• Existing institutions remain in a woeful state 

A Women’s Commission is to be established under a new law to help protect women’s rights, although questions remain as to why existing institutions meant to protect women are not functioning as they should. 

On 7 March, the Government issued the Women Empowerment Bill, with President Ranil Wickremesinghe announcing that it was aimed at empowering women and would be tabled in Parliament in May. 

The gazetted bill has the following nine objectives:

1. To make provisions for the advancement and empowerment of women by introducing mechanisms to secure women’s rights subject to the provisions of the Constitution
2. To introduce mechanisms to give effect to the obligations undertaken by the Government in relation to women in terms of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and in terms of applicable laws
3. To formulate and implement the national policy for the advancement and empowerment of women by timely interventions at all levels across all sectors and develop a framework to facilitate and ensure empowerment of women
4. To protect women from all forms of discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation
5. To take steps to prevent discrimination, marginalisation, sexual harassment, and violence against women and to strengthen the measures for the prosecution and punishment of acts or omissions relating thereto
6. To make recommendations for law reforms as a matter of priority, in order to provide for the prevention of discrimination against women and empowerment of women
7. To promote the realisation of and ensure equality and justice for women and take measures to ensure, as far as possible, women’s participation in all measures and mechanisms connected with administration of justice and the equal representation of women in decision-making structures and positions at every level within the Government
8. To ensure economic empowerment, having special regard to women with disabilities 
9. To conduct public education programmes relating to all aspects of empowerment of women

A Women’s Commission 

Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Women Parliamentarians’ Caucus Chair Dr. Sudarshini Fernandopulle said that the caucus had initiated the drafting of the bill and had provided leadership to the process. 

“It mainly focuses on establishing a Women’s Commission. There are those who are being discriminated against for being a woman – they’re denied their rights or harassed, and in such instances, women don’t know what to do. Some may end up going to the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka (HRCSL) but the HRCSL has a vast area to handle and gender issues get diluted. To make sure that women also have equality and equity, the Women’s Commission was proposed, where women can go directly with their complaints,” said Dr. Fernandopulle. 

Meanwhile, Women and Child Affairs Ministry Legal Officer Kumudu Perera told The Sunday Morning that the proposed commission would act in a similar manner to the HRCSL; it would be able to directly inquire into allegations and complaints of infringement of women’s rights. Thus, women will be able to place their complaints regarding instances of discrimination at both private and State institutions directly with the commission. “It will cover areas such as equal pay for equal work,” she added.

“The commission will also influence policy decisions. The seven commissioners are to be appointed by the President but recommended by the Constitutional Council to ensure independence. 

“We have ratified international conventions, but for women’s issues, we only have the Constitution to spell it out. Even if a woman has a job, she doesn’t have the legal footing to ask for equal pay. We wanted to articulate this in a legal document. Further, with a Women’s Commission, more women will be confident about going there,” Perera said, explaining the reasons behind the establishment of such a body.  

It is also learnt that the need for a women’s commission has been a long-term call since 2011, but that a lack of political will had prevented it from seeing the light of day. With the change of Government in 2019, this reform was shelved again, after having made progress since 2015. 

A misappropriation of resources?

However, human rights lawyer Swasthika Arulingam, AAL questioned why resources were not being channelled to strengthen the existing institutions meant to protect the rights of women. 

“Existing institutions are not functioning properly or in a timely manner. For example, the National Authority for the Protection of Victims of Crime and Witnesses does not function properly – if you write a letter to it about the need for protection for a woman, you sometimes only get a response after a year, which has happened to me. Then you have the Criminal Investigation Department which is supposed to investigate allegations of cyber sexual harassment, but never provides us with any answer when we go and complain.” 

Arulingam noted that such institutions lacked resources, training, capacity, and manpower while the Judiciary also required more resources and support, particularly to address issues related to women.

“It is very patronising to come up with a Women Empowerment Bill when all these issues remain unaddressed. We need economic repression to stop first so that women have more freedom to study and become empowered on their own. One of the ways in which women from the working classes deal with tough situations is by using free education and the strict laws on child employment and education.

“Now, when that free education is coming under attack and families are not sending their children to school due to the economic crisis, women are being disempowered by the State as well. Instead of adding another commission which will burden the bureaucracy and fail to provide any tangible benefit to the people, the obvious thing the State can do is to resource existing institutions, free education, the Judiciary, and safe houses so that women are empowered to escape from violence and the permanent state of dependency on men.”

Gender equality bill 

The Sunday Morning also learns that a bill on gender equality has been presented to the Cabinet on 11 March. Officials involved in the drafting process of this bill said that it aimed to ensure equality for all genders.