Gender violence blamed for suicides among women

CHITRAL, Oct 7: The participants of a workshop here Sunday suggested that gender violence must be weeded out because it poses as one of the reasons of the rising trend of committing suicide among the women in Chitral. The workshop on gender violence was held for local media persons under the auspices of Legal Awareness Program for Human Rights (LAPH)  to sensitize them to chalk out a strategy to contain the trend. The speakers enumerated a large number of the manifestations of gender based violence and said that in this region, the women folk are vulnerable to them from within the boundaries of their houses to the working places and educational institutions. Divided into a number of groups, they worked out a strategy concluding that the women must be protected from gender based violence to save them taking the extreme step of ending her life. A large number of case studies of suicide in Chitral established it firmly that the women committing suicide were the victims of gender based violence and they had no place of consolation and help against the perpetrators, they said. They strategy proposed a crises cell for the victims of violence to rush to their help and rescue. The local intellectual and former project manager of IUCN Dr. Inayatullah Faizi conducted the workshop and concluded the suggestions of the working groups and presented his paper about the social problem. The chairman of LAPH, Niaz Ali Shah said that his organization was engaged creating awareness regarding human rights in Chitral with special emphasis on the plight of women. He said that organizations on grass root level were being formed named human rights monitoring committees (HRMCs) on union council levels which will involve more number of people in monitoring and controlling the gender based violence.–Zahiruddin ]]>