Taslima Yasmin

Despite enacting several laws in the past decades to protect women and girls from violence, creating a safer space for women and girls is still a distant reality for Bangladesh.

A recent decision of the High Court Division (HCD) declaring that women cannot act as nikah/marriage registrars in Muslim marriages was subjected to considerable scrutiny.

In the year 1890 during the British colonial regime Hari Mohan Maiti, an adult man aged 35, was charged in the Calcutta High Court with causing the death of his bride Phulmonee who was just about 11-years-old.

The video of a gruesome act of sexual violence on a woman in Begumganj, Noakhali that went viral in early October, and the subsequent reporting on the incident in various media outlets had led many to questions—was it rape or could it be called an attempt to rape, or was it a sexual assault?

No doubt that in rape cases, DNA evidence can strengthen investigations and prosecutions.

The demand of girls worldwide to live free from the harmful practice of child marriage is one of the key focuses of this year’s International Day of the Girl Child.

The alarming rise in the incidents of sexual violence against women and children points at the failure of the existing law and justice system in prosecuting offenders of rape and ensuring justice for the victims.

It is now common knowledge that a pandemic, or any emergency for that matter, impacts women and girls differently than men.

The controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 (CAB) has been finally passed through both the lower and upper houses of the Indian Parliament this week amidst protests and questions being raised regarding its constitutional validity.

In July last year, the draft NRC (National Register of Citizens) in Assam had primarily delisted more than four million people from Indian citizenship—a process that is now pending for its final publication on August 31 of this year.

The Maintenance of Parents Act 2013 has made it a punishable offence for the children to fail to fulfil certain duties and responsibilities towards their parents as described in the Act.

Very recently, a circular was issued by the Supreme Court saying that from now on, the testimony of women and children victims of rape and sexual assault, under Section 22 of the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act 2000, will be recorded only by female magistrates. This decision was taken based on the recommendation of the Supreme Court’s Special Committee for Judicial Reforms.

Almost a year ago, the Indian government announced its plan to deport “all illegal immigrants” including approximately 40,000 Rohingya refugees estimated to be living across India. In August 2017 in a letter sent to each of the state governments, India's Ministry of Home Affairs issued an order to “identify and deport all illegal immigrants”, including Rohingya refugees. The home ministry as well as leaders of the ruling BJP insisted that there were links between illegal migrants and threat to national security as they were perceived to be more vulnerable to potential recruitment by terrorist organisations.

More than four million people in Assam are possibly no longer Indian citizens as per the recently published draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC), a process meant to identify and delist those who are “illegal migrants” living in this northeastern state of India.

It is often the case that rape victims prefer to remain silent or "settle" the matter through informal village mediations, instead of resorting to the formal legal system.

The courts in the subcontinent including our Supreme Court had held in a number of decisions that in case of sexual offence there is no illegality in convicting the accused on the sole testimony of the victim. But in reality, the courts have hardly applied this rule in a rape prosecution, particularly in Bangladesh.

The current definition of rape in our Penal Code was formulated in 1890 back in colonial times.

The law of enemy property has a long and complex history in Bangladesh. Although it originated from the emergency laws