Violation of girl’s rights: Harmful practices based on moral, traditional and cultural practices

Pages: 364-370
Aakash Deep Sharma (Post Graduate Government College for Girls Police Administration, Panjab University, Chandigarh)
Anu (Department of Social Work, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra)

Every social grouping in the world has unambiguous traditional cultural practices, some of which are favourable to all members, while others are harmful to a particular group. Harmful traditional practices affect girls more than boys. Some of these include: domestic violence, early and forced marriages, son preference, the dowry system, killings in the name of honour, are overlook as being part of the natural order of things. Throughout much of India, these practices are common despite of these practices have serious consequences for the girl’s physical, emotional, and psychological development and their violation of international human rights laws, such practices persist because they are not questioned and take on an aura of morality in the eyes of those practising them. Case study approach was used on three adolescent girls from marginalized families of Punjab who escaped from their houses because of harmful traditional practices at home, hampering girl’s freedom, wisdom and human rights. Rapport building was done, interviews were held with the subjects and meeting at which information about subject was gathered by researchers from Social Welfare Organization staff. A meeting was arranged at which information about subject was gathered from organization staff, social worker, which also included observations of subjects for two weeks during different activity classes. The conclusions drawn were preference for the male child, often with concomitant daughter neglect. It may mean that all female children is disadvantaged from birth. Forced marriage and engagement, inadequate health care, domestic violence, denial of education were common reasons in all the three cases to escape from the house and later living in NGO shelter house facility for better life and empowerment with due permission of legal court and local authorities .NGO acted as a major buffer; they could not afford it otherwise. A huge onus lied on the scope for improving home environment of such adolescent girls and working to hasten the eradication of harmful traditional practices which violate the basic human rights of girls.