Asmita: The idea of speaking with you is that the histories of the Domestic Violence Acts in Bangladesh and India are somewhat intertwined, since they developed around the same time. Could you speak to the history of law-making in Bangladesh on domestic violence?
Sara: Sure. I think there were two impetuses to the development of the law on domestic violence.
First, there was already an understanding in the women’s movement and among legal aid groups that domestic violence was a real issue, but we were providing responses based on existing laws, which did not expressly recognise domestic violence, and which had many gaps. Every lawyer who represented a woman or child facing domestic violence understood that protection was needed, but it wasn’t clear how to get a legal remedy.
The second impetus to drafting the law was international, the model law from the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, which was circulated globally and worked on by UN Women (or ‘UNIFEM,’ as it was then) for domestication in different countries. Through that process, more women’s groups became aware of the issue. In Bangladesh, at least two organisations began drafting a law to address domestic violence, drawing on the international material but also, importantly, on India's legislation which was already in place. The Law Commission in Bangladesh also drafted legislation, again looking partly at India’s.
So the international process, once it was grounded in our region through the Indian legislation, became a real catalyst for others to think about what was possible in our own context. We were not working on a blank slate and women’s groups already knew we needed a more focused response on DV, and one which prioritised victim/ survivor protection.
Asmita: I wanted to understand where the movement in Bangladesh stood on domestic violence at that point. You already had different organisations approaching it in different ways. How did you bring them to the table to participate in drafting the law?
Sara: People were working from their own platforms initially. The main legal aid groups, all NGOs, included the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association (BNWLA), BRAC’s Human Rights and Legal Services Programme (‘HRLS’), Ain O Salish Kendra (‘ASK’), and also the National Legal Aid and Services Organisation (‘NLASO’) (now known as the Directorate of Bangladesh Legal Aid); the last wasn’t very active on this issue at that time, though it must have had many relevant clients. Then there were women’s groups like the Bangladesh Mahila Parishad and Naripokkho, who had focused on campaigns against violence against women from the mid-1980s onward, again, in response to emblematic cases such as the Yasmin or Rima killings, and following international attention on addressing violence against women, and legal changes in the region, including India.
In Bangladesh, violence-against-women reforms came through special legislation, the Suppression of Violence against Women and Children Act 2000, dealing with acid attacks, abduction, rape and trafficking initially, rather than through changes being incorporated into the Penal Code or Criminal Procedure Code.
In fact that’s been a consistent pattern in Bangladesh and any new serious crime, whether violence against women, trafficking, or terrorism, has been carved into separate legislation, with ‘special provisions’ e.g. for fast-tracking investigations and trials, denial of bail, victim protection measures, and so on. But domestic violence didn’t feature in that stand alone violence-against-women legislation, except as dowry-related violence. If there was no dowry demand involved with the ensuing violence, you couldn’t access those protections under the special law.
Most law reform agendas for the women’s movement prior to the DV Act were about personal law reform and certain extreme forms of violence against women, such as rape and acid attacks, not domestic violence. The contrast between how the movement, and how rights organisations worked on rape versus acid attacks is instructive and maybe holds some lessons for how to frame our responses more effectively on DV. Acid violence emerged as an issue in Bangladesh before it did in India, and the response, which included separate stand-alone legislation on acid attacks, plus legislation restricting the sale and availability of acid, was led by the Acid Survivors Foundation. They built a holistic response through data collection, coordination between the government and NGOs on victim support, and, most critically, survivor engagement, so that acid survivors, almost all young women and girl, themselves became the ones speaking about their pain and their need for justice, and their visibility and courage created a real impact on the public, and on justice actors. Much of the work with survivors was catalysed by Nasreen Huq of Naripokkho. That work, and Bangladesh being first on this, seems to have informed India’s later acid legislation. Because the numbers were smaller and more discrete, and the impact of the crime so visible, groups could organise around the issue of acid violence effectively, and incidents of acid attacks have fallen as a result.
The initiative to draft the DV Act came with a recognition that we needed to build a victim-centred response, addressing what a woman or child actually needs, and that this is different from a punitive process.
Two groups were working on drafts of their own: BNWLA, and ASK. Eventually, and after quite a lot of back and forth, everyone came together in one coalition, the Citizens’ Initiative on Domestic Violence (CIDV), which let us pool our experience and expertise. BNWLA, BLAST and others, had a huge client base of women who were survivors of violence , so through our reflections on our work and drawing on clients’ experiences, we could contribute to the drafting far more effectively.
We also took an early and important decision to abandon our separate drafts and instead build on the Law Commission’s draft, since it was already engaged on the issue and the Law Ministry was more likely to build upon this than purely NGO-prepared drafts. We combined the three drafts, taking useful elements from each, and once that was agreed, we went back to the comparative examples, looking at India’s legislation in much more detail to work out what we needed.
Asmita: Bangladesh, like India, has a personal law regime. Do you also have a secular option, like our Special Marriage Act?
Sara: Yes, we do have a civil law option for marriage, the Special Marriage Act, 1872, but very few people use this (given it still requires people to formally renounce their faith in the case of Hindus and Muslims), and of course laws like the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890 or the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2017 which apply to all irrespective of faith or community. We have separate Family Courts regulated by the Family Courts Act, 2023 (an updating of the earlier law), maintenance applications are made for Muslim and Hindu women under the FCA and based on personal law, and alimony for Christian women under the Divorce Act, 1869, before the Family Court, applying personal law principles. After divorce Muslim women of course can only get maintenance for the limited ‘iddat’ period , which remains an issue.
Asmita: How was “family” and “domestic” defined in the new draft, and what changed?
Sara: According to the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act, 2010, 'family’ means related by blood or marital relation or adopted or joint being members of a family who live or used to live together in a shared dwelling and ‘family relationship’ means any relationship established by reason of blood relations or marital relations or by reason of being a member of an adoptive or joint family. The Act defines ‘domestic violence’ as physical abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse or financial loss to any female or child member of the family or a person having a family relationship.
The DV Act isn’t used for most cases where domestic violence occurs. Practitioners still see it as not having changed the game much. Many still file maintenance applications outside the Act, since the forum under the DV Act is a magistrate, not a Family Court judge, and other applications go to Family Court judges anyway. People tend to go to the Magistrate’s Court mainly for protection, residence and compensation orders under the DV Act. It may be seen as less effective, or speedy than the Family Court.
Asmita: What were the key features of the drafted law, and the major changes you were pushing for? In India, we got the right to residence, a broader notion of family including natal families. What did you get in Bangladesh?
Sara: One big change was the definition of the household and to whom the law would apply, creating new duties and responsibilities, including to a wife and children. However, at the last stage, the definitions were changed, so that a divorced wife could no longer claim; this happened at the last stage of vetting by the Law Ministry back in 2009/2010. A second very important change was to the definition of domestic violence itself, including economic, sexual, physical and psychological aspects, none of which had been clearly articulated before as DV, and none of which would have been accepted in earlier claims. Even now, though very few claims invoke sexual violence as a form of DV. The remedies most sought are protection orders, with residence and compensation orders; maintenance and custody claims still mostly go to the Family Court.
Asmita: On the form of the law, was there debate over civil versus criminal? Since domestic violence outside dowry wasn’t recognised as an offence, was this Act meant to establish it as one?
Sara: There was a lot of discussion. Some pushed hard for it to be a criminal offence, with the same draconian approach used for other kinds of violence against women, so restrictions on bail, and so on. Several activists, with more experience of the abusive dynamics involved in the application of criminal justice, than of trial court work, were adamant we didn’t want that baggage. So we pursued an approach that the DV law would be a civil law providing protection and other ancillary orders, focused on what the victim needed, and if the situation escalates, then criminal prosecution could be triggered under the Penal Code. What we didn’t anticipate was that the underlying penal provisions on dowry-related violence would not be revised, and that there would be no complementary changes to the Penal Code at the time. The only offence under the DV Act itself is violation of a protection, residence, custody, or maintenance order which has been a major point of criticism from many trial lawyers, who see it as toothless, with no deterrent effect.
In practice, the earlier pre DV Act pattern is still often repeated – a survivor files a dowry-related violence case under the special law on VAW, alongside her maintenance / custody claims, and this essentially pressures the husband to settle the financial matters at the family court. One shift I’ve noticed recently is that in cases where survivors are from a middle or higher income group, where DV Act proceedings may be brought alongside family court maintenance or custody proceedings,, the stigma attached to a DV case has some strategic impact. The deeper challenge is that in situations of serious power imbalance, the person perpetrating violence, in contrast to the survivor, often has the resources to resort to endless interlocutory orders to block the survivor from accessing emergency relief, y. The DV Act was meant to shift the dial for women and children who face domestic abuse, speed things up and make the law actually work for them. How effective it’s actually been, and what other institutional changes are needed beyond simple law reform is the real question.
Even after the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act, 2010 was enacted, the main response to domestic violence in Bangladesh remains largely the same as before, since the majority of cases arise in the context of poverty and low-income households, the key concern is still economic survival, whether or not separation or divorce is involved. Unless a situation of domestic violence reached a very extreme level, women weren’t asking for much beyond how to survive financially without a breadwinner, even a violent one. So most legal responses were and are in the form of maintenance claims, sometimes child custody, and rarely for protection or residence orders.
Asmita: On enforcement, India has protection officers, service providers, and similar mechanisms. What was envisaged for Bangladesh?
Sara: We already had two institutions in place to address VAW, the police run Victim Support Centres, only eight in number, and the public hospital based One Stop Crisis Centres,. The DV Act was meant to introduce enforcement officers, but no separate cadre was actually created; for years, existing officers under the Directorate of Women’s Affairs at the district level were simply tasked with the role, without dedicated resources or training. A huge problem was that no duty bearers - the judges, magistrates, enforcement officers, and police -- were oriented to the law when it came into force. NGOs were often the only ones familiar with its terms. I remember an early case that BLAST colleagues conducted where they had to hand the magistrate physical copy of the Act repeatedly because they’d never seen it.
Even where it’s possible to secure an emergency protection order, there are real gaps in ensuring consistency of response, given limited resources and capacity.. Victim Support Centres still exist only in 8 districts, and elsewhere the victim is on their own, or dependent on NGO services, and government hotlines and the police. There’s almost nowhere for emergency shelter with less than 20 government run shelters across the country. Meanwhile a woman or child who is a victim of abuse may be juggling a DV case, a dowry case, and a family court matter simultaneously, without the financial or social support to sustain any of it. The social safety net provision that may be available is a few hundred or thousand taka, nowhere near enough. So you’re thrown back onto the same social structure, only slightly modified since the Act. I’ve tried to find data on the budget for implementing the DV Act which includes training for magistrates, resources for courts but haven’t found it.
There’s a “family card” programme the new government launched after the elections, essentially a safety net for low-income families, entitling them to services and financial aid. Whether DV survivors are prioritised within that isn’t clear.
The DV Act was worked on intensely by women’s groups and rights organisations, but once it had been enacted, the movement’s interest moved on, a bit like a baby that’s arrived and now everyone’s attention shifts to other children needing to be fed and clothed. Years later, the main demand we still hear in reviews is to make DV non-bailable or a separate offence and the more structural issues – about institutional and financial resources needed for resourcing the implementation of the Act - rarely come up. If we focus on the latter, and build collaborations, including with the social welfare and law ministries, and the judiciary, we can make the law work far more effectively.
Asmita: That runs against what you said earlier, about not wanting a punitive framing and it sounds like we’ve come full circle.
Sara: I don’t agree with having punitive framing. But it’s a debate practitioners and NGOs need to have when reviewing the Act. What some are now proposing is a family support centre to be established for Family Courts, doing what a victim support centre and enforcement officer together were meant to do, coordinating referrals and support, since the enforcement officer alone can’t manage all these tasks. BLAST has just started piloting an initiative with the Directorate of Bangladesh Legal Aid on this.
Asmita: So we’re still with the original Act.
Sara: Yes. A draft law to amend the DV Act went to the interim government but wasn’t approved, perhaps due to lack of prioritisation by the Women’s Ministry, which held the file. Parliament is still revising legislation that was adopted by the interim government and the Anti- Sexual Harassment Act is in the same position, amendments were drafted but a stand alone law was not ultimately adopted. However, very significant changes were made to the Bangladesh Labour Act, recognising duties to address gender discrimination and sexual harassment at the workplace and putting in place specific provisions on prevention and protection.
Asmita: What’s the future agenda on domestic violence in Bangladesh. Is it reforming the existing law, new legislation, or focusing on procedure and support systems?
Sara: After the DV Act, the DV rules were framed, and the Legal Aid and Services Act was reformed to prioritise DV survivors. Those remain ongoing areas of work . The priorities are training and understanding around powers and duties. A fourth feature I’d flag, alongside remedies, was recognition of the roles and duties of legal aid groups and other civil society organisations, expressly set out in the Act.
After the July Uprising, there was a major turnover in the police (many of whom fled the country after their role in carrying out brutal violence and mass killings of protestors) and in other relevant government offices, and now more changes in personnel after the recent elections. Judicial and police and civil service training academies need to include the DV law in their curricula. There’s also broader institutional work needed to address judicial delays, lack of timely police response, lack of institutional (particularly healthcare) support.
A gap in our Coalition is that we’re still very focused on advocating for changes in the law, and less on institutional support or the financial interventions needed, and also very centred on the Women’s Ministry, rather than for example the Law Ministry, Health Ministry or Finance Ministry. Unfortunately, the judiciary hasn’t really taken up the issue - eg fast-tracking DV cases or appeals (as has recently been done by the Supreme Court for rape appeals)- and even the Interim Government’s Judicial Reform Commission didn’t mention relevant reform recommendations on addressing domestic violence, violence against women more generally or family courts. There is a real opportunity for the Judiciary and the Government to address this gap now and to coordinate a response on domestic violence against women and children.
Asmita: Why is this so deprioritised? Have violence levels actually gone down, or is it just not getting attention?
Sara: The issue of DV is not getting the attention it deserves. Post-Uprising, we’ve seen some highly misogynistic forces unleashed and an overt backlash against women’s rights. We do have 50 women parliamentarians in reserved seats, but fewer than ten women were elected in general seats, and there are even fewer in cabinet. However, some have been active on the ground for years, including on rights issues, while others are survivors of gross violations of human rights themselves, including of disappearances of their family members. These are issues on which the women’s movement has been largely silent and it’s important now for there to be greater connection and communication between citizens’ organisations and political actors on the pervasive nature of domestic violence and to treat it not just as a legal problem with technical solutions, but as an urgent political priority.
Two issues are worth separating. First, there’s an issue about how much of the agenda on reforms to the legal and institutional framework on violence against women is shaped by women’s and human rights groups. In the last six months, there have been horrendous, high-profile rape cases involving young children, which triggered nationwide protests, resulting in fast-tracking of investigations and cases, setting up a new Supreme Court bench for rape appeals, and police completing investigations in days rather than months (of course raising its own fair-trial concerns). Nothing comparable has happened for domestic violence, even though it’s very possible that equally brutal DV cases occurred in the same period, but they just aren’t getting the same response, particularly in the media, despite higher overall incidence, perhaps precisely because the pattern of violence in such cases is so widespread and entrenched and endemic, and has a certain level of social sanction
Second, the anti-discrimination movement that led the Uprising was focused on challenging discrimination in the allocation of quotas for government jobs, and many of us hoped it would necessarily extend to addressing issues of discrimination more broadly. But unfortunately it hasn’t. Before the Uprising, we had fifteen years with a woman prime minister and women in senior positions, but they made very little real investment in the institutional response to domestic violence. That government could have passed any law it wanted, given it had a total majority, with its opposition subjected to severe repression. But it never chose to review the Act’s operation. We assumed the DV Act would be an easy win, and so would its implementation, since there’s no religious or personal-law angle to it and the issue affects all communities. What we underestimated was the depth of resistance to change in this area specifically. It’s a strong, still-active bloc, and reflects deep seated patriarchal values and conservatism .
Asmita: Is the caseload on domestic violence at women’s organisations still high, or has it declined?
Sara: I don’t think client numbers have declined. I’d guess the type of cases undertaken and nature of advice given have shifted somewhat given the availability of new remedies under the DV Act, but the bulk of our case load is still maintenance cases, which are resolved either through mediation, and/or litigation before the Family Court. For most women with a background of domestic violence, the ask is still: please get maintenance being paid, so my children and I can survive.
Asmita: So maintenance remains the core issue.
Sara: What has changed is that women and children who are abuse survivors can and do get protection and residence orders now. Residence orders in particular would be worth studying in more depth. Taslima Akhter had done a study for Action Aid on implementation of the DV Act , but there’s no government study to date.
Asmita: Looking at this as a South Asian issue, where do you see possibilities for collaboration going forward?
Sara: There are many possibilities to collaborate across South Asia to learn about our best (and worst!) practices in responding to DV survivors, and also to identify common challenges in relation to addressing violence against women, and more broadly on how we navigate our work on rights and justice. It’s relevant of course that Bangladesh’s DV Act drew on India’s, and that India’s acid legislation drew on Bangladesh’s laws and policies. But going beyond this - there are many possibilities for collaboration in terms of mapping strategies on reforms to women’s rights within the family, and to personal laws, and in relation to violence. .. Given the majoritarian politics and practices across the region, there are obvious political sensitivities in each country regarding reform, and these initiatives can easily be weaponised as minority-targeting. We have made progressive changes with respect to women’s Muslim personal laws and women’s rights to divorce, inheritance and marriage in Bangladesh . In contrast, in Bangladesh, Hindu and Christian personal laws on marriage and divorce are effectively stuck in the nineteenth century. But we know that Pakistan has already made changes that Bangladesh hasn’t, for example in Sindh on Hindu personal law. Much of Muslim personal law in India is similarly also frozen in time. It’s worth building the argument, across the region, for how such reform can happen, pointing to what has actually changed, and for whom.
We often hear two standard objections: that personal laws affecting the majority community can’t be touched, and that minority personal laws can’t be touched without trampling on minority rights. In Bangladesh, Hindu and Christian women have made demands for reform themselves and faced pushback from their community leaders, and recently from newly active conservative groups such as the Hindu Mahasabha, who seek to frame demands for reform as an attack on family and community identity. Strategising around that backlash matters in Bangladesh, and across South Asia, right now.
There’s also a shared legal and organising history in the women’s rights movement in South Asia that’s been fractured over the past two decades, as everyone has had domestic fires to deal with, and repressive, authoritarian or highly communal governments to struggle against. We need to learn from each other’s different histories and stages of organising. Personal laws and violence-against-women laws matter, but so does the strategy, the organising, the navigation of legal procedure and institutions. Exchanges between our countries shouldn’t only be about what the law says, but about what has actually worked in practice and also on how we keep alive a culture of respecting rights, and demanding justice and accountability.
