The statistics speak for themselves. Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) as well as child abuse have reached alarming proportions throughout the country; several cases are reported daily in the media.
One in five women (20.4%) have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner. Nearly half (49.3%) of these women did not seek formal assistance. Over a third (35.7%) have contemplated suicide, underscoring the severe impact of such violence.
Research indicates that 82.9% of sexually abused children and adolescents are female with 67.1% being older than 12 years. Disturbingly, 94.5% of perpetrators were known to the child and delayed disclosure was significantly higher in cases involving penetrative abuse, multiple incidents or abuse by a known person.
A UN report reveals that 90% of women have experienced sexual harassment on public buses and trains, highlighting the pervasive nature of such misconduct in daily life.
A study found that 14.5% of surveyed men admitted to committing rape at some point in their lives. Notably, 96.5% of these men faced no legal repercussions and 65.8% did not feel worried or guilty afterward. In 2023, 1,502 girl children were raped and of them 167 became pregnant.
One study reported an abortion rate of around 58 per 1,000 women among ever-married women. According to a 2016 report, the Ministry of Health reported that 658 abortions are carried out daily and that about 240,170 abortions take place annually.
While Sri Lanka has ratified many international covenants and conventions dealing with women’s and children’s rights and there are laws to protect these rights, the fact remains that Sri Lanka is still a patriarchal society despite the high rate of women’s education. Societal traditions and attitudes are a major deterrent to the empowerment, safety and security of women and girls. While there is a comprehensive National Action Plan to address SGBV covering issues such as justice and law reform, social protection and welfare, gender empowerment, economic empowerment, labour and foreign employment, transport, education and children’s rights, the government needs to put this plan into action without further delay. Immediate steps should be made to criminalise marital rape, amend the Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA) in keeping with Muslim women’s wishes and legalise abortion as well as ending period poverty and carrying out an extensive nationwide education campaign to inform women of their rights and how they can get redress when these rights are violated.
As part of its series on Assessing the Key Issues Facing the NPP Government, Groundviews spoke to social activist Shanuki de Alwis on what the government must do to address SGBV, how to better support survivors and the need to bring perpetrators to justice.
What should the government’s immediate priorities be to address SGBV?
The problem is that we keep putting this issue onto the state and saying prioritise, which is true, they should. And they have. I believe there has been more effort recently especially with the government prioritising women’s issues and women’s welfare. We have committed to a national action plan. There are certain commitments that the government has made in various interventions. But how do we make women feel safe? We also have to prioritise the intersectionality of this issue because women are not a homogenous group. While we have made various international commitments and ratified so many different things and we have many policies and legal frameworks in Sri Lanka that do support SGBV intervention, we haven’t looked at how to change social behaviour to strengthen the implementation of these policies. The government does need to prioritise on educating the community while they’re working on legal and policy frameworks. There is a huge need for these conversations, this understanding of the frameworks and the system, to be taken out of the academic and Colombo circles. In terms of community outreach, state-sponsored nationwide education needs to happen so that every single woman out there knows what she can access. And there are laws such as marital rape. The fact that marital rape is still not a crime in Sri Lanka is in itself is a crime. The government must do public education campaigning around this because it is a huge part of SGBV that we continuously ignore. When we talk about SGBV violence, we box it into either rape on the street or domestic violence but we don’t think about the fact that marital rape is part and parcel of this issue.
What legal reforms are necessary to address SGBV?
Marital rape is definitely something I would like to see being criminalised. In terms of legal reforms, the MMDA is something that has been discussed vocally by Muslim women. It is part and parcel of SGBV where their right to sign their marriage contract has not been given to them. This is a violation that the government can look at. I also find it difficult to understand why domestic violence is not one of the reasons that a woman can ask for a divorce legally. There are four things that you can cite as your reasons for a divorce in the Marriage Act but domestic violence isn’t one of them. It would be good if the marriage laws are reformed because this is a huge issue. And, of course, abortion rights; abortion needs to be legalised.
How can survivors of SGBV be better supported?
I’d like to talk about abortion rights because we assume that abortion is because of teenage pregnancies. We think it’s women who have no regard for life or who don’t think ahead and don’t protect themselves. We victim blame but statistics have shown that 90 percent of abortions are done by women who are married. They are unsafe abortions because abortion is illegal but just criminalising something doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. Banning abortion doesn’t mean that abortions won’t happen. For the married women, it’s a result of abject poverty because they are women who have two to three children and cannot afford to be pregnant again. We have this other statistic, which is that 13 percent of maternal deaths are due to abortion. A woman does have a right to her choice. It is her body and I don’t think any government out there should have a say on what a woman’s rights to choose are. Abortion rights are very important because our women are struggling, suffering and desperately seeking unsafe methods. Another thing is period poverty. This government has said that it is looking at supporting an end to period poverty. When you’re talking about donating menstrual products, it needs to be a sustainable plan without being dependent on which government is in power.
How can perpetrators, particularly the security forces, be brought to justice?
It’s a difficult one to talk about this because it is very sensitive. We have romanticised, glorified and glamorised the security forces, so they have become beyond reproach and enjoy a certain impunity. It is important to break these barriers because you are talking about the lives of women. There are villages that have been set up for former security forces men suffering from post-traumatic distress disorders who have not been given proper mental health support but are put in a village with their families. They are taking out their pain and distress on the women in their lives. When you put an entire community of these men together without having support systems and infrastructure for the women to access safety, it becomes a huge problem. We also have issues where there is documented evidence of SGBV happening in conflict zones and where we have been sweeping it under the rug. We need to stop making excuses for SGBV irrespective of what context it happened or who did it. There needs to be greater strengthening of the interventions and implementation of the law, which means investing heavily in training legal support, social advocates and community leaders to take charge so that there is a more robust system around the woman to protect her.
What are the challenges in implementing the law?
The organisations that have been doing some incredible work in terms of intervening with SGBV such as Women in Need, women’s shelters and foundations have been surviving on donations and funding based work, a big slice of which came from USAID. A lot of this funding has been cut so organisations such as Women in Need have had to let go of 50 percent of their staff. They are under resourced. A lot of their facilities are now struggling and women are suffering as a result. So we do need to strengthen them. We need to have local state-sponsored intervention to make sure that these services are sustainable. The entire legal process needs to be survivor friendly, putting the survivor first with a human rights approach. There’s a lot of re-traumatisation and re-victimisation that happens at every step of intervention whether it’s from psychosocial services, legal services or law enforcement. There is a big reason why women don’t report SGBV as much as they should. They don’t report it because they feel like they’re not safe with those who should be keeping them safe. The government should look at strengthening and investing in sustainable solutions.
( Groundviews )