Finalist : She Creates Change, Change.org Foundation
Campaign Demand
Make justice accessible for abused Women with Disability in India
Decision maker
Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (Department of Disability Affairs)
Need for the Campaign
“When it first happened I told my mother about it, but she said that it must be my fault that it happened”
“He had never beaten me like this before. He dragged me out of the house and beat me”
“Then I attempted to kill myself but it was my misfortune that I survived”
Personal Frame
For a long time, I have seen disabled women being mistreated whether on the streets, while working, or even in social places like parties. Witnessing misbehaviour, including rape, molestation and abuse with disabled women is not uncommon. Moreover, when these women and girls are sent to institutions, they face unhygienic situations and the chances of sexual and physical abuse increase instead of doing them any good.
Having worked with various sectors of NGOs (and NPOs), including some self-initiated projects, I got in touch with a lot girls who are mentally and/or physically disabled and have faced trauma throughout their lives due to limited mobility to escape situations. The government still does not have any set of regulations for registering abuse against Women with Disability! A huge chunk of them are completely unaware of the proceedings to register complaints. For some, the abuse has been so common right from their childhood, that they don’t even understand they’re being mistreated!
The 2011 census estimates that only 2.21 percent of the Indian population has a disability while The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare claims much higher percentage of the Indian population is affected by psychosocial disabilities with 6-7 percent (74.2 – 86.5 million). As high as 75.03% of women with disabilities live in rural areas. Most of them are left out of healthcare and literacy levels are lower. The core problem lies with the fact that the government, itself, is unaware of the numbers of people with disabilities.
In some cases, when disabled women have tried to lodge complaints against harassment or abuse, the police have refused to register them citing that the women are “mad”. According to a study by the Human Rights Watch, few police officers have the training or expert support needed to handle these cases, which points to the fact they are not sensitized to take instances like these seriously. Even with the changing leaderships in India, a lot of rights have been passed, but hardly anything has been implemented yet apart from one-off cases but that is not a standard being lawfully followed.
It is high time that these women receive justice so that the judicial system itself doesn’t become a hindrance to them! My proposition would be to
Sensitize the police and make them aware of such cases so that crimes against Women with Disability are registered and taken seriously
Make a set of regulations revolving around abuse of Women with Disability to make the proceedings accessible for them
Study and find the real number of Persons with disability
Sensitize the women and girls with disability to increase awareness about abuse and the actions that need to be taken in such cases
Detect. Protect. Empower.
Strategy to get the masses to support the campaign
Documenting videos about victims and their plight and making it reach to the masses (audio-visual approach has a huge impact on people)
Reaching out to fellow change-makers to support and promote the campaign to get maximum outreach
Initiate discussions on other platforms like Quora, The Logical Indian and Youth Ki Awaaz which would direct people to really think about the campaign and support it
Strategy to Escalate the Campaign
Host local events for spreading awareness through street art, flash mobs or street plays which actually engage the people and provide a better effect (the change has to be started at smaller places, closer to home, leading to a bigger aim)
Get prominent, strong women (disabled or otherwise) like Deepa Malik, Sudha Chandran and Arunima Sinha to promote the campaign on social media and other platforms
Make a request to meet with the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (looking through contacts and creating an uproar on social media would help), to help them show the need of new regulations
Reaching out to fellow contacts and the masses while encouraging them to share and post about similar events on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, while tagging the Ministry in their posts and using hashtags to increase visibility
Working on ground-level with NGOs dedicated to the cause of women and/or disability to create a wholistic impact and get a good backing for the campaign
Reaching out to Radio stations and having conversations on air with live QA with the audience to stir the masses. A lot of stations have current programmes dedicated to bringing about or celebrate change and that can be tapped into
Campaign proposition by Phalguni Bhaumik for She Creates Change 3.0
Quotes, figures, and instances above have been taken from studies and articles from SAGE Journals, hrw.org, womenenabled.org, Quartz India