters", we will never attain the gender equality that is a key pillar of every democratic nation.
