Amid a formal function organized by the United Struggle Committee of all political parties, UCPN (Maiost) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Chairman of CPN-UML Jhalanath Khanal, Nepali Congress General Secretary Krishna Sitaula and Devendra Mishra, acting president of Sadbhawana Party (Anandadevi), among others signed in a common declaration paper. [break]
Several points including that the political parties´ agendas and policies should aptly address women´s issues, their party cadres should be provided with certain level of gender training and political protection to perpetrators should come to an end were listed in the declaration.
Speaking the function, Dahal stated that women´s liberation cannot be undermined if at all we believe in a progressive and prosperous society. “What is happening now is the result of long-existing transitional phase in the country. Whatever is happening against women these days clearly indicates that our society is going out of track,” he said.
Leaders in the program. (Photo: Bijay Rai)
Dahal told the parties that all of them are in the same boat now and called for institutionalizing all the major achievements made so far in order to ensure that the boat remains safe. “We should forget our differences and work to save the boat,” he said responding to the several allegations by earlier Speaker Khanal and Sitaula.
Khanal had expressed utter dissatisfaction over the continuation of the current government terming it as good for nothing. “Women´s issues cannot be separated from the national or political issues. While I express my and my party´s commitment to each and all points made in the declaration, I also need to stress that the current deadlock created by the current government has come to an end in order to pave the way for any kind of progress,” he said.
Similarly, Situala stressed that there is no alternative to forging consensus. He added that violence against women is becoming a major social issue in entire South Asia and it is gaining momentum in Nepal as well. “This will indeed trigger change. But we all should be committed to fight for gender justice from our own level. What we can do least is discourage lavish parties and ceremonies in the name of wedding and discourage dowry system among other things,” he said.
According to Chandra Dev Joshi, the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Samyukta), women´s economic empowerment alone can make them anything more than a male´s ´bed partner´. “Until and unless a woman is financially independent she will continue to suffer at the hands of the breadwinner.”
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