This report documents diverse strategies adopted by community groups in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Nepal to negotiate women’s rights in the context of culture, while grounding the strategies in the specific political - historic local and national contexts. It looks at secular strategies along with the more recent responses to fundamentalism, that use cultural identity and religious/ cultural resources. The report provides a rich account initiatives that promote culture as relational, transforming, plural and accommodating of women’s rights, and in doing so, challenges dominant static and fundamentalist assertions of culture. This documentation assumes significance in relation to human rights with the creation of the new mandate of the Independent Expert in the field of Cultural Rights in 2009, in that it gives content to the term cultural diversity and participation and contribution to cultural life, both integral part of Cultural Rights.  

Advocate Salahuddin Dolon v Bangladesh, Writ Petition No. 4495 of 2009

Summary: The High Court today directed the Ministry of Education to take immediate steps to implement the Guidelines on Sexual Harassment declared earlier in BNWLA v Bangladesh, and to ensure that no woman working in any educational institution, public or private is forced to wear a veil or cover her head, and may exercise her personal choice whether or not to do so. [1]The Court also observed that Section 27A of the Government Servants Discipline and Conduct Rules 1979, must be read alongside these Guidelines, to ensure that public officials are held to account for any acts of sexual harassment.

The Court observed “It is the personal choice of a woman to wear a veil. If any person tries to compel a woman to wear a veil against her consent or will that amounts to a violation of her fundamental rights as enshrined in the Constitution”.