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During Nepal’s armed conflict between 1996 and 2006, acts of sexual violence against women and girls were commonly carried out by warring factions. Social stigma and fear of retaliation prevented many survivors from reporting sexual crimes or speaking about their experiences.  

To this day, inadequate policing, legislation and health facilities leave victims of sexual violence with limited ways of seeking support or redress. In addition, the media rarely provides non-sensational information about sexual violence, or content that constructively challenges the social norms that make sexual violence prevalent.

To tackle this issue, we helped produce a series of fifteen-minute dramas with two local radio stations in areas where high incidences of sexual violence were reported.

The power of drama

´óÏó´«Ã½ Media Action believes radio drama can play a powerful role in addressing sexual violence. Fictional storylines provide a safe space for addressing difficult subjects such as domestic violence and rape.

In one episode of ‘Shobha’s Courage’ – broadcast on Saptakoshi FM in Eastern Nepal – a schoolgirl, Shobha is being harassed by her maths teacher. She doesn’t know how to approach the issue and becomes reclusive and depressed. One day, Shobha is inspired after seeing a woman confronting a man about sexual harassment on the bus. After receiving information about tackling sexual violence at school, she courageously reports the misconduct she’d faced to her headmistress – leading to the prosecution of her maths teacher.

Expert advice

To help local radio staff better understand how to challenge attitudes and behaviours that lead to sexual violence, training was provided on gender issues. Training also focused on how to portray the issues effectively and creatively through radio drama.  This included boosting production skills, script writing, recording and editing. Mentors were also embedded within the stations to provide intensive mentoring and support to the radio drama production teams.

Over the duration of the project, 40 radio producers from the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (ACORAB) in Nepal were trained online – to increase the reach of the project across the country.

Project information