During COVID-19 pandemic period the atrocities against women and girl children reached the alarming high, resulting in multiple impacts on women’s wellbeing, their sexual and reproductive health, their mental health, and their ability to participate in the revival of the rural economy.

As per the data released by Odisha Police, the State has recorded a total of 1212 cases of rape during the period of January – June 2020. The statistics further reveals that the total sexual assault cases in 2020  has been over 8 per cent higher than the average cases of rape for the triennium average (TA) of years 2017-19. As per the police record, Mayurbhanj district has recorded the maximum number of rape and sexual crime cases followed by districts of Koraput, Keonjhar, Balasore, Balangir, Kendrapara, Bhadrak, Jajpur, Sambalpur, Sundergarh, Boudh and Ganjam.

The government has put in place various policy provisions to eliminate gender-based violence. One of them is Pari Express, to create awareness against child sexual abuse. The department has set up Women and Children Cells at district-level police headquarters as well. It has been making efforts to ensure that existing schemes, such as “One Stop Centres” and “Emergency Response Support System”, remain operational. Similarly, the state has set up a ‘fast track special court’ scheme under National Mission of Safety for Women, to dispose of several pending rape cases of women and children below 12 years. Despite several policy arrangements and institutional mechanisms, there is steep rise in domestic violence cases across Odisha.

Keeping in mind the above, in April 2020, with the spike of second wave of Covid, CYSD launched an innovative programme to Mitigating Sexual Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) cases in three districts – Mayurbhanj (Thakurmunda block), Koraput (Boipariguda block) and Keonjhar (Saharapada block)

The project aims to establish Help Desks in targeted 90 villages of Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar and Koraput districts of Odisha. The Help Desk, run by trained SGBV warriors (both women & men) will provide necessary assistance to the SGBV victims. The Anganwadi Centres (AWC) have been selected as the location of the Help Desks, as it is easily accessible by women and girls in the community. Besides, grassroots and frontline women workers such as ASHA (90) and AWW (90), who have played a critical role in preventing and responding to the recent COVID-19 crisis will be supported strongly in their current role for excelling in awareness, reducing cases of SGBV and increase in reporting of such cases in resultant platforms. The programme envisages that awareness layered local-centric measures embedded in psycho-social support system will not only result in the women voicing their concerns and start questioning on the issues, but also will support in increase the reporting of the cases at the appropriate platforms.