Changing Trends of Intimate Partner Violence against Women in Nepal
Pranav Adhikari, Anita Ghimire and Fiona Samuels*
Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), referring to physical, sexual and emotional violence perpetrated by an intimate partner is prevalent in Nepal as in other patriarchal Asian societies. IPV relates directly to the Sustainable Development Goals, especially of empowering women and ensuring gender equality (Objective 5) as well as ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages (Objective 3).33 percent of Nepali women aged 15-24 who have ever been married face IPV (MOHP 2012). As partnership without marriage is highly stigmatised in Nepal, IPV between unmarried partners is never discussed and is not calculated in this figure.  Hence, while highly prevalent, all forms of IPV remains largely understudied, except for sexual violence. The objective of this paper is to bridge this gap by discussing the following:
  • Emerging forms  of IPV and changes over time,
  • IPV among unmarried adolescents,
  • Nature of perpetrators and victims (age, caste and ethnicity), and
  • Gender Based Violence (GBV)  training  and its impact on  perpetration of IPV by men and adolescent boys.
The paper is based on a two-year qualitative fieldwork carried out in two districts (Rupandehi and Kapilvastu) of Nepal as well as an analysis of five-year national data of reported cases from the Central Office of the Police in Nepal. 

The study argues that while massive gender empowerment training and placement of local redressal systems has helped reduce older forms of IPV, new forms of IPV largely related to migration are emerging. Similarly, while mainstream programmes ignore IPV among unmarried partners, it is highly prevalent among adolescent girls and is leading to growing cases of suicides.

Reference
MOHP, New ERA, and ICF International Inc. 2012, ‘Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2011’, Kathmandu and Maryland: Ministry of Health and Population, Government of Nepal.

* Mr Pranav Adhikari is Senior Research Officer at the Nepal Institute for Social and Environmental Research (NISER), Nepal and has been involved in various studies on gender and adolescents. Dr Anita Ghimire is Director for Social Research at NISER, Nepal. She is the team leader (Nepal) for ‘Violence against Women and Girls in South Asia’ which is a two-year multi-country project on IPV in South Asia funded by DFID and led by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London. Dr Fiona Samuels is a Research Fellow at ODI, London and head of ODI’s project on ‘Violence against Women and Girls in South Asia.’