The police had been conducting a long-term campaign to end social exclusion and violence against women due to menstruation in Marku village under the Community-Police Partnership (CPP) program, which began in 2018.
What you should know
Nepal Police, which made Marku, Chaurpati Rural Municipality-7 of Achham, a Chhaupadi Goth-free village, has been honored with the 'Herman Goldstein Award' in the United States.
Nepal Police has won an international award for its community-police partnership project to end the Chhaupadi practice in a remote village of Achham. Deputy Superintendent of Police and former Achham Police Chief Ishwori Prasad Bhandari said that this project of the police was selected as the best project in the world-famous 'Herman Goldstein Outstanding Problem-Sensitive Policing Service'.
The team presenting the project on behalf of the police included Deputy Superintendent of Police Kiran Jung Kunwar, Deputy Superintendent of Police Ishwori Prasad Bhandari and Police Inspector Pratima Karki who had gone to the US. The program was held in Madison, Wisconsin, from October 13 to 15.
The Nepal Police, organized by Arizona State University in the US, had made a presentation on 'Community-Police Partnership for Social Transformation: Campaign to End Chhaupadi Practice in Marku Village of Achham'.
The first international award that the police have received for working in the community is the 'Herman Goldstein Award', and it has created history in the Nepal Police, said Bhandari. 'It is a happy moment for me to go to America to receive the award for the work I did as the Chief of Police while living in Achham,' said Bhandari, 'This is the first time that I have received an international award for working in the community. It has made the police more responsible for eliminating the Chhaupadi system.' He said that the Nepal Police has concluded that this model can be expanded to other districts of the Far West and Karnali.
This award has been presented every year since 1993 in the name of American criminologist Professor Herman Goldstein. In 1979, Goldstein introduced the concept of problem-oriented policing, moving the police away from a system of reacting only after a crime and towards identifying social problems and long-term solutions.
This project of the Nepal Police has presented a vision of transforming social thinking, cultural norms and behavior beyond crime control. Bhandari said that it has highlighted the capacity, accountability and human-centered commitment of Nepal's police service at the international level.
SARA model to eliminate Chhaupadi practice
Nepal Police had launched a long-term campaign to end social exclusion and violence against women due to menstruation in Marku village of Chaurpati rural municipality of Achham district under the Community-Police Partnership (CPP) program launched in October 2018. Before the project started, there were 85 Chhaugoths in the village. Due to superstition and religious fear, women were forced to live separately in Goth or Jhupadi for 4 days during menstruation and for a maximum of 15 days during their first menstruation. Police data shows that 14 women died due to Chhaupadi in Achham alone from 2009 to 2018.
The police had adopted the 'SARA' (Scanning, Analysis, Response and Evaluation) model based on the principle of problem-oriented policing to eliminate Chhaupadi practice in Marku village. Initially, the District Police Office Achham had made the end of the Chhaupadi system a priority agenda by signing an agreement with all local levels. Then, the police implemented a strategy of combining ‘soft implementation and continuous awareness and monitoring’ to solve the problem in the long term, taking into account the values, legal basis, costs and community values.
Under this program of the police, all 85 Chhaugoths in Marku were demolished in 2019. According to the police, no Goth has been reconstructed in the village in the last 6 years. Similarly, 287 community awareness programs, 27 school-contact programs and 730 or police-community patrols have been conducted. Through these patrols, direct communication has been held with more than 30,000 locals, covering an area of about 13,850 km2. Transparency and local participation of the plan have been ensured through 22 public hearing programs and regular meetings. 134 police officers and about 70 organizations collaborated in the
project. During this period, there have been no deaths or other incidents due to the Chhaupadi practice in Marku.
