Women’s Rights Groups Welcome New Legal Protections Against Sexual Violence in the Maldives, including Marital Rape

• Opinion by Divya Srinivasan, Humaida Abdulghafoor (new delhi, india)
• Wednesday, December 22, 2021
• Inter Press Service

The move has been welcomed by national and international women’s rights groups which have been calling for greater legal protection against sexual violence.

In the Maldives, sexual assault has traditionally been viewed as a private matter. However, research-backed evidence has enabled campaigners and survivors to build public awareness.

The ground breaking Women’s Life and Health Experiences (WHLE) study by the Maldives Ministry of Health (2007) revealed that one in five women between the ages of 15 and 49 experienced intimate partner violence and one in eight women were subjected to childhood sexual violence.

The efforts of activists have fuelled growing recognition at all levels including policy, law and public awareness that the State must do more to effectively prevent, address and respond to widespread violence against women and girls.

A high profile case involving an attempted rape on a safari boat in the harbour of Hulhumale in June 2020 resulted in public protests and increased calls for police accountability in rape cases. The outcry prompted lawmakers to propose amendments to existing sexual violence legislation, including the nullification of certain discriminatory provisions from the Sexual Offences Act.

Hailed as an important step towards ensuring access to justice for all survivors, the reforms just signed into law improve the definition of rape, sexual injury, and sexual assault, and apply such offences regardless of marital status.

Previously, marital rape was only criminalised under certain limited circumstances, specifically when the marriage was in the process of dissolution, when one of the parties had applied for a divorce, if the couple was living separately under a mutual agreement, or if the husband knowingly passed a dangerous sexually transmitted disease to the wife.

The only marital rape conviction in the country was issued by the High Court on 1 October 2020. The victim in the case died from the assault -- the posthumously reached verdict was possible through the narrow definition of rape in the law at the time (as the victim was separated from her husband).

Therefore, the current amendment criminalising marital rape without exceptions is a significant milestone in sexual violence legal history in the Maldives.

New amendments to the law also specify the provision of rape evidence kits at all government hospitals and health centres, and training for staff on using the kits, including applying a "victim-centred and trauma-informed" approach.

In addition, the Maldives Police Service has been mandated to use rape evidence kits while investigating sexual offence cases. It is anticipated that the implementation of these changes will help to increase the investigative robustness of rape cases and ensure survivors have a better chance to access justice than before.

In a further improvement, certain discriminatory evidence provisions have been removed. Previously, the court could throw out rape cases on the grounds that there was a possibility of false testimony being submitted by the victim assessed based on the so-called “dignity and discipline of the victim”.

This had left the door open for the introduction of evidence relating to the past sexual history of the victim, regardless of its relevance as to whether or not she had consented to the particular sexual act in the case.

The court was also able to consider “the relationship between the parties and the transactions between them prior to the offence” and construe that on these grounds it was improbable that an offence had occurred.

Another progressive amendment is the removal of a provision which previously allowed the denial of sexual violence if there was a long delay between the occurrence of the incident and its reporting, and if the incident was not narrated to another person in the intervening time.

International human rights standards state that there should be no adverse inference due to delay in reporting since there are many valid reasons why survivors do not report rape immediately.

The deletion of these discriminatory provisions from the statute books is extremely welcome as they enabled the course of justice to be perverted, and gender stereotyping and secondary victimisation of survivors during legal proceedings.

For survivors of sexual violence, the new amendments have eliminated some of the barriers to justice identified by Equality Now and Dignity Alliance International in a joint report Sexual Violence in South Asia: Legal and Other Barriers to Justice for Survivors, which calls on the Maldives, along with Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, to take urgent action in addressing sexual violence, improving access to justice for survivors, and holding perpetrators to account.

Legally permitting impunity for rape within marriage treats women as the property of their husbands and takes away their rights over their own body. By criminalising marital rape without exception, the Maldives is now more in line with international human rights standards and aligned with other countries in the South Asian region such as Nepal and Bhutan.

However, marital rape is still not a criminal offence in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, where human rights activists continue to advocate for legal reform.

Uthema is a Maldivian women’s rights NGO that advocates for gender equality and has been calling for better legal protection and access to legal redress for those subjected to sexual and gender-based violence.

Uthema congratulates the Government of the Maldives on this important positive change to the law and calls on all relevant State authorities to ensure that the law is fully and effectively implemented.

The legal modifications just passed have opened up avenues to justice for survivors, and introduce a much-needed deterrent to would-be perpetrators. This is crucially needed to address the problem of underreporting of sexual assaults, which is very low due to the system-wide service and law enforcement gaps.

Ensuring public and stakeholder awareness of the amendments, improving low reporting rates for rape, and improving investigation and prosecution procedures, are now the need of the hour.

The Maldives has taken a significant and progressive step to achieve justice for survivors of sexual violence, particularly within marriage. In a socio-cultural context where conservative forces continue to advocate for unequal marital relations and archaic patriarchal notions that marriage is a contract of ownership of women’s bodies for men, this legal shift sends an important message to all Maldivian people.

That message is that women in the Maldives have an inherent legal right to bodily autonomy and dignity as a separate human person deserving of equality with men, security, safety, optimal physical and mental health and wellbeing within marriage, free from sexual or any other form of violence.

For media enquiries please contact: Tara Carey, Equality Now, Head of Media Manager, E: tcarey@equalitynow.org; M: +447971556340 (WhatsApp)

Equality Now is an international human rights organisation that works to protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world by combining grassroots activism with international, regional and national legal advocacy. For more details go to www.equalitynow.org, Facebook @equalitynoworg, and Twitter @equalitynow.

Uthema is a women’s human rights NGO registered in 2016, advocating for gender equality and women's empowerment in the Maldives.

Divya Srinivasan is Equality Now South Asia Consultant, and Humaida Abdulghafoor, Uthema Co-Founder and Member

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© Inter Press Service (2021) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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