Domestic violence rates are high in Bangladesh in spite of laws such as the Nari o Shishu Nirjatan Domon Ain and the DVPPA 2010. According to data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, almost three in every five women (57.7%) have experienced some form of physical, sexual, or emotional violence in their lifetime.
While the formulation and enactment of the DVPPA in 2010 was an achievement for the government, especially the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs that proposed it and the coalition for domestic violence known as the Citizens Initiative against Domestic Violence (CIDV) that championed it, subsequent experience of implementation has been less positive.
This Countering Backlash policy brief outlines details, key messages and recommendations from research into the implementation of the DVPPA conducted in 2022 by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University, as part of the “Countering Backlash: Reclaiming Gender Justice” programme hosted at the Institute of Development Studies, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) programme, and supported by the Swedish Government.