How reading one news story led journalist Kristy Crabtree to explore the misogyny of rural courts in Bangladesh.
by Kristy Crabtree
*All names have been changed to protect the identity and confidentiality of the individuals who shared their stories.
Eight men leaned around a table as midnight approached their village of Tongail, Bangladesh. Resting on the table, two lanterns cast out the only light inside the cold, brick-walled room. They were gathered because of *Rohima.
The men in Rohima’s life – her father, brother, cousins and uncles – clustered around the table to debate her options. Deserted by her husband, she could not divorce, she could not remarry, and she had no income opportunities. Rohima’s is a common fate that follows the tens of thousands of women in Bangladesh abandoned by their husbands on an annual basis. Discriminatory family laws ensure women have unequal access to fair family courts, facilitated divorce rights, marital property and other economic protections.
I, too, sat at the table because of Rohima. She volunteered to share her experience with a writer because in her words (translated to English), “Everyone wants the right justice.” Even if she was unlikely to achieve justice in a conventional way, she at least wanted her story to be recorded.
Although I do speak Bengali, I haven’t mastered the language, so, when speaking with Rohima and the men in the room, I chose to use a translator to pick up the nuances. Despite the fact that I am a woman, my presence was not complicated because I am also a foreigner. The cultural restrictions that apply to Rohima did not apply to me.
Addressing the men in the room, Rohima’s brother asked for their involvement in pursuit of a mediation solution for Rohima. Mediation, they hoped, would change her husband’s mind to end his marriage on the basis that he simply no longer wanted to be married or financially responsible for his wife. Initially, impassioned arguments and accusations darted across the table as the men’s words carried flecks of spit that spotlighted momentarily in front of the flickering lantern light. How had it come to this point? Who is to blame? Where is the husband now?
Although she wasn’t seated at the table with the men, nor spoke in front of them, Rohima hoped this meeting would end the month-long stalemate with her husband. The point the group wrestled over that night was not whether to involve the court, but how to entice Rohima’s husband to meet with the arbitration board, an informal mechanism for mediation made up of locally elected or appointed individuals who campaigned to be representatives. Those elected are not done so through a formal election per se; rather, those on the board are elected for their respected social standings in the community. If they could persuade her husband to meet with an arbitration board, there might be an opportunity for resolution. She was completely dependent on the strategy her male family members and local male leaders were pursuing.
As the oil in the lanterns recessed, the men decided to go to Rohima’s husband’s village and request his presence in arbitration.
Village arbitration and caucuses of this manner remain typical throughout Bangladesh, especially in rural areas where there is a preference toward the most direct route to justice rather than the State’s slow-progressing litigation mechanisms, which often cost more than rural residents are able to pay. One Bangladeshi non-governmental organization (NGO) reported more than 10,000 cases in village arbitration in in 2011 alone. Villagers are accustomed to taking charge in the local justice process through mediation and the assignment of extra-judicial punishments, including fines, physical reprimand, and at times more severe beatings, lashings, forced humiliation or even killings, all of which are done so outside of the law. Informal arbitration requires only a meager financial burden and has the advantage of convenience in comparison to the formal State judicial system, which would require rural residents to jump through bureaucratic hoops, including hiring a lawyer, filing the right paperwork and campaigning for witnesses who will support your character in order to strengthen your case. The State government allows for local mediation boards to resolve issues in rural areas this way, as they understand many rural residents cannot afford the formal processes. The aforementioned punishments (beating, forced humiliation, killing, etc.) are not legal but they are more than often overlooked.
Rohima’s husband rejected the initial offer to meet for arbitration.
The group of men convened three more times over the course of several weeks. When he refused each time, the men grew frustrated with appearing weak to other villagers.
Without her husband’s voluntary participation in arbitration, Rohima could not divorce and could not remarry. In the meantime, her husband – as a man – could continue life stigma-free until he wished to marry again; for now, he simply didn’t want to be financially responsible for Rohima but was not concerned with coming to a resolution quickly since there are no social or legal punishments for him to create a marriage-divorce limbo. With no place of her own, Rohima survived by living with her brother’s family, but that too would be short-lived. Her brother’s one-bedroom shelter already housed his wife, children and parents—all of them supported by his day laborer wages.
Induced by the stalemate with her husband, rumors had been spreading throughout the village that Rohima was a “ruined woman” affected by voodoo, a rumor based mostly on the idea that a voodoo spirit had overtaken her and thus made her undesirable to her husband. Her opportunities for social acceptance dwindled and her reputation in the village turned sour. One family member offered a solution that Rohima could be beaten by a broom and burned by a spoon smoldered over the fire to release the voodoo spirits.
Ultimately, after four attempts, the group accepted that arbitration was no longer a viable pursuit. Though she was still not seated at the table at the final mediation meeting, the men presented Rohima with her possible options. Option one: go to the district court. This implied a monetary obligation to pay fees to the court and a lawyer. It also meant Rohima would have to collect supporters. Campaigning in her village, which would be difficult with the rumors of voodoo, she would have to offer compensation to supporters who promised to forego bribes from her husband. Option two: Rohima could plead with her husband to take her back. Then, at least, there would be someone to take care of her.
If Rohima was a man seated at the table—if her opinion carried equal weight—she could freely divorce her spouse. As an interpretation of the Koran and under talaq, Arabic for a man’s verbal initiation to divorce, he can simply give voice to his intentions and his resolution for divorce would be achieved. But Rohima is a woman in a small village in Bangladesh, and justice for her is neither simple nor forthcoming. For her, no immediate resolution came. Rohima continued living in the space between decisions, married yet abandoned and living day to day, pursued by rumors of voodoo.
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Rohima’s story is not uncommon in her village, a rural area of 20 to 25 families within a larger city of more than 175,000 individuals. It is normalized to the point where, in the span of less than a month living in a small village in Tongail, I heard from 24 other women and girls who were recovering after acts of violence ranging from forced marriage and rape to economic violence such as denial of inheritance and discrimination. In their lifetime, women face a high likelihood of abuse in Bangladesh. A 2014 nationwide survey showed that 87 percent of women are abused by their husbands, with 77 percent facing abuse on a regular and persistent basis.
How I found myself in the village in the first place all started with an article in The Daily Star, a national Bangladesh paper, published four years ago. The 2011 headline that caught my attention was about a 14-year-old girl named Hena who had died unexpectedly. Hena’s death wasn’t due to disease, malnutrition, or an accident. Her death was the result of a punishment after she was raped by her 40-year-old cousin. Although Hena was the victim of the sexual assault, she was punished with 101 lashes prescribed by local religious and community leaders in a village arbitration court. She only stayed conscious for 60 of the 101 lashes ordered for her punishment. After 60, she fell unconscious and later died.
I read this story as a white, middle-class, educated woman living in the New York, and hoped that it was a one-time, rare-as-ever story. I knew from my time in Bangladesh as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer (2005-2006), however, that that was unlikely because of my work at a girls’ school where I regularly heard from my students about discrimination. Since that time, in my several trips back to Bangladesh, I consistently heard from women and girls about harmful traditional practices they survived and cultural restrictions on their choices. I had followed the Bangladesh news regularly since, but it wasn’t until reading Hena’s story that I was roused to research further.
Hena’s death wasn’t a singular incident. Her story is not dissimilar to those of many other survivors of gender-based violence. Under makeshift informal village arbitrations, survivors face extreme obstacles to achieve even the most minimal justice. Worse, although they are victims, survivors often end up being punished. Five months prior to Hena’s death, the High Court, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court, had passed a ruling reaffirming an existing law outlawing the types of extra-judicial punishments she suffered. Yet, even with this declaration by the High Court, Hena wasn’t protected. The law went unenforced.
Other documented violence, news stories, and existing advocacy on the issue showed the same thing. I discovered an existing movement in Bangladesh against extra-judicial punishment, including women like Sara Hossein from BLAST, a legal service and advocacy organization; Khushi Kabir from Nijera Kori, an organization that promotes community organizing; and Dr. Dina Siddiqi of BRAC University, an academic whose research on gender and women in South Asia is extensive.
Some of these women funnel their energy toward changing legislation, like BLAST. Others like Nijera Kori (which literally means “we do it ourselves” in Bengali) focus on organizing landless groups – those who do not own property for agricultural reasons – in hopes of changing power dynamics in rural areas. Among these women as well as others, the existing movement calling for an end to violence against women and equal access to legal protection progresses in Bangladesh.
After speaking with these three movement-makers over several months, first via email, then over the phone, then in person, it seemed the next step was to hear from women themselves about their experiences seeking justice. That seemed to be the missing piece – what was the opinion of women experiencing violence and trying to navigate the judicial system? Should arbitration boards be abolished? Should they be reformed? What solution would equalize the outcome for survivors of gender-based violence?
I met with Kabir to discuss her observations from Nijera Kori’s perspective. Her organization brings together landless people to form autonomous groups. These groups complement the traditional arbitration board seeking to resolve disputes related to government safety nets, healthcare, violence against women, land-grabbing, and access to resources by providing technical and legal support.
“Traditionally if there is a dispute, the leaders of the village, always elite males, would resolve the dispute and give a verdict,” Kabir said. Women had little voice in the process, and would likely not even be present in an arbitration meeting concerning an issue they raised.
With Nijera Kori’s intervention, landless groups form a village committee, and offer alternative dispute resolution based by training on existing laws. They bring female observers to ensure women’s points of view are included, and they advocate for police and court interventions instead of non-State arbitration boards in the event of more serious issues like rape, murder, and assault.
Judicial appellants gravitate toward village dispute resolution not only because of familiarity and low cost, but also because the formal courts often have an excess of cases that quickly become delayed. For Nijera Kori, the solution is not to eradicate arbitration boards. Instead, there are improvements that can be made while still allowing room for the convenience, speedy resolution, and the low-cost benefits that village courts provide. To Kabir, this means women are represented on village arbitration boards and that laws from the High Court and Parliament are communicated at the village level.
Without an alternative perspective to balance the scales, gendered power dynamics remain in place, making justice for women a largely unrealizable aspiration. Yet, there are examples of opportunities for positive change as well. Based on my interviews with women, there are three key changes that need to take place. First, functionally-powerless individuals need to unite and organize themselves. Second, women using arbitration boards need to be cognizant about laws and rights and feel empowered to act on this knowledge. Third, women need to be represented in the arbitration boards. In Tongail, I came across examples of each of these elements that if promoted more broadly could mean great change.
As with any method for pursuing justice, the powerful and wealthy inevitably tip the scales in their favor. However, village arbitration can have beneficiaries beyond the elite. A vibrant social mobilization movement in Bangladesh targets the landless poor and day laborers to build their collective strength. For those organized in this manner, strength in numbers can bring victories that challenge traditional power dynamics.
In one village, a group organized by Nijera Kori challenged a local civil officer when they realized he had scammed them of rightful food subsidies. Months after many villagers paid the man for the benefit of the subsidies, they were informed that the food subsidies were freely provided by the government. Normally the officer, with access to more information, connections to local elected leaders and a monetary advantage, would be able to cast off their grievances, possibly due to bribery. However, united, the villagers convened an arbitration meeting with the officer, and when confronted by the group, he confessed. After being threatened with physical punishment – not a resolution that Nijera Kori teaches, but a decision this particular group made on its own – he returned the money stolen through his fraudulent claim.
Despite the fact that extra-judicial punishments are illegal in Bangladesh, the organized group of villagers greatly improved their opportunity for corrective justice. Armed with accurate information from Nijera Kori, they were able to demand action. Although this example is not linked to women’s access to justice specifically, there is still a clear benefit to groups of individuals uniting to balance against those possessing traditional claims to power.
Community organizing is one method that will improve women’s access to justice and to challenge traditional power holders. This is strengthened further when combined with rights-based knowledge and empowerment. Meeting *Amena, a woman who had participated in rights-based training with Nijera Kori, illustrated this point.
Amena’s face beamed when she told me about how she prevented an early marriage. The day before a 12-year-old girl in her village was to be married, Amena stepped in. A marriage at that age is an illegal act in Bangladesh; the law states a person can be married at age 18 and no earlier. Yet illegal marriages like this persist in rural areas where families have a lower dowry to pay and more potential suitors. With the rights-based training provided to her by a local NGO about laws against early marriage and other forms of violence against women, Amena felt empowered to take action.
A last minute intervention coordinated with the girl’s school teacher and neighbors gave Amena the confidence to confront the girl’s parents about their desire to marry their daughter at a young age. Initially this induced quarreling between Amena and the girl’s parents, but Amena and her supporters persisted, and eventually they prevented the marriage.
The delay caused by Amena’s protest opened space for the girl’s parents to reconsider their decision to marry their daughter early in the face of opposition from their immediate social network. Because of Amena’s intercession, the girl completed school, avoided early pregnancy, and ultimately had a voice in who she married six years later. Amena’s story represents the potential influence of this combination of rights-based knowledge and confidence to take action.
But even with access to information, women need representation on arbitration boards to equalize justice outcomes. As *Talsima, another villager explained, when she used to observe arbitrations the committee members would tell her to leave because she was a woman. This only emboldened Talsima to find a place on the arbitration committee. Outside her working hours in the cauliflower fields she maneuvered several meetings with local leaders and earned a position on the arbitration committee.
For Talsima, however, this hasn’t been the complete panacea. Being the lone women on an arbitration board of 10, her presence has not translated into justice for women. “I’m a bit weak,” she told me through a translator. “I wish there were more women [on the board]. Because I am alone on the board, I cannot make a step forward. This is a male-dominated society: whatever the decision, it’s the men who make it.”
Talsima’s is a unique feat. Yet, for women facing village arbitration, equalizing the potential outcome means changing the gender ratios of local arbitration boards. Talsima knows change might be slow, but it comes only if you take a position and stand obstinate. Presence is the beginning of power, and Talsima feels confident she won’t be the only woman on the board for long.
Access to justice through conventional routes comes riddled with obstacles: how to report safely and confidentially; how to cover court and lawyer fees; how to remain protected while enduring the long judicial process. However, the other option, village arbitration, exists with challenges as well. Outcomes in arbitration are often based on patriarchal beliefs about gender roles and not state laws guaranteeing protection from assault and equal treatment under the law (Article 27 of the Constitution). The problem resides not only in flawed methods for justice, but also in the harmful beliefs that devalue women and dilute their ability to pursue justice to its fullest extent. Under this type of system, women’s truths go untold, their harm goes uncorrected, and hostile conditions for justice persist.
If communities employed these three techniques, justice could be more balanced. If women were united and involved in community organizing or NGO-reformed village arbitration; if women knew their rights and felt empowered to advocate; and if women were better represented on arbitration boards, justice outcomes could be revolutionized. If these were the conditions, women could tell their truths and secure resolutions. For Rohima and other survivors, this would mean a different outcome—not one where they live a day-to-day existence, in a limbo dependent on the decisions of the men in their lives. Instead of choosing among harmful decisions, these three changes to the justice process would mean women could exercise agency, have meaningful access to due process, and have their claims and complaints heard by other women.
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Kristy Crabtree is a Seattle-based writer who focuses on issues of gender-based violence, forced displacement, and ethics in GBV data management. She has written for Forced Migration Review, Ode Magazine, Glimpse Magazine, The Irawaddy, The Huffington Post, Perspectives on Global Issues, Queens Courier, Yahoo News, Monthly Developments Magazine and the Journal of Muslim Mental Health. She currently works in the International Rescue Committee’s Women’s Protection and Empowerment technical unit as the GBV Information Management Specialist. Follow her on Twitter @kristycrabtree.
