By Deepak Adhikari
KATHMANDU, Nepal
Dozens of protesters "slept" on the streets outside the parliament building in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu on Friday, demanding equal rights for women in the proposed constitution.
Chanting slogans and displaying placards saying “No Mother No Child”, “Issue Citizenship in the name of Mother”, the mostly women protesters blocked the main road leading to the constituent assembly, which is a special parliament tasked with writing the long awaited constitution for Nepal.
About the symbolism behind launching the "sleep protest" outside the parliament, Subin Mulmi, a women rights activist and one of the protesters, told Anadolu Agency that it was meant to mock the Nepali leaders.
“Through the sleep protest, we want to mock our leaders who we think have been asleep as far as women’s rights are concerned,” Mulmi said.
She said that the protesters wanted to warn lawmakers that their deliberations inside the parliament would be disrupted if their demands were not met.
“We have handed memorandum letters to all lawmakers. Almost all are aware about our demands because we have been organizing protests for the past several weeks,” she said, adding that Friday’s protest was called by the Collective Campaign for Women-Friendly Constitution, a coalition of 20 women rights groups.
Spurred by the devastating earthquakes that hit the country three months back, Nepal’s politicians, after years of bickering, have hastened the delivery of a post-war constitution.
But the draft of the charter has sparked protests from various groups, including ethnic minority and women. The draft bars single mothers from passing citizenship to their children; a provision rights activists say is likely to make a million Nepalis stateless.
Rights activists have demanded that reproductive rights be included in the constitution and proportional representation of women in the judiciary and the government be ensured in the charter.
