Human Rights Now (HRN), a Tokyo-based international human rights NGO conducted an investigation on violence against women in India during its research mission of the "violence against women project" from September 15 to September 22, 2008 and published this report with recommendations.
HRN's Violence Against women project aims: to build a network with women's organizations and NGOs fighting against violence in Asia and to improve the current situation of violence by conducting investigations and making policy proposals in cooperation with such organizations. Another goal of the project is to change the aid policy of the Japanese government which has almost no targeted aid plan to exterminate the violence against women in Asia despite being one of the main donor countries in the region.
The research focused on India, the region where the violence against women is reported to be severe: the violence against women includes domestic violence, dowry-related violence, sati, acid attacks, "witch hunting", violence related to child marriage, and rape.
The research focus is on domestic violence (DV), which is an urgent problem in India since a great number of women have been killed by their husbands and husbands' family members. Various NGOs have been making efforts to improve the situation by pressuring the government to enact laws against DV. As a result, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 (DV act) was enacted. Although the enactment of the DV act was a significant step towards changing the situation, the implementation of the act has been far from successful. Thus, the main focus of this research is, along with the investigation of the reality of DV, to observe the role the DV act plays in real life--particularly to identify the cause of problems as well as possible solutions. Due to time restrictions, the HRN research mission selected two areas in India - Delhi and Rajasthan. The capital, Delhi, was chosen to examine the status of implementation of the law and to gain an overview of how the law is enforced nation-wide. Rajasthan was chosen since the state is seen as facing serious and typical problems of violence against women.
The mission found serious gaps between law and reality related to VAW (Violence Against Women) in India and its causes, as well as made several recommendations at the end of this report to fill the gap in order to protect women from violence.
HRN expresses its deepest thanks for the cooperation and support given to the research mission by numerous organizations and individuals.
