Share-Net Bangladesh’s CoP members meet to discuss Sexual Harassment

As part of the 16 days activism against Gender Based Violence (GBV), Share-Net Bangladesh organised a Community of Practice (CoP) Meeting on ‘The situation of Sexual Harassment in Bangladesh’ at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dhaka.

A total of 24 members from 18 organisations were present at the meeting to share their work in the SRHR field and the barriers or gaps they have in terms of effectively carrying out their work.

Arnob Chakrabarty, Managing Director of RedOrange Media and Communications chaired the discussion. He opened the session and shared specific objectives of the meeting.

Dr. Abul Hossain, Project Director, MOWCA joined the meeting as the Chief Guest. Upon addressing the issue of sexual harassment, he said that “instead of focusing more on law and policy implementation, we should invest more in prevention of such incidents in the future and it can be made possible by educating individuals along with their families.”

Hans Angenent, First Secretary/Controller, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands presented a newly reformed policy guideline on ‘Sexual Harassment in the Workplace’, developed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He strongly asserted that organisations adapt to the codes of conduct mentioned in the new policy or it might hamper their possibility of acquiring funding from the Embassy in the future.. Some of the guidelines involved: maintaining confidentiality of the victim’s identity; setting an action plan to tackle inappropriate behaviour; and to follow a ‘zero tolerance’ policy on sexual harassment.

Gazi Sakir Mohammad Pritom, Senior Research Associate from JPG School of Public Health, BRAC University shared findings from the desk review on ‘Sexual Harassment in Bangladesh’ during this meeting. The desk review was conducted by Share-Net Bangladesh as part of its knowledge generation activity.

Syeda Samara Mortada, Communications Analyst, UN Women, spoke about the terms ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘inappropriate behaviour’, and the seriousness of the fact that these two terms are very different from each other and must not be used interchangeably.

Umme Farhana Zarif, BANDHU Social Welfare Society laid importance on the fact that transgender women must not be left out when the issue of sexual harassment is raised. She said, “A big group of transgender women are vulnerable to sexual harassment, but there is no data to show that.”

Saimum Reja, Senior Lecturer, BRAC University School of Law discussed the serious problem of cyber sexual harassment and how young people fall prey to the impending epidemic. He said that the cyber crime unit should put more effort in addressing such cyber crimes find effective ways to deal with online sexual harassment.

Nakib Rajib Ahmed, Head of Programme, RedOrange Media and Communications said that “Rigorous media content should be analysed since some media content have influence on Sexual Harassment.”

The chair of the meeting shed light on the power of national advocacy campaign on the issue, while the Chief Guest concluded the session mentioning “There should be a collaborative effort from all the organisations who are working on Sexual Harassment in Bangladesh.”