Urgent Call for Protection Against GBV!
Around 14 years ago, I was working as a young careerist for a national NGO in Bangladesh. At the time, a case story by one of my colleagues working under the Violence against Women and Girls (VAW) component, caught me one day. What I found really gruesomely disturbing at the time was the fact that a destitute girl with disability was made to marry her rapist. To me it showcased, an even more alarmingly perpetuating vicious cycle against survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) in Bangladesh. What were her families thinking? Were they so concerned about saving the girl’s family from so-called-shame and dishonour? Or was her family forced into compliance instead to save the heinous criminal’s family from shame? That’s an untold story I never had the chance to dig deep enough into though …