Do legal empowerment activities of NGOs reduce gender-based violence in Bangladesh?

Abstract

This article explores the role of NGOs' legal aid activities in empowering women and reducing gender-based violence in Bangladesh. For collecting primary data, a field survey was conducted in Bangladesh, where come to work (CTW) provides legal aid services. It implements a number of activities. The list of its activities include conducting human right education sessions, supporting community people to establish a people's organisation, sensitisation of the elite people and establishing a network with national level organisations to deal with the gender 'cases' at courts. As an outcome of these activities, women have become more knowledgeable about their legal rights. Moreover, people's organisations have been founded overseeing informal justice, for making sure that women are receiving proper justice. This paper reveals that a comprehensive approach developed by the NGOs for empowering women legally has been successful in reducing gender-based violence in a patriarchal society of Bangladesh.

A legal empowerment approach to improving access to justice for victim-survivors of sexual and gender-based violence

“…As such, legal awareness and education is a prerequisite to the legal empowerment process (Bruce et al, 2007). Legal education and awareness for women, and SGBV victim-survivors will create an enabling environment for victim-survivors to seek remedies for the violence they have faced (Panday & Rabbani, 2017).…”

“…To address this, one key strategy employed by legal empowerment initiatives is to form CBOs which increase the bargaining power of victim-survivors and act as a support mechanism for victim-survivors. CBOs allow for the pooling of limited resources to lobby and achieve results (Panday & Rabbani, 2017). Golub (2010) argues that group formation leads to legal empowerment of the people and the mainstreaming of such groups into society.…”