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INDIA: ‘Civil society organisations are at the forefront of the fight against gender-based violence’
CIVICUS discusses the recent wave of protests against gender-based violence (GBV) in India with Dr Kavitha Ravi, a member of the Indian Medical Association (IMA).Protests erupted across India after a 31-year-old female medical trainee was raped and murdered in a Kolkata hospital on 9 August. The IMA called a strike, with protests held in major cities including Kolkata and Mumbai. While the official strike has ended, many doctors, particularly junior doctors, remain on strike and protests continue to demand justice, accountability and safer working conditions for women.
What triggered the recent protests against GBV in India?
Protests erupted after the tragic rape and murder of a young female doctor at the R G Kar Medical College in Kolkata on 9 August. This horrific incident shocked the nation and sparked widespread outrage. In response, a coalition of doctors, medical associations such as the IMA and various resident and faculty associations joined together in a nationwide strike to demand justice for the victim and better safety measures for health workers, particularly women who face significant risks in the workplace.
Protesters are calling for major reforms, including the adoption of a Hospital Protection Act, which would designate hospitals as safe zones and introduce measures to create a safer environment for health workers. Their demands are part of a larger movement to comprehensively address GBV, prevent similar tragedies in the future and create a safer and more supportive working environment for everyone in the health sector.
What steps have been taken so far to ensure justice and the safety of female health workers?
The judicial system has acted swiftly by transferring the case to a higher authority to ensure a thorough investigation after concerns were raised about the police’s initial inquiry, which was not accepted by the students or the victim’s family. They were sceptical, believing the police might be favouring the college authorities and supporting the accused.
This decision aims to ensure a detailed investigation so justice can be done. The Supreme Court of India is also overseeing the case to monitor its progress, address any issues that may arise and ensure all necessary steps are taken to uphold justice.
In parallel, several initiatives are underway to improve the safety of female health workers. The Ministry of Health has proposed establishing a committee to review and improve safety protocols in health facilities. There are also plans to increase security in hospitals and establish a new national taskforce dedicated to improving safety through better infrastructure, advanced technology and additional security measures. However, despite these efforts, more needs to be done to combat GBV and ensure that these measures effectively protect female health workers.
How have the authorities responded to the protests?
The authorities have taken a mixed approach to the nationwide strike, combining concessions with new measures to address immediate concerns. The Health Ministry has drawn up a detailed plan to increase security in central government hospitals. This includes installing high-resolution CCTV cameras, monitoring access points with identification badges, deploying trained security personnel for constant patrolling and securing duty rooms for female staff. Hospitals are also encouraged to develop and regularly update emergency response plans and conduct mock drills.
In response to these measures, the IMA suspended its strike. However, other doctors’ associations have continued to protest for more substantial reforms. Many people remain dissatisfied, particularly after recent incidents of police violence. While the Supreme Court’s intervention may have temporarily eased the tensions, protesters remain concerned about the new measures’ effectiveness and full implementation.
Why is GBV so prevalent in India, and what’s being done about it?
Deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and legal factors account for the high prevalence of GBV in India. This is a patriarchal country where traditional gender roles and the subjugation of women are deeply entrenched. Women tend to be economically dependent on men, which traps them in abusive relationships that make it difficult for them to seek help or escape. Intergenerational cycles of violence perpetuate the problem, as children who witness or experience abuse may come to see such behaviour as normal.
Low literacy rates, particularly in rural areas, further limit women’s understanding of their rights and the available support. When they do seek justice, the system often fails to protect the victims or hold perpetrators accountable. Systemic failures in law enforcement and justice help perpetuate GBV.
Many initiatives and campaigns have helped highlight and address this issue. But it has not been easy. A lack of consistent political will and weak implementation of policies have hindered substantial change. Feminist and social justice movements often face resistance from conservative parts of society, making it difficult to change these deeply entrenched cultural norms.
To combat GBV effectively, we need a comprehensive approach that includes better education, legal reform, economic empowerment and cultural change. Civil society organisations are at the forefront of this fight, actively advocating for stronger laws, better enforcement and increased public awareness. Continued and robust efforts are essential to address this widespread problem and ensure meaningful change.
Civic space in India is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with the Indian Medical Association through itswebsite orFacebook page, and follow@IMAIndiaOrg on Twitter.
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JORDAN: ‘Transnational feminist solidarity is vital in the struggle against gender-based violence’
Content warning: this interview contains references to femicide and violence.
CIVICUS speaks with Banan Abu Zain Eddin about the widespread anger triggered by recent femicides in Jordan, and more broadly in the Middle East and North Africa, and civil society’s role in the struggle against gender-based violence (GBV).Banan is a feminist activist and co-founder and executive director of Takatoat, an independent feminist collective based in Jordan whose work focuses on establishing safe spaces for women and girls and building solidarity to push back against the prevalent patriarchal culture.
What do recent femicide cases reveal about the scale of the problem of GBV in Jordan and the region?
We have recently seen a frightening rise in femicides in the region, shockingly carried out in public spaces. In Egypt, Naira Ashraf, a student at Mansoura University, was murdered in broad daylight and in the presence of several bystanders outside the university gates. Shortly after, a Jordanian student, Iman Arsheed, was shot on her university campus in Amman. A few weeks later, another Egyptian university student, Salma Bahgat, was knifed to death by a fellow student. In what seems to be a pattern, the murderer was a man whose marriage proposal she had rejected. The string of tragedies continued in Lebanon, where a young pregnant woman was beaten and burned to death by her husband.
We are seeing a wave of femicides in the region. We have reached a point at which people are witnessing femicides happen in public and not bothering to interfere. This is leading to femicide being normalised and even turned into a spectacle. A terrible case in this regard took place in 2020, when a woman was murdered by her father who then sat beside her body drinking a cup of tea while people made videos and took photos of the murder scene. The victim had recently been returned to her family after spending time in a women’s detention facility for complaining of her husband’s domestic abuse.
Women and girls are constantly at risk of being killed just for being female. Women are targeted when they are viewed as challenging those exercising power over women’s bodies and choices. Men get easily offended when women violate the unwritten rule that a man cannot be rejected by a woman. A rejection of a marriage proposal represents a denial of male authority over women.
This is very scary. Following Iman Arsheed’s murder, many women and girls received death threats. Many were afraid of going to class, and some stopped attending, effectively losing their right to access education. Such crimes reinforce the exclusion of women, taking us backward in a struggle that an older generation of feminists has carried on for decades.
What roles are Jordanian women’s rights organisations playing in the struggle against GBV?
We are putting forward demands for national mechanisms for monitoring GBV, reporting cases, protecting victims and holding perpetrators accountable. We emphasise that encouraging women and girls to report abuse should only come after the enactment of protection mechanisms, and that immediate accountability is the main deterrent.
We also work to counter the normalisation of GBV by focusing on the ethics of media coverage. As much as the murderer should bear full responsibility for his crime, the media should be held accountable for its coverage. Naira Ashraf’s murder provided a blunt example of the terrible normalising effects of media coverage that is sympathetic towards perpetrators rather than victims of GBV. Her murderer’s defence lawyer was given a lot of air space that he used to justify the murder, creating a wave of public sympathy for his client.
What should the Jordanian government do to curb GBV?
Women’s rights and safety should be a priority on the government’s agenda. Sadly, this is not the case. State inaction has normalised GBV. The recent femicides didn’t happen out of the blue: a series of events led to them that the state did nothing to stop. The state has so far failed to establish effective protection and reporting mechanisms and encourage women to report violence before it escalates.
When a woman in Jordan reports a situation of violence, including domestic violence, she is typically blamed. Reporting mechanisms have a major flaw when it comes to abusive family members: victims are sent back home to their abusers once perpetrators sign a pledge to stop the abuse. On top of that, the concept of swift justice for GBV victims simply doesn’t exist.
Additionally, the limited protection mechanisms that currently exist scare most GBV victims away. Women hosted in safe houses are subjected to a number of rules and regulations that result in them losing their freedom of movement, being under surveillance and losing access to communication devices.
In short, the current wave of femicides is a direct result of collusion between the government, the media and the judiciary.
What was the idea behind the call for a regional strike against GBV?
The regional strike that we held on 6 July was just the start of our cross-border fight against GBV. Transnational feminist solidarity is vital in this struggle. The driving force of our call was sheer anger at the current situation: we will not accept more piecemeal, ineffective solutions for a problem that is systematic and systemic.
Violence against women is the result of a system that places women in a subordinate position. That’s why the whole range of feminist demands for rights are inseparable. Intersectional feminism believes that protecting women from violence implies not only protecting them from femicide but also closing the gender pay gap and recognising women’s unpaid work, among many other things.
The strike was quite successful because it proved that if the rise in femicides is a regional phenomenon, feminist organising against it is regional as well.
Civic space in Jordan is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with Takatoatthrough itswebsite or itsFacebook page, and follow@takatoat on Twitter. -
NIGERIA: ‘The federal government and ASUU at some point made it feel like our education doesn’t matter’
CIVICUS speaks with Benedicta Chisom about the current student mobilisation that is calling on Nigeria’s government to respond to teachers’ demands and end the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Benedicta is a student at Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Nigeria and a creative writer. Being directly affected by the ASUU strike, she has worked on social media to create awareness about it and its underlying issues.
How did the #EndASUUStrike movement start, and what does it want to achieve?
The #EndASUUStrike started with students’ protests at the University of Benin and Ambrose Ali University, Ekpoma, and then snowballed into an online movement. Its message is simple: we want to go back to school.
Students just want to voice their grievances over the strike. Both the federal government and ASUU at some point made us feel like our education doesn’t matter. They keep going back and forth with the matter while our academic year is wasted. Every time teachers go on strike, we become passive spectators, just waiting on them to decide when to end it. We had to remind them that we matter too, and that it is our education and future that is at stake.
The protest was our way of demanding that the federal government and ASUU come to a final agreement so that teachers stop going on strike every single academic year. As a result of the strikes that have happened since 2020, we have lost more than 12 months of our academic career.
It would be a shame if the students that come after us continue to face the same challenges. Recurrent strikes need to end with us, this year. We want a five-year course to take five years of schooling, not more.
How has the government responded so far?
In February, President Mohammed Buhari mandated a trio composed of his chief of staff, the minister of education and the minister of labour and employment to address the disagreement with ASUU over the strike. The Minister of Labour met with the other unions – the National Association of Academic Technologists, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions – which went on strike in support of ASUU. He assured the public that the government is tackling disputes in the educational sector holistically and acknowledged that some issues causing the crisis are economic, including funding for the revitalisation of universities and workers’ welfare.
But ASUU and the students are angry at the government’s undivided focus on the upcoming 2023 general election, as though students and their education did not matter. The union also condemned the rush to purchase the ruling All Progress Congress party’s presidential nomination forms by politicians even though money is one of the reasons for the strike. It accused the ministers of labour and education of insensitivity.
According to Independent Electoral Commission, more than half of registered voters, 51.1 per cent, are between the ages of 18 and 35. Many of them are students, and how will students believe in the government if their voices aren’t heard by the people they vote for? At some point we had hopes for change but now that the strike has been extended by 12 weeks, I can’t say much. But we are positive the mobilisation will drive home our grievances to some extent.
What do you think striking teachers should do?
For students, the strike is frustrating and disheartening. We are told to stay home without any idea of when we will return to school. I have spent a whole semester at home, and what was supposed to be a five-year course increased to six years. Our lives are put on hold; this affects not only our academic progression but also our life plans. Education workers should be more flexible with their demands and have more empathy towards students.
What should the government do?
There are many things the federal government can do to ensure that both the needs of students and education workers are met. The government must offer a good agreement to ASUU and begin to implement it immediately. It must also start paying unpaid allowances and salaries. This will give students back their right to education and stabilise the economy. The strike has done a lot of damage already.
One of the first things the government could do is adopt the University Transparency Accountability Solution (UTAS) as a preferred payment option instead of the system currently used. UTAS was created by Nigerian experts and must be run and maintained locally, so it will encourage local innovation and provide employment. It has passed the test and ASUU has agreed to improve it. It has become a bone of contention, so there is a big chance the strike will end once it is adopted.
Most significantly, the government must set out a strategy and timeline to come up with the billion-dollar funding required to revitalise universities. This will show ASUU and students that they are indeed working towards restoring public universities.
What kind of support do you need from the international community?
Social media has made the world a global village, so I am sure people in other parts of the world are aware of the protests and strikes in Nigeria. We need more voices to put pressure on our government to take immediate action. It would be of great help if students in other countries and Nigerians in the diaspora could help share the #EndASUUStrike hashtag, repost our posts and share our tweets to add momentum to the movement.
Civic space in Nigeria is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
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NIGERIA: ‘The government is more willing to negotiate with terrorists than with striking teachers’
CIVICUS speaks with Olorunfemi Adeyeye about the current student mobilisation that is calling on Nigeria’s government to respond to teachers’ demands and end the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). Olorunfemi is a student activist and member of the Fund Education Coalition, which works to raise awareness about the importance of Nigerian public universities and is currently supporting teachers by taking part in the #EndASUUStrike movement.
How did the #EndASUUStrike movement start, and what does it want to achieve?
The origins of the campaign are in the Fund Education Coalition movement, a coalition of Nigerian student groups advocating for education rights. #EndASUUStrike started when student organisations came together and called for students to be at the forefront of the struggle for their rights to quality public education. It uses the grievances of the ASUU strike to highlight what students need to have on their respective campuses.
The demands of the ASUU strike include several issues that concern Nigerian students directly. For instance, the union has raised the need to revitalise public universities. This is of great importance to students, who are the direct victims of underfunding. The campaign to properly fund education demands the revitalisation of laboratory equipment, which is in poor state, and fixes to the problems of overcrowded lecture halls and moribund campus health centres, among other key aspects. The union also frowns at the proliferation of universities and seeks an amendment to the 2004 National Universities Commission Act. The establishment of more universities, while existing ones are poorly funded, has become a constituency project for Nigerian rulers. Almost everyone in the ruling class wants to have one in their backyard. This is just unacceptable. We are fully in support of the strike, which also highlights issues surrounding the poor remuneration of lecturers.
What the Fund Education Coalition wants is for the Nigerian government to accede to workers’ demands in the educational sector. And not just to ASUU’s: the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities and the National Association of Academic Technologists are also on strike. With all education workers currently on strike, it was only rational for students to join them.
Have you established any connections with student movements facing similar challenges in other parts of the world?
Social media platforms have made it easy for us to share information about the #EndASUUStrike movement, reaching a vast audience across the world. Unfortunately, however, we have not yet had the chance to get in contact with any international student organisations facing similar issues.
As student activists, when things happen in other countries we lend voices to help each other – for instance, when the #FeesMustFall movement erupted in South Africa the Alliance of Nigerian Students against Neoliberal Attacks, an organisation I led in 2018, released a statement of support. We hope the same will also happen with the #EndASUUStrike. International solidarity among all the oppressed people in the world is key.
To counter the government’s propaganda that ASUU is on strike because it feels it can gain some concessions due to the approaching elections, it should be noted that this isn’t a new problem. Interestingly, there are no new problems in Nigeria. Our issues date back a long way. Strikes similar to the current one have been happening since the 1980s and the issues they point to continue to affect generation after generation of Nigerians.
We are still dealing with the same issues, as the government systematically fails to fulfil its promises and implement the agreements reached with unions. Our issues are perennial and endemic, but even though they may be different from those faced by young people in other countries, we are still open to collaboration with as many organisations from around the world as possible.
How has the ASUU strike affected you?
As students it is very unfortunate that we must go through this again. It is an endless cycle of spending very little of your time in class and most of it on the streets fighting for your right to education.
When ASUU goes on strike, it not only affects academic activities, but also the economic and social life of everyone in the academic community. There are students who depend on universities being open because they sell academic textbooks, stationery or equipment to make a living. There are also people who run businesses within universities as a means of providing for their families. All these have been disrupted. The strike has affected everyone.
As student activists, some of our activities have been affected and we have not been organising as we normally would on campuses. We hope the federal government will agree to ASUU’s demands so things can go back to normal.
What do you think education workers should do?
First, I need to clarify that students have a good relationship with ASUU and the other educational workers’ unions. We are all partners in the education sector. As students, we have been able to present some of our ideas and thoughts to ASUU.
An issue we discussed recently was that they should come out with a clear message against the government’s propaganda. The government has tried to convince people that it cannot accede to ASUU’s demands because there is no money to fund education. This is misinformation and propaganda, so we have asked ASUU to counter it with their own narrative and make it public. Everyone should understand why ASUU is striking and support their struggle. This will not only benefit teachers, students and their families, but it will also help us save public universities and ensure they are well equipped for ordinary citizens to attend.
How has the government responded so far to both the ASUU strike and the #EndASUUStrike movement?
The federal government has not responded to ASUU’s and students’ demands. Faced with strikes by other unions, such as the Airline Operators of Nigeria, the government reacted fast to prevent the suspension of airline services. But ASUU has been on strike for almost three months and the government has not even called them to a meeting. This serves as an indication that education is not really a priority for them. The government is more willing to negotiate with terrorists and bandits than to sit down and negotiate with academic workers.
As a result, ASUU has decided to extend the strike by three more months, which means students will have spent close to six months without attending school.
We hope we can put more pressure on the government so it will react to what is happening. We want the government to agree to a meeting with ASUU representatives and commit, this time, to solving the issues brought up at the meetings.
What kinds of support do you need from the international community?
As someone who is at the frontline of the struggle to protect a public education, I would say that the international community should put pressure on the Nigerian government to prioritise education.
The government has been telling us it does not have money to fund education, but yet there is serious capital flight from Nigeria to other countries. The president has donated one million US dollars to Afghanistan and oil theft has grown. Who is stealing the oil? Not ordinary people. Who are contributing to oil theft, money laundering and massive capital flight, if not foreign nations? These monies are mostly not kept in our banks. We need our international allies to put pressure on the government to stop capital flight and instead invest in education.
International organisations should also help us put pressure on foreign governments, corporations and parastate actors to stop aiding and abetting the thievery in Nigeria. Nigeria has plenty of resources that should be put to the correct use, such as funding education.
In addition, we need the international community to help us push our narrative through social media so that more attention is paid to the situation Nigerian students are dealing with.
Civic space in Nigeria is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Follow@activistfemi on Twitter. -
PAKISTAN: ‘The government must hold accountable those responsible for excessive force against protesters’
CIVICUS discusses recent protests in Pakistan with Asad Iqbal Butt, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a civil society organisation that works for the realisation of the full range of human rights for all of Pakistan’s citizens and residents.Protests erupted in response to the rising cost of food, fuel and utilities in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The situation quickly escalated into violence. Several protesters and a police officer were killed and many protesters were injured and arrested. As tensions flared, traders closed their shops, exacerbating economic disruption. The Kashmiri prime ministeracknowledged the protesters’ grievances but stressed the need to maintain peace and stability, while Pakistan’s president called a high-level meeting to devise a response. Having narrowly avoided defaulting on its foreign debt last year, Pakistan is now seeking a new bailout package from the International Monetary Fund.
What triggered the protests, and how did the government respond?
Since March 2023, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) has witnessed several large-scale protests, with people taking to the streets to demand subsidised electricity and flour. Led by the Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), a civil society group, these protests have also called for the removal of unnecessary perks and privileges enjoyed by politicians and bureaucrats.
The movement gained momentum in May 2024. On 11 May, thousands of people responded to the JAAC’s call and began marching towards the capital, Muzaffarabad. The entire region came to a standstill as reports of violent clashes and casualties emerged, first on social media and then in mainstream media.
Shortly after the first verified reports of violence, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan launched a fact-finding mission, on 16 and 17 May. We found that ahead of the protests, the AJK government had sent a request to the Pakistani government for paramilitary and civilian forces. This signalled its intention to use force against protesters. Deployment of additional forces began on 3 May, almost a week before the call for protests and the long march. But it was the involvement of the Pakistan Rangers, a federal paramilitary force, that marked a significant escalation. Their entry into Muzaffarabad and alleged unauthorised use of force contributed to the violence.
Key incidents during the protests included a police raid on 10 May on the residence of Shaukat Nawaz Mir, an elected traders’ leader, which resulted in arrests and clashes. On 8 May, an assistant commissioner reportedly assaulted an older person in Dodyal, Mirpur. A crackdown on the JAAC leadership in Kotli, Mirpur and Muzaffarabad further inflamed public anger, leading to retaliatory attacks on government officials and property.
On 10 May, a crippling shutdown and wheel-jam strike took place, followed by violent clashes between police and protesters. Police arrested scores of activists and clashes resulted in injuries on both sides. The long march from Mirpur to Muzaffarabad on 11 May was marred by violent clashes. A police sub-inspector was killed and many police officers and protesters were injured.
The entry of the Rangers, their lack of coordination with local authorities and the perception they were being deployed to violently suppress the protests fuelled violence. Clashes in Muzaffarabad left three protesters dead and many others injured. The situation escalated when the Rangers resorted to teargas shelling and firing.
Who organised and led the protests?
These protests were unprecedented because they were leaderless, not driven by a political agenda or led by a political party. A cross-section of civil society took part in or documented the protests, including journalists, lawyers, students, traders and young people.
There were other demands apart from those put forward by JAAC. Civil society lawyers emphasised that the people of AJK are highly sensitive about their identity, particularly following India’s revocation of the special constitutional status of Indian-occupied Kashmir. This explained their concern about any perceived attempts to undermine AJK’s special status or deny recognition of Kashmiris’ rights over their natural resources.
Although not directly involved in the protests, many women from civil society expressed their solidarity with the movement. One woman said that even though she knew the government would use violence against protesters, she hadn’t stopped her young son going to the march because the protest was necessary to make people’s voices heard.
What are civil society’s demands to the government?
Civil society groups, including the HRCP, have primarily called on the AJK government to listen to people’s legitimate demands for economic rights and better governance, and to show restraint and engage with protesters through peaceful dialogue and negotiation.
The government must also hold those responsible for excessive force against protesters accountable, following an independent investigation, including to help prevent future abuses. The use of paramilitary forces against AJK citizens is also cause for serious concern and should not recur.
The AJK government must respect human rights, including the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression and the right to life. It must also implement sustainable economic relief measures, including subsidies and price controls, to address immediate public needs.
Additionally, the Pakistani federal government should ensure that legislative powers in AJK lie with the elected AJK Assembly. Finally, AJK should be given control over its natural resources, while Pakistan’s earnings from its use of AJK’s water and electricity must be shared more equitably.
How can the international community help?
The international community should monitor potential human rights abuses in AJK and, where possible, press the Pakistani government to ensure they do not recur. It is important to exert moral pressure on the government to respect, protect and fulfil the democratic and fundamental freedoms of the people of AJK.
Civic space in Pakistan is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan through itswebsite and follow@HRCP87 on Twitter.
