HC guidelines on sexual harassment
May 17, 2009
THE move by the High Court last week to lay down a number of guidelines for the authorities to prevent sexual harassment of women is surely a milestone in Bangladesh’s legal history. It has long been known, and publicly pointed out, that women in a very large number of instances and in very many professional and other areas have been subjected to such harassment over the years without any measures being put in place to help them deal with the problem.
Now that the HC has acted, thanks to a public litigation writ petition filed by the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA), we can be reasonably sure that concrete steps will be taken to ensure the security of women in their work and movement, that indeed women will be empowered to take such action as will bring the perpetrators of the crime to book.
A significant feature of the HC action is that its guidelines will be treated as law until a law relating to prevention of sexual harassment is in place. This is important, for it allows no time gap to be there between the directives coming into effect and the actual framing and promulgation of a law. Even more encouraging, the HC’s directive to the authorities regarding the formation of five-member harassment complaint committees, to be headed by a woman, at every workplace and organisation means that sexual harassment of the kind that has been going on for years could now finally be reined in. In these long years, we have repeatedly come across reports of various forms of sexual harassment in such important places as higher academic institutions, government offices and private enterprises. Such nefarious activities have been carried on both openly and subtly. Moreover, with the arrival of e-mails, mobile phones and SMS, harassment of women has appeared to go up. At crowded public places, women have had to go through such humiliation as groping and pinching without being able to take action against the elements indulging in such outrage.
We feel that the High Court directives have opened the window to change of a substantive kind. It not only helps Bangladesh’s women to assert themselves but also reassures the nation that we indeed inhabit a country which means to ensure equality of all kinds and especially between the sexes. It should now be for the government and the private sector to act swiftly on the HC guidelines. When it does, it will be going a major step further in promoting its promised culture of change.
Source: The Daily Star
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