In Bangladesh, gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the most serious human rights violations, disproportionately affecting women and girls. According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report 2025, of the seven economies in the Southern Asia region, only Bangladesh stands out, placing 24th in the world, scoring 77.5%. Despite this relatively strong performance on gender parity, GBV is prevalent in Bangladesh. While GBV can affect anyone, women and girls often become the victims, marking it a persistent socio-legal challenge. Despite the constitutional guarantees of equality and non-discrimination and a range of protective laws like Nari O Shishu Nirjatan Daman Ain, 2000 and Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act, 2010, Bangladesh’s response to GBV remains fundamentally ineffective due to ambiguous legal provisions, legal and administrative limitations, gender-stereotypical social norms and so on.
What is Gender-Based Violence (GBV)?
UNICEF describes GBV as any harmful act perpetrated against a person based on socially ascribed or gender differences between males and females. The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women explicitly relates GBV with violence against women, stating that it indicates physical, sexual or psychological harm to women, including threats, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty. It articulates that violence may occur in public or in private life. However, in Bangladesh, GBV is not clearly defined in any protection law, highlighting a statutory limitation. Both Nari O Shishu Nirjatan Daman Ain, 2000 and the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act, 2010 are the fundamental legislations to prevent violence against women, though these laws have failed to specifically define GBV. However, in the Bangladesh Labor (Amendment) Ordinance 2025, a definition of GBV was adopted, and has since been approved by the National Parliament.
The Violence Against Women Survey 2024 reveals Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) as a form of GBV, noting 46.7% of women experienced physical violence and 54% of women faced physical and/or sexual violence by their husbands, 32.7% of women experienced emotional violence and overall, 69.6% experienced violence of any form. According to Ain-O-Salish Kendro (ASK), during January-February 2026, 46 women were raped, 20 women were gang raped, 10 women were murdered after rape and 14 women faced attempted rape, 4 women were tortured by their husbands, 19 women were murdered by their husbands, 10 women suffered dowry-related violence including physical torture and killings, 7 women faced sexual harassment including assault, injury and killing. As per the ASK report in 2025, 749 women were raped, among them 180 women were gang raped, 560 women faced domestic violence and 193 women suffered sexual harassment. A BRAC study conducted in February 2019 in all 64 districts found that more than 50% of respondents did not recognize verbal abuse as a form of violence. The same study found that only 4% considered marital rape as violence and only 1.1% regarded the threat of divorce as a violent behavior towards women. The study revealed that the threat of divorce, marital rape and creating fear of violence are often overlooked. These statistics demonstrate that despite stricter legal punishment, heinous violence continues to occur irrespective of women’s age because of weak enforcement and inefficient judiciary.
In the case of challenges, GBV is rooted in gender inequality, the abuse of power, and harmful norms.
In Bangladesh, patriarchal cultural beliefs, socioeconomic disadvantages and limited access to education and economic opportunities play a significant role, making women susceptible to exploitation and abuse. Domestic violence, rape, sexual abuse, trafficking, forced prostitution, acid attacks and dowry-related abuses are the most common forms of GBV in Bangladesh. However, ambiguities in legal provisions, inadequate sentencing policies, weak enforcement mechanisms, and a lack of legal awareness have contributed to the persistence of GBV at alarming rates. Under the Penal Code, 1860, the ambiguous definition of rape in section 375 fails to criminalize marital rape, which effectively permits child marriage to continue unregulated. The definition also does not cover the situation where the woman is intoxicated or unable to give consent and eventually, this narrow definition fails to protect women from human rights violations. Moreover, the unspecified term of penetration causes biased trials, leading to lower conviction rates. The Nari O Shishu Nirjatan Daman Ain, 2000 defines rape identically, retaining the same ambiguities regarding the age of consent and the meaning of ‘consent’. IPV remains unstated in the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Act, 2010, and proving emotional abuse mentioned in the Act is difficult, making it practically impossible for the victims to secure proper legal relief. Besides, Bangladesh has failed to enact a law on the prevention of sexual harassment in public places, educational institutions and workplaces after the landmark BNWLA judgment in 2009.
Lack of gender-sensitive law enforcement agencies, financial resources and witness protection, harsher but poorly implemented punishments, limitations of the One-Stop Crisis Centre, forced out-of-court settlements and political interference result in conviction rates close to zero. As a result , a backlog of 10,000 rape cases reflects both low conviction rates and slow trials. Victim blaming, scrutiny of victims’ lifestyles and character, wide social approval of misogynistic narratives and moral policing on social media enable violence and shield the perpetrators. The normalization of domestic abuse in households, patriarchal power imbalance, fear of reputational damage to the family and the silencing of victims further escalates domestic violence. Poor enforcement laws, ineffective shelter homes, accountability failure and the institutional barriers victims face often silence them without demanding proper legal recourse.
Prosecuting and punishing perpetrators of GBV faces multiple obstacles related to the lack of coordinated criminal justice responses, the absence of expertise and insufficient structures for conducting credible investigations, the absence of comprehensive redress mechanisms and inadequate understanding of the GBV’s root causes and magnitudes. Women’s vulnerability to corruption and abuse increases due to an unregulated and inaccessible system for case filing, limited access to information and legal representation. In court hearings, victims of GBV bear the evidentiary burden of producing evidence, e.g. medical reports, witnesses etc., even in the rape cases, and frequently courts discharge accused persons without framing charges if no prima facie case is established. Media coverage often sensationalizes incidents and blames victims, reinforcing harmful social and cultural stereotypes. Character assassination of the victims by the defense lawyers includes further harassment and humiliation.
Conclusion
Articles 3 and 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) acknowledge the right to life, liberty and security for every person and recognize non-discrimination before the law. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) ensures equality of men and women, requiring the State Parties to condemn all forms of discrimination. In Bangladesh, low conviction rates frequently allow impunity to perpetrators of GBV. Society must discourage both the stigmatization of victims and the silencing of their voices. Hence, preventing GBV in Bangladesh requires substantial reform of national legal and policy standards, structural reforms, promoting gender equality and human rights, and strengthening the core belief of GBV as a human rights violation, not as a private or gendered issue to be suppressed.
The writer is a student in the Department of Law at the University of Dhaka.