Legal and Psychological Counselling for Feminist Resilience in the face of COVID-19, Phase II

INWOLAG a right based organization following its vision and mission in this scenario launched a project to assist the GBV victims, with financial support from WFA. Six different districts were chosen for the intervention where focal persons in different districts were assigned to assist the victim with legal aid. Districts included Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, Kavre, Rupandehi and Banke. All the appointees were female having experience in dealing cases related to Women violence and legal expertise. The purpose of female appointee as a legal advisor was to provide gender friendly environment for the victim, enabling them to express freely and comfortably.

As the part of the activities, Workshop program and Legal Awareness in 6 different districts were conducted to meet the desire objective of the project. 6 different awareness programs were conducted in different districts while 4 different workshops were conducted collaborating different districts in overall time period.

Legal awareness was conducted among the indigenous women community for providing them the knowledge about the gender based violence issues, laws and policies and the impactful ways to cope with the problems. Total of 256 local indigenous women from six districts participated during the legal awareness by the legal counselors. Workshop program was conducted among the local officers, representatives from governmental bodies, attorneys and GBV survivors to sensitize the local officers regarding the GBV issues faced by the GBV survivors. The workshop also helped in building up the coordination and networking among the government, survivors and the organizations. Total 163 participants participated in the workshop program.

Legal Counseling and Psychosocial counseling were provided throughout the year by focal persons and counselors in the different districts. The total number of the cases dealt by the INWOLAG is twenty nine, which includes eleven cases of Rape/Sexual Violence/Child sexual abuse, one case of abduction and trafficking from Banke district. Three cases of writs, two cases of domestic violence, total nine cases of divorce, partition, alimony and transaction from different districts while two cases of defamation were received from Kathmandu and one case of accidental homicide from Banke district. The project started from July, 2022 and completed on August 15, 2023.