Editorial
Violence against women has been commonly understood by many human rights and CSOs. However, shuttle violence prevalent in politics in the form of discrimination, isolation, intimidation, threat and coercion leading to psychological violence is generally ignored or misunderstood or considered as normal behavior in politics. Aspects of gendered violence in politics are not so far seriously considered by even champions of gender experts of violence against women. Even international instruments and mechanism such as CEDAW, UNSCR 1325 and Beijing platform have been silent about the issues of VAWIP. Collecting evidence from the field to prove the dynamics of VAWIP thus has to be considered as important for promoting women in decision making position, which is a new facet of the program proposed.
Politics being dominated by men always designs political party system and process in such a hierarchical and patriarchal manner whereby women do not get space in the leadership. The fear of being out of power politics force women to silently suffer atrocities faced within political parties, election process and political system. Thus the cases of political violence against women are not recorded and shared among women politicians as well with media and human rights groups. The formation of Watch Group/Protection Triangle at local level consisting of active and conscious citizen groups (human rights communities, media, lawyers, security personnel/agencies, government agencies and political leaders) could help in identifying and recording the cases of violence against women in politics as well as supporting the process of initiating actions against perpetrators. The documentation of cases of violence, coping mechanism and actions against perpetrators will help in determining various forms of political violence against women and gaps in the current national and international laws, provision (including election code of ethics) and mechanism (formal and informal). It will provide new dimension to existing definition, issues and legal provisions of violence against women from political perspective. It is necessary to engage multi-stakeholders such as CSOs, human rights groups, media, lawyers and government line agencies including security agencies along with women politicians, political parties and election commissions during the implementation process which will provide opportunity of knowledge sharing among different stakeholders. This will eventually help in building new perspective of political violence and implication of these among women in politics. This would ultimately promote the process of active participation of women in politics.
