V v LEGAL EMPOWERMENT FOR ENSURING RIGHTS OF DALIT WOMEN IN

SOUTH ASIA: A REGIONAL CONSULTATION

Samiul Mahmud Rokib

(Advocate, Judges Court, Bangladesh
Pursuing LLM in International Law at South Asian University)
Kathmandu, Nepal
9-10th November 2019

Situation of the Dalit community in Bangladesh:

“The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race,
caste, sex or place of birth.”1

There is no doubt that, the Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh has rightfully
articulated the non-discriminatory clause. But the ground reality might not be the same as there
are other stakeholders connected with it to make true these words. Out of a total population of
approximately 160 million the estimated number of Dalits in Bangladesh range between 5.5 to 6.5
million.2 Traditionally in Bangladesh Dalit people are involved in menial jobs like sweeping,
cleaning and others considered low jobs in the society by the upper class. Due to their work and
descent, and the so-called caste system, they are perceived as “untouchable”, which also have been
adopted by sections of the Muslim majority. Here the key reason for this kind of mentality called
untouchability might be the working class backed by the religion and a long existing tradition of
society. On the basis of profession, many Dalits are stigmatized as isolated and social exclusion.
Most of the Dalit's jobs are low paid and dangerous such as cleaning toilets, sweeping streets, and
emptying septic tanks. A study3 from 2014, shows that 43% of Dalits make their living from
sweeping and cleaning jobs. 22% of them work in agriculture sector and 14% of Dalits’ livelihoods
depend on the tea gardens. The study also found that a monthly income of 42% of Dalit families’
ranges between 3 and 6 thousand Bangladeshi taka (hereinafter BDT), 18% live on less than 3
thousand BDT, 17% live on 6-9 thousand BDT and 12% of Dalit families earn between 9-12

1
Article 28(1), The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
2
Situation of Dalits in Bangladesh, Joint NGO submission related to the review of Bangladesh at the 30th Universal
Periodic Review session in 2018, Prepared by BDERM and Nagorik Uddyog
3
Parvez, Altaf and Mazharul Islam; Bangladesher Dalit Somaj: Boishommyo,Bonchona O Osprisshota (Dalit
Communities in Bangladesh: Situation of Discrimination, Exclusion and Untouchability); 2014

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thousand BDT. Only 11% of Dalit households are able to earn more than 12 thousand BDT per
month.

Situation of Women in Bangladesh:

In most of the cases, Bangladeshi women face barriers and disadvantages in nearly every aspect
of their lives, including access to health services, economic opportunity, political participation,
and control of finances. Though Bangladesh is working on the empowerment of women and it is
internationally recognized for its good progress on a number of gender indicators but there are
significant gaps remaining in the development. The rates of violence against women remain high.
Almost two out of three (72.6 per cent) ever-married women in Bangladesh have experienced some
form of partner violence in their lifetime. Women are also discriminated against in family life.4 In
Bangladesh, marriage, divorce, custody of children, maintenance and inheritance are subject to
religious law and these ‘personal laws’ often discriminate against women.5 Despite the legal
support, Bangladeshi women are still not receiving equal treatment in practice. Inequalities are
common, for example: Women in the informal sector are often paid at lower grades than men for
the same work.

In Bangladesh, Dalit women face multiple forms of discrimination, because they are women and
at the same tome Dalits. Bangladesh is a firmly patriarchal society and Dalit women are often the
worst affected by these systems due to the prevailing beliefs about the status of Dalit women in
Bangladesh. Though a number of laws have been enacted to prevent women and female child
abuse in Bangladesh, such efforts have not led to improvements in the lives of Dalit women. A
major cause of discrimination towards Dalit women is lack of uniformity in the provisions of
family laws for different religions in Bangladesh. Women of different religions enjoy different
rights as per their own religious laws. The maximum entitlement of a Hindu woman according to
the law ends only with the right to be maintained by the males before marriage at the paternal side,
and husband’s side after her marriage till her death. Therefore, it could be said that, despite the
constitutional guarantee access to land rights for Dalit women is not supported by the legislation
and/or policies. As majority of the Dalit women are Hindu, they are not allowed to inherit land,

4
https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/countries/bangladesh
5
Ibid

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either from parents or from husband. For Muslim Dalit women, they are allowed to inherit land
but in maximum cases, they do not have the right to take a decision on the lands. Either it is
controlled by brother(s) or husband.

Moreover, the empowerment of Dalit girl through education which is often put forward as the main
strategy for achieving women's empowerment and gender equality, is not a successful project of
the Govt. of Bangladesh. In the matter of higher education of girls from Dalit and backward
community the achievement becomes very trivial. One of the main reasons identified for Dalit and
other backward girls’ inability to access higher education is ‘poverty’.

Unfortunately, the employable skills for livelihood policies do not pay attention to Dalit women.
Dalits, in general, live in segregated areas. Dalit women do not know the information about these
trainings. Therefore, they are not able to access the opportunities of employable skills. Even if they
are informed, they cannot access those provisions due to a lack of mobility. Though the Dalit men
have some mobility, living in a patriarchal society, Dalit women do not have the freedom of going
to the training centers to receive the skills. Moreover, the government training centers are mainly
at the district level. Especially rural Dalits live in remote areas. It is another main reason for Dalit
women not joining employable skills.

Relevant laws, policies and efforts of Bangladesh discouraging the caste-based and gender-
based discrimination:

To protect and promote the human rights of the citizen, Bangladesh has ratified almost all major
international conventions and treaties. Major of these are:

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

(CERD) 1965,

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 1966,

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 1966,

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

1979 (with the reservation on Article 2 and Article 16 (c)),

UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education 1960,

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 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) 1989.

As a signatory to the core international human rights treaties, Bangladesh has the obligation to
promote and protect human rights for all, including those discriminated on the grounds of caste,
work and descent. Despite these positive commitments, Dalit rights continue to be severely
impaired. Key challenges to the full enjoyment of fundamental human rights for Dalits in
Bangladesh include lack of access to education; extreme poverty issues; health and housing
problems; and unequal access to work.

There are some laws, policy decisions and initiatives taken by the Govt. are given bellow:

‘Education on special demand’ means making the learning process easier for the students
with physical and mental impairment (physically challenged or autistic) under the regular
teaching learning process or ensuring quality education for children from ethnic minority
or special education for enhancing any particular skills of children. (Article-25, Draft
Education Act-2016);

‘Inclusive Education’ means providing equal opportunity and environment for children
with a special demand for learning regardless of their gender, religion, race, ethnicity,
disability, poverty level or deprived due to geographical location or environmental factor.
(Article-29, Draft Education Act-2016);

The government will take initiatives to ensure gender equality and equity at all levels of
education. (Article-50 (1), Draft Education Act-2016);

The government will take initiatives to ensure proper infrastructure development and social
circumstance for female students. (Article-50 (2), Draft Education Act-2016);

The government will take initiatives to provide stipend or loan with interest free or low
interest facilities to female students for receiving higher education and conducting
research. (Article-50 (3), Draft Education Act-2016);

The concerned authority will include gender studies and reproductive health at the
secondary level curriculum. (Article-50 (4), Draft Education Act-2016);

National Women’s Development Policy-2011;

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 One Stop Crisis Centers (in 6 divisional towns and providing co-ordinated healthcare
facilities, legal services, police support, shelter and rehabilitation of the victims are
arranged);

One Stop Crisis Cells (at 60 hospitals);

A National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory and a National Trauma Counseling Centre;

The National Database on Violence Against Women has been maintained since 2009;

National Toll Free Helpline (10921) was introduced in 2012;

The National Children Policy-2011;

The National Plan of Action for education 2011-2015;

The National Housing Policy from 2008;

National Health Policy 2011;

National Strategy for Water Supply and Sanitation, 2014;

WASH activities;

Special attention has been given to educate and develop skills of women in the National
Women Development Policy-201112;

National Women Development Policy;

Under the Department of Youth Development of Ministry of Youth and Sports, Bangladesh
government has introduced employable skills training for the unemployed youth;

Draft Anti-Discrimination Bill; etc.

Situation of Paralegals in Bangladesh:

The paralegals have very influential activities recently in the justice field. They are not law
graduates but their success rate is very high.

One paralegal assisted an 11-year-old girl who worked as a housemaid in Dhaka. After she ran
away from her abusive employers, her family believed she had died, but she had ended up in

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prison.6 In another case, a 7-year-old boy fell asleep while playing on a parked bus, woke up in a
strange city and also ended up in prison. The paralegals found the parents of these children and
got them released to the care of their parents.7 A contribution restorative justice can make in serious
cases where offenders are imprisoned for a long time without conviction is that victims can play a
role in arguing that 21 years in prison is enough. Victims can argue that the pain for all the parties
should end, as should the injustice system's dysfunction. “Much of the work of the paralegals
involves simply restoring some simple functionality to an administrative dysfunction. One
paralegal spent weeks searching for a lost court docket. When the paralegal made the paper trail
visible, the sad fact was that the prisoner had been acquitted and should have been released three
years earlier.”8

Paralegal aid clinics inside prisons educate prisoners on topics such as courtroom etiquette, on
what bail is and how it could work for them, and their legal rights. This learning partly occurs
through drama where prisoners themselves play the roles of lawyers and judges, and through song.
As the paralegals entertain by singing their message, they point to individual prisoners and sing
the message that this point could be relevant to you. Paralegals not only support victims and those
arrested by advising them how to file a case or find a lawyer, they also inform their family members
of their arrest. They also help police to divert juvenile cases from the police station.

In Rangpur, this was a comparatively feminized form of democracy. The Rangpur restorative
justice was run by Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST). Five of the seven RDRS
boards of trustees are women, its chair, CEO and programme director are all women. RDRS is a
regional NGO that offers the rural poor integrated initiatives for empowerment, livelihoods,
justice, rights and development. Restorative justice delivery benefits from being integrated into
the work of a local NGO with a philosophy of local integrated empowerment across many phases
of life. To illustrate with another programme RDRS and other NGOs that deliver restorative justice
in Bangladesh also run, the Acid Survivors’ Network for Prevention and Better Inclusion supports
mostly women, but sometimes men, who are disfigured by acid attacks after advances have been
rejected.9

6
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20504721.2015.1109332
7
Ibid
8
Ibid
9
Ibid

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In Bangladesh, there are some effective NGOs and Govt. organization e.g. National Legal Aid
Services Organization. Though most of them are not working for Dalit rights. NGOs which are
providing paralegal service are given below:

Madaripur Legal Aid Association;

BRAC;

Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST);

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ);

Bangladesh National Woman Lawyers Association (BNWLA); etc.

Importance of grass-hood level Paralegal:

A paralegal program by GIZ operating in three prisons resulted in the release of 700 unnecessarily
detailed prisoners in one year. Therefore, there is no doubt that the success rate of the paralegal is
very high at a very low cost. If paralegals are to be consistently effective over time, their efforts
need to be well managed and well organized. Features of a good monitoring and evaluation system
include: a system for tracking paralegal work, a mechanism for providing paralegals with ongoing
supervision and support, and a means for evaluation. As most of the Dalit people are living in a
remote area the grass-hood level paralegal will be very effective for the well-being of Dalit people.

Moreover, the grass-hood paralegal could be key to access to justice for the Dalit people. In
Bangladesh most of the database and research are done by the NGOs. They have refined
information and experience how to do paralegal in effective way. Even by comparing with the
other countries’ paralegal activities they can improve human rights and other empowerment for all
the poor people specially Dalit people. As Bangladesh does not have any law regarding the
paralegal activities the grass-hood level paralegal would be a linking factor between the justice
and other stakeholders.

Importance and possibilities of Regional Alliance of Dalit Women:

“The significance which is in unity is an eternal wonder.”

………Rabindranath Tagore

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The great Rabindranath Tagore rightly mentioned and the importance of unity lies in these words.
The Regional Alliance of Dalit Women could bring us that eternal wonder that we are waiting for
a long time.

In January 2007, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW) in its observations on India noted concern about “the ongoing atrocities
committed against Dalit women and the culture of impunity for perpetrators of such atrocities” as
well as concern “that despite a law banning manual scavenging, this degrading practice continues
with grave implications for the dignity and health of the Dalit women who are engaged in this
activity.”

That is the spirit that we can use it for the South Asian Regional Alliance of Dalit Women. As
Dalit rights are the common problem of the SAARC Nations, We can even approach the SAARC
Dalit Alliance for the better and bigger interest of one part of human beings that our one part of
society thinks “Untouchable”. By fostering mutual understanding, good neighbourly relations and
meaningful cooperation among the alliance for solving the common problems, interests and
aspirations of the peoples of South Asia and the need for joint action and enhanced cooperation
within their respective political and economic systems and cultural traditions we could and should
take initiatives for the Regional Alliance of Dalit Women. Even for this we can come up with some
recommendation e.g.:

Providing training and education in human rights values;

Introducing the quota system for Dalit people;
Promoting and protecting women’s rights;
Eradicating manual scavenging;
Implementing the minimum wage for any profession;
Campaigning for Dalit rights;
Introducing new awareness programme;
Research and digitization of data;
Promoting local governance and political rights;
Youth motivation programme;
Establishment of a Dalit Night Training School for old Dalit people; etc.

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