Relief rebuilding to 25 communities in Nepal

"Without citizenship one cannot enjoy the rights provided by the state". We all have dreams and aspirations to live their life with dignity. However, women living in Nepal, there is a real barrier towards achieving their dreams due to not having citizenships. Without citizenship individual cannot vote, obtain passport, driving license and any other government facilities that the state provides. "In the country like ours patriarchy has been deeply rooted and hence the patriarchy type of family is one of the most features of Nepalese society". Before marriage a father has the responsibility to take care after his daughter, after marriage it is husband's duty to protect her and with the passage of time when she gets old the son takes care after her.Thus a woman does not have any right to make any decision regarding herself or her family. In other words, women do not have their independent personality. Whatever the male member does that should always be acceptable to female and it has been a common practice especially in the rural areas.

The status of women is defined in term of their marital or sexual status and the right to property is fragile and imperfect. Hence to have the control over the property male neither registers their marriage nor do they provide the citizenships to their wife due to which women have been deprived of getting all the facilities.

Hence Barpak (1st Epic center of the massive earthquake 2015) a village of Gorkha where our Shadow Barefoot Volunteers are working since last two years is also not an exception. Women living in Barpak are still treated as the property of men where her voice, choice and decisions are not taken as rights. Due to the moral support from the local authorities and community our Shadow Barefoot Volunteers did a survey and collected data of unregistered citizens of Barpak where they found women to be the most. Our Shadow Barefoot Volunteers coordinated with the District Administration Office and registered 339 individuals for their citizenship card. After months of hard work, the volunteers were finally successful in registering the locals to get their citizenship card.

CASE STORY:

30 years old Bhim is a husband of 25 years old Bimala. Bhim has a citizenship but he had not made citizenship for her wife saying that wives are for houses not for any other work and hence why do they need citizenship. When one of our volunteers requested Bhim to make a citizenship for her he said NO, and our volunteer finally convenience him and he agreed. Bimala finally got the citizenship and now she also got the voters identification and from this year onward she will be giving her votes. She is so happy in getting the citizenship and with tears she said NOW I AM ALSO ONE OF THE CITIZENS OF OUR COUNTRY.  After receiving the citizenship Bimala also got the "Red Card"- a card distributed by the Nepal Government to identify earthquake survivors, through which she has been able to get the 1st installment of recovery money towards rebuilding their home - even though that sum is very nominal for them to start rebuilding work. In future, she is very hopeful that from the national identity she would be able to do lots of work in her village. And finally she also proudly opened a BANK ACCOUNT.

There are lots of such cases in Barpak and other parts of the country where women do not have citizenship which has affected in various aspects of woman's life such as economic dependency, no independent identity and low social preference. The discrimination continues against them all throughout their life till death. Hence one can firmly say that women face discrimination arising out of unequal right to inheritance which affects various aspects of a woman’s life which ultimately hinders their overall development.