Birendranagar, July 23, In a bid to push a campaign for eliminating social malpractices and taboos, an inter-generational dialogue programme was organized at Birendranagar of Surkhet on Monday.
The Story Kitchen organized the event with financial support from UN Women to take ahead the social campaign. On the occasion, participants had stressed the need to end alarming practices of Chhaupadi (keeping women and girls in cowsheds during menstruation),
Child marriage and selective abortion of female fetuses in Karnali. Madhurani Dhakal, Executive Director of Women’s Association for Marginalized Women (WAM) said growing trend of sex selective abortion in want of son has negatively impacted women’s reproductive health.
She further noted such women have witnessed serious health complications including uterus pro-lapse. Likewise, prevalence of child marriage is also formidable in society, said Nisha Poudel, right activist and psycho-social counselor of Aawaz Sanstha.
“The forms of child marriage have changed over the time”, she said, adding it is not the parents but the children themselves who take initiative for early marriage these days.
“In the previous fiscal year alone, 20 child marriage cases were registered in the organization. However, no case was taken to legal recourse”, she added. Dila BK of Police Women Cell said number of male having second marriage in want of son has invariably gone up in society.
As many as 43 polygamy cases were registered in the previous fiscal year, she shared. Biswani Joshi from Ministry of Social Development underlined the need of collective actions of stakeholders against social anomalies.
Also speaking on the occasion, Anu Upadhyay of Equal Access Digital Broadcasting Initiative said the dialogue event was organized to engage people representing three generations for social cause.
