By Riya | Rescue Project Director
Hello everyone, this is Riya, the Director of the Gaya Rescue Project in Bihar.
Namaste .
Past reports have contained many stories from the girls we have helped, but for this update I thought I would write about the environment in which we work.
The Government of India has committed to eliminating violence against women and girls through numerous policies, laws, and programs, yet one in three women aged 15–49 experiences some form of physical or sexual violence during her lifetime.
The state of Bihar is the third most populous state in India. The level of violence against women and girls in Bihar is the highest in India: 56% of women have experienced violence, and 57% of men and women believe that intimate partner violence is acceptable. Only 21% of women in Bihar who have suffered violence have sought help.
Bihar is one of the hotspots of child marriage in India as 51 percent girls there are married even before they are 18 years of age, officials said here Wednesday.
“Fifty-one percent of girls are married before they are 18 in Bihar,” said N. Vijaya Lakshmi, managing director of the Women Development Corporation of the state government.
In her welcome address at a day-long workshop on the prevention of child marriage in Bihar, she said the mean age at marriage for girls is 17.4 in the state as against 19.5 for the country.
“Child marriage is rampant but reporting is poor. Lack of data is a key issue to make a difference,” she said.
According to her, the vicious circle of poverty works in predictable patterns in Bihar. Poverty coupled with other social factors lead to early marriage. The child marriage then leads to deprivation of education and vulnerability to health risks and increases the risk of domestic violence and abuse.
This is from new Times of India
“Does our country’s law and order system reach up to the mark? A data, released by the Crime Records Bureau, stating that 3037 girls went missing from Bihar last year, is answering the question rightly. As we all know, the traffickers mostly find their prey from the poverty-stricken regions. Unfortunately, Bihar is one of the poorest states in our country. Thus, it is highly vulnerable to the human trafficking crimes. It seems that the political executives of Bihar are not aware of this fact. If not, why did Bihar Home Minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav, when questioned by BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav regarding the rapid rise of ‘girl missing cases’, say in the state assembly in a careless manner that most of the missed girls were grown up girls so they may not have been kidnapped forcefully. It is clear from his statement that this responsible government representative believes ‘love affairs’ is the main reason for this increasing ‘girl missing cases’, as it is a usual thing that when the girl elopes with his lover because of the ‘love affair’ her relatives file a ‘missing case’. But, countering the idle argument, some social workers ask if the love affair theory is true why there are still many cases marked unresolved. In the city of Patna alone, nearly 656 ‘girl missing’ cases reported last year”.
Please help us continue our work, every girl we rescue is another life saved.
These statistics are girls like the one in the photograph with all her possesions on her head, now safely at Rescue Junction
More in the next update with stories from the girls themselves,
Thank you,
Riya
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