The Tibetan society has the notion that sexual violence is undoubtedly an unlawful act of violence. Therefore, a heinous crime as such is never hidden or compromised. Furthmore, victims of sexual violence have legal agency and are protected by the Supreme Court of India.
Tibetan Nuns are not aware of the crimes against women of which occur on a daily basis in todays current Indian Society. Many women are not knowledgeable of laws on violence protecting women and how to assert and exercise these basic human rights.
With this background, the Tibetan Legal Association conducted two hours legal awareness program at various Tibetan Nunneries around Dharamsala on topics of law and women, crime against women, women’s rights under Indian Constitution and Fundamental Rights available to Tibetans as foreigners, laws relating to the Registration of Foreigners and Identity certificate, Affidavits and FIR along with example of cases handled by TLA so far. The Resource persons were Mr. Lobsang Dakpa, President of TLA, Mr. Kunsang Topden; Advocate, Mrs. Dickyi Peldon, legal staff and Ms. Yama Choezom as a law graduate and volunteer.
• The objectives behind conducting this legal awareness program are
• To educate the nuns about crimes against women, women’s safety and how to protect oneself.
• To convince them the importance of documents such as Registration Certificate (RC) and Identity Certificate (IC) with actual illustrations handled by TLA.
The TLA has successfully educated almost 300 nuns and staff from four different nunneries over the subjects relevant to their day to day life, including the recent demonetization policy of Indian government.