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Lockdown has been an effective intervention against Covid-19 the world over. But in this time women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) rights are also greatly hindered.

The government of Nepal prioritized pregnant women for health assistance during the lockdown. But women in labor pain were reportedly being ferried by risky means of transport like motorbikes. Women in post-partum period, whose need and care depend on daily wage of their husbands, were bound to compromise on daily nutritional diet required during such periods. In such situations, pregnant women feel more vulnerable and anxious and thus their mental health is more affected. Access to reproductive healthcare for pregnant women and postpartum women is limited in such periods.

Marie Stopes International has already warned that travel restrictions and lockdowns could have a devastating effect on women, as they struggle to collect contraceptives and access other reproductive health care services, such as safe abortions, in many of the 37 countries in which it works, including Nepal. In Nepal, there was limited access to contraceptive devices particularly condoms, oral pills, emergency contraceptive pills due to close down/limited opening hours of pharmacy and service centers. Organizations such as Marie Stopes Nepal, Family Planning Association Nepal (FPAN), and Midwifery Association Nepal are doing a commendable job, constantly updating and providing information through their social media, hotline numbers, and online platforms.

The effect of lockdown has also been felt by people living with disabilities, with inadequate availability of urine bags, condom catheters, diapers and tissue papers, increasing the risk of infection. Though organizations working for the HIV-infected populations are trying their best to provide door to door service, lockdown has made it hard to reach the HIV infected to give them antiretroviral therapy (ART). As per a report, the stock of ART is available only for the next two months and the government has to intervene to fulfill the growing demand. Transgender people in particular need access to gender affirmative services such as endocrinology and laser therapy. This situation is likely to persist in a situation when the lockdown is relaxed.

Most health workers are being mobilized to combat Covid-19. But many LGBT people continue with their sex work, putting them at high risk. Thus the LGBT population faces stigma, discriminatory behavior, violence, economic burden, limited access to health information and services during such periods. Little has been done, either by the government or the civil society organizations, to track the SRH needs of women, young people and vulnerable populations. Thus, vital issues like the availability of menstrual hygiene products, the situation of commercial sex worker, privacy, and consent, has been less discussed and prioritized.

To tackle gender-based violence during the pandemic, the government of Nepal together with the National Women Commission (NWC) and other community-based organizations have set up legal counseling, psycho-social counseling, and shelter support, and urged people to report such violence against women through their toll-free number. In response, the government has established a hotline and a call center to make it easier for citizens to access information related to Covid-19. It has also released Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 Health Service Guideline 2020 prioritizing services for emergency, acute and chronic conditions, essential health, and ambulance.

Even though the UN’s preparedness and response plan for Nepal highlights primary health care and reproductive service as a key pillar and urges uninterrupted access to sexual and reproductive health, the new guideline fails to explicitly mention maternal care, access to gender affirmative health service, contraceptive service, safe abortion, and sanitary product as essential health services.

The Covid-19 crisis management centers at local and provincial levels have been established as coordination bodies. The center has an important role in providing information and services to assess, track, monitor and address SRH and other needs. Social security is vital during such a pandemic and vulnerable and marginalized populations in particular need to feel safe and respected through adequate information, service and proper counseling. Social protections for the LGBT population and women with low economic status are also needed.

The current situation can be used as an opportunity to develop robust local level mechanisms to address such critical needs. As prioritized by the government, the Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) and public health professionals can be a part of the local response system that collects disaggregated data, provides information, tracks sexual and reproductive health needs of women, and links them with services and service providers. Further, civil society organizations need to continue evidence-based advocacy and help the government address SRH needs of vulnerable groups amid this humanitarian crisis.

The author is pursuing Masters of Science in Public Health at University of Southern Denmark

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Prakash Poudel started an agricultural farm at Pokhara’s Musetuda in October last year. He had hoped the new business would be profitable and he would not have to go back to the Gulf for work. He had started the farm with five cows and buffaloes after returning from Qatar four years ago. The number later reached 15. But these days he is worried about the sustainability of his venture.

Helpers are unavailable and his market access has been blocked due to the lockdown. His overall costs have spiked, along with the price of bran and straw for the cattle. Poudel is uncertain if the easing of the lockdown will help much.

“Bank loans comprise around 75 percent of my investment. If I can’t do business, I can’t pay back,” Poudel says. “If things don’t improve soon, I may again have to go abroad for work—if that option is still open amid a global pandemic.”

He foresees difficulty in delivering his dairy products door-to-door even after the crisis. Seeing fellow farmers in the neighborhood dump rotten vegetables does not give much hope.

There are others like Poudel who expect things to only get worse in the days ahead, lockdown or not.

Mausam Upreti had started a liquor store in Kapan area of Kathmandu after returning from Japan last year. He had high hopes from the store named ‘Bottles’, where he sank a lot of his savings. But just as business was picking up, the pandemic struck and lockdowns started. “The rents are rising. I have to pay almost Rs 200,000 a month in rents. For a new business, it was already a huge burden even without the pandemic,” he says.

For Dipak Bhattarai, a UAE-returnee taxi driver in Kathmandu, the lockdown has meant a total loss of income. He is struggling to feed his family, even as he has to pay monthly bank installments of the loans taken out against the taxi. “I have two more years to clear bank loans. Now I don’t have work. But I still need to pay the loans, room rent, and food,” he laments. For people like Bhattarai who survive on daily earning, things are getting tougher by the day. He too is unsure his taxi business will go back to normal even after the end of the corona crisis.

The government is under pressure to bring back Nepali migrants stranded in Malaysia and Gulf countries. Thousands are waiting to return. But there are no good plans to adjust them into the domestic workforce. Economists worry about an impending economic crisis.

Joblessness is already a big problem. According to Nepal Labor Migration Report 2020 prepared by the Ministry of Labor, Employment, and Social Security, there are approximately 756,000 working-age returnee migrant workers in the country. Likewise, Nepal Labor Force Survey 2017/18 shows only 42.8 percent of returnee migrants are employed; another 13.4 percent are unemployed, while 43.8 percent are out of the labor force.

The government keeps asking Nepali youths to employ their skills and labor in their own country. But it has persistently failed to bring effective policies, let alone implement them, to keep them home. Upreti, the Japan-returnee, says: “The government came up with a policy to give loans to the youths against educational certificates. But the policy is confined to the paper. You can’t imagine the tedious documentation and the many hassles getting this loan entails.”

Bhattarai, the UAE-returnee, says he is tired of listening to government promises. “The announcements of discounts, loans, and tax exemptions are all useless talks,” he says.

Poudel, the Qatar-returnee, complains of high government fees even to register agriculture-related businesses. “How does it then expect to attract the youth to this sector?” he asks.

Often, the migrant workers express their wish to return to Nepal and start a business. The government also keeps urging them to come. But when they return, they have to confront unfriendly policies and corrupt officials.

Siddhartha Gautam from Nepalgunj, Banke, abandoned his Europe plans earlier this year, even though he already had a visa to Poland. Rather, he decided to start a poultry and fish farm at home. Then Covid-19 struck.

His enthusiasm is fading fast. “I see nothing good being done to revive agriculture, which is supposedly a government priority,” he rues. With or without the lockdown, Gautam reckons those in agriculture will continue to struggle for their livelihood without greater state support. 

Even as there are heated discussions over Indian occupation of Limpiyadhura and Kalapani, those are not the only Nepali territories that India has encroached. There are about 174 hectares of Nepali land in the eastern Jhapa district that India has gradually captured by moving the border pillars. As a result, Nepal has lost areas in Pathamari, Mahespur, Mechipul, Bhadrapur, Galgalia border, Kakadvitta, Barishjot, Madanjot, Nakalabanda, Bahundandi, and a village across the Mechi River.

According to border expert Raj Kumar Pokharel, Nepal government had given land-ownership certificates to its citizens living in those areas in 1965; Indians started capturing them starting 1988.

There were some pieces of land that Nepal and India had agreed to provisionally give to local occupants on the condition that their ownership would be finalized later. But India has already captured those areas. Besides, Indian citizens have started farming on areas that clearly fall under Nepal. Nepali and Indian border agencies have already had a number of discussions to settle the farming issue.  

Twenty-five Nepali houses in the Dulu village across Mechi Rivar in Bhadrapur Municipality, 20 houses in Pathamari area of Kechanakawal Rural Municipality, and over a dozen houses in Bhansa Khola area are without land ownership certificates. These households have been asking government authorities to give them a clear word on their nationality.

People living there remember their lands as always belonging to Nepal. The pillars installed by Rana Prime Minister Junga Bahadur Rana based on Sugauli Treaty have traditionally served as the border between the two countries. There are 988 such pillars in Jhapa district alone.

“Earlier, we did without a land ownership certificate as there was no need to sell our land. We were fine farming without a certificate,” says Sanjib Thapa of Bhansa Khola. “In 1995, the Indian forces started coming to our courtyards for land demarcation. Only then did we realize that our lands had already gone to India.”

Locals say India installed new pillars in 1988, making their lands as Indian territories. India has given ration cards to the locals, which, according to border expert Pokharel, is a plot to lay claim Indian ownership. “Nepal is unknowingly losing its territory,” he says.

Says Noor Alam of Pathamari in Kechanakawal: “Since the times my parents came to settle down here, there has never been any doubt that this is Nepali land. We also have land ownership certificate. I have Nepali citizenship based on this certificate. Now they say this land belongs to India.”

Indian authorities come to inspect border areas once a week. But the Nepali side is oblivious. Says Jinat Ganesh of Mechipari: “We don’t know what happened in the past. But now India has been building huts in the Nepali land to lay their claim. There are people living in those huts. Nepali officials never show any concern.”

Several countries have reported an increase in domestic violence during their Covid-19 lockdowns. Women and children have been the victim of domestic violence for years. The Covid-19 lockdown has only made things worse.

According to the World Health Organization, with the onset of the pandemic, violence against women has been steadily rising in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Similarly, the number of victims of domestic violence has increased dramatically in India, Pakistan, Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, and Australia. In Jingzhou city of China, the number of reported domestic violence cases tripled in February 2020 compared to February 2019, with among 90 percent cases related to the lockdown.

In Cyprus and Singapore, the number of people calling the helpline for women victims of violence has increased by 30 percent and 33 percent, respectively. In Europe, France has one of the highest rates of domestic violence. According to its interior ministry, the cases of domestic violence across the country during the lockdown jumped by 30 percent, with a 36 percent increase in Paris. In Australia, Google has registered a significant spike in searches related to domestic violence during the coronavirus pandemic.

Based on official figures, annually, around 219,000 women, from teens to 75-year-olds, are abused physically or sexually by partners, formal partners or abusers, among which only 20 percent cases are reported. One woman is killed every three days.

In Nepal, domestic violence has been a problem for many years. A recent survey showed that half the women have experienced some form of it. Rights activists have reported an increase in cases of violence during the lockdown, as women and children have become insecure around the house. With an increase in women’s workload during the lockdown, their vulnerability to gender-based violence has also increased. According to the WOREC, 176 reported domestic violence cases were recorded in 18 districts by May 9, among which 26 were rape cases.

Also, reportedly, 114 people have committed suicide in Sudhurpaschim Province in the past two months, compared to 475 suicide cases in the whole of the last fiscal year. Nepal Police say they have taken special precautions against crimes against women and children during the lockdown. As it is difficult to reach police office to file a complaint during a lockdown, the police have urged the public to use online platforms such as ‘Nepal Police Mobile App’ to lodge a complaint.

Some factors that have contributed to an increase in domestic violence during the lockdown are quarantine anxiety, economic insecurity, and weakened victim support networks.

At a time when women had slowly started becoming independent and entering a male-dominated workforce, the Covid-19 scare could take away these new opportunities and force them back into their homes.

Globally, the pandemic starkly highlights gender inequality in all its forms. OECD figures show that globally, women comprise 70 percent healthcare workforce. As women do a large part of unpaid care work, the upcoming economic crisis will hit them much harder. Hence it is important to help them strengthen their physical and mental health as well as their economic independence, beyond the Covid-19 crisis.

Different countries have come up with different ways to tackle domestic violence during the lockdown. Italy has launched a mobile app that allows people to ask for help without having to make a call. The French government has launched new hotlines and a website. Western Australia has created a “Covid-19 Family and Domestic Violence Taskforce” to work with the police force.

Robyn Rihanna Fenty privately donated $2.1 million to the Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles to assist victims of domestic violence during the lockdowns. Clara Lionel Foundation and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey jointly matched the donations. Many other people and organizations have joined hands to fight domestic violence around the globe in these difficult times.

In Nepal, the civil society and women’s rights advocates should take up the cause. They can then goad the government into taking steps that reduce violence against women and provide justice and protection to victims in this time of crisis.

The Ministry of Women and Children, the Women’s Commission, and the National Human Rights Commission can play an effective role in this regard. They can persuade the state to include resources to prevent violence against women in the national plan against the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, it is important to recognize such anti-violence services as essential.

In addition, to avoid having to endure repeated violence with the perpetrator, the victims should be provided safe accommodation as well as a separate quarantine when necessary. It is the state’s duty to prevent violence against women and children in this time of pandemic and to fulfill their basic needs.

We have 24/7 helplines, the toll-free number 1145, plus some online support networks, but more support is needed, especially outside Kathmandu. Organizations like RUWON (Rural Women’s Network Nepal) need more support. When a case of domestic violence is reported in a neighborhood, the victims should have immediate access to counselors and helplines. Although Covid-19 may have limited our movement, it does not have to limit vital human interactions.