Initially, she formed a common ground to gather women to share their experiences in order to start a movement against injustice faced by widows. With time, along with several volunteers, she conducted research and raised issues to highlight the inequity among widows. In 1994, Thapa established Women for Human Rights, (WHR) Single Women Group which in its effort to eliminate plights of vulnerable, discriminated and exploited widows, works to uplift and empower widows and make their voices heard at the policy level. [break]
Issues like illiteracy, poor economic background, and religious doctrine are some of the factors that build prejudice against widows making it a global problem even at this age, especially in South Asian countries. WHR specifically works with widows in rural areas as Thapa explains that rural widows are more prone to exploitation due to ignorance and lack of awareness. [break]
Photo: Keshab Thoker
Through the organization, she has helped empower widows who belong to the helpless, excluded and disadvantaged groups and through its service, has even supported young widows whose husbands were killed in Nepal’s 11-year insurgency by providing them their basic rights. Since its establishment, WHR has been mobilizing widows from such groups to become a change agent themselves in their community and so far has supported more than 84,000 widows in 1,050 villages, municipality and development committees in 73 districts of Nepal.
Thapa believes that widows should be categorized as single women and in their fight for justice, the organization has helped to implement several policies. For instance, the property widows inherited from their deceased husband need not be returned to her husband’s family after remarriage, widows don’t need to reach the age of 35 to inherit their husband’s property and they no longer need to take permission of the male family member to obtain a passport.
“There are many problems faced by widows as widow-related gender based violence has not been researched well. So we work in raising awareness to uplift widows, empower and mobilize them as change makers and improve their status by helping them reclaim their dignity in the society,” says Thapa.
The Week met with Thapa to talk more about status of widows in Nepal and the challenges that she has faced while fighting for their rights.
Tell us something about your work.
Since the last nineteen years, we’ve been focused on the issues of widows at a national level.
There are many issues of violence against widows that needs to be addressed and we work on using mechanisms accordingly for our work to be more pragmatic and effective. We work at the central level and though the main focus is to capacitate them by working at the grassroots level; another job is to work on the central level or policy level in order to make international agendas as well. We should consider the fact that the issues of widows are prevalent worldwide. Out of 7 billion people in the world, 3 billion are women and many of them are widows. There are many women who have become widows due to conflict, HIV, trafficking, natural disasters and many young widows are increasing so this is why we need to look at their issues specifically.
What motivated you to start WHR?
I became a widow at a very young age and after witnessing discrimination against widows, I was inspired to start WHR. One of the initial challenges that I faced was that the concept was not clear to everyone. Nobody had worked solely for the rights of widows at that time. When I went to the Chief District Office for registration as we needed citizenship to work, I hardly received any positive response. That motivated me to fight for widows’ rights. I think that was probably the first time that a cause for widows was being addressed.
What are the main obstacles that you faced while working for widows’ right in Nepal?
It’s always difficult to interfere with family matters so sometimes it was hard to approach widows who faced problems. The other thing is that we respect cultural and religious sentiments and we hardly ever dare to revolt against the practices that have either of these significances. There are cases when many women have been termed as untouchables and considered a bad omen and discriminated just for being a widow. I’ve also been through it and it’s still difficult to break that taboo especially in the rural areas. Even now we can see practices like widows not being allowed to wear red or to attend certain functions. Unless we discard this traditional mentality of people, it’ll be hard to change things.
How are the problems of widows of rural areas different than that of urban areas in Nepal?
The situation of widows all over the country is somewhat the same but there are many differences as well. In rural areas there are financial issues and the recent census date has showed that 88 percent of Nepali widows are illiterate so their dependency is high making them vulnerable. In urban areas, the widows are self dependent to some extent as compared to the ones from rural areas. Though economically they may be sound, psychologically they’re facing the same trauma. In urban areas, the dependency may be less as they have more access to resources but in rural the mobility is high. There are hardly any cases of mobility for urban widows because they have to maintain their status and standard. But besides urban and rural there are many differences when it comes to class and caste as well.
What are the steps that WHR taken to empower women?
First of all to socially empower women, we need to change the mindset of people. To do that we need to raise awareness regarding equal rights for widows. By bringing awareness, we strive to change the way in which widows are perceived. We try to make widows self reliant and independent. We also take their issues to the policy level of the government and the mainstream level. It’s safe to say that our NGO works like a model for everyone to follow.
How has the support of the government been like when it comes to widow’s rights?
I think the policies and support from the government has been fairly good as compared to other South Asian countries when it comes to helping us in pushing the agendas for widows’ rights. If the government had not been supportive enough then it’d not have been possible to change five to six laws regarding the rights of single women and to implement the policies against widow discrimination. The government also brought social security schemes and set agendas and such policies have been brought into mainstream as the government has separated budget as well. Policies supporting widows rights are there on paper but it just has to be practically implemented now.
What are the other issues that you think the government needs to address?
One of the issues that we’ve been facing is that there isn’t any clear definition of conflict not even with the government so the question of who exactly is the victim of conflict arises time and again. Before financial aid wasn’t provided for the family of Maoists who became widows after they lost their husbands during the insurgency period but we advocated for their rights and helped them get the relief money.
Now, the main problem we face is every time a new government comes in power, it announces their own people as martyrs and claims the one million financial aid that has been separated for the victims of the family. So in this way many others who’ve lost their husbands in the conflict claim that their husbands are martyrs too and have the right to receive aid. There are discriminations right now in the policies as some get less or some get more financial aid. So there isn’t any proper category defining that and that is one of the issues that need to be resolved by the government. We’ve also fought for widows to get their share of property even after remarriage but it has still been difficult to implement that policy.
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To rise above the stereotype notion of widows, fight for their justice and formulate strategic agendas to appeal to UN to immediately incorporate a separate UN resolution on Widowhood, an international conference was organized in Kathmandu by WHR. The conference titled “Enriching the journey towards empowerment of Single Women” was held for three days from February 4 to 6, in collaboration with SANWED (South Asian Network for Widows’ Empowerment in Development) and UN Democracy fund. The conference was held to highlight the grim reality of widows around the world and collect responses on the General Recommendation submitted to the UN.
With participation and presentations by representatives from sixteen different countries including Afghanistan, Burundi, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Israel, Italy and Japan, the outcome of the conference will be disseminated during the workshop at the 57th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 57) under the theme of Violence against Women to be held at United Nations Headquarters in New York in March 2013.
Thapa’s take on the conference
There are resolutions on older women, trafficking, HIV, violence against women and many other issues under UN except a separate resolution on widows. The main focus behind organizing this conference was to discuss the rights of windows in order to appeal to the UN to adopt a separate resolution on widowhood. There was international participation especially from South Asia as maximum problem of widowhood is experienced by women of South Asia.
The main process to reach a consensus through discussions on important agendas and presentations was prepared here during the conference and later every participating country will then endorse the strategy through their own country to precede the movement to the UN. The General Recommendation of Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on issues of widowhood was submitted together by WHR from Nepal, along with India and UK last year. So to make our approach even more authentic this conference was organized with involvement of more countries.
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