my body my rights nepal
speaKing out – a first step “I gave birth to my first daughter and after six days… I was carrying [a] load of millet and felt that something was coming out [of my vagina]… My husband treated me indifferently, [threatening]: ‘I am not satisfied with you, I will bring another wife’.”
© Amnesty International
many women in nepal carry a painful burden that they are too embarrassed to talk about. they live with it for years, in some cases because they don’t know where to go for help. they are living with uterine prolapse, a debilitating condition in which the pelvic muscles give way, allowing the uterus to descend into the vagina. the causes are many - having a lot of children within a short space of time, poor nutrition, and lifting heavy loads while pregnant. but underpinning these causes is pervasive discrimination against women in nepali society, a reality that the government has failed to effectively address. as the women featured here show, this failure results in women having little say in daily decisions about their bodies and sexuality – decisions which instead are controlled by the people around them.
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© Amnesty International
“At first I didn’t tell anyone. But later, I started to attend trainings and meetings [run by NGOs]. I came to know that I can share my experiences and pain with other women. So after that I told someone about my problem.”
“We have to carry heavy loads and work hard, and if I do that for one day, I have to rest for four to five days to recover. I can’t work well.”
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