Parbattyo Chattagram Nari Sangha
(The Chittagong Hill Tracts Women’s Association)
Founded on the 3rd of May 2013, the Parbattyo Chattagram Nari Sangha (The Chittagong Hill Tracts Women’s Association) is a grassroots organization providing a platform for the women in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. While the Hill Women’s Federation, another representative organization of the Jumma women in the CHT, is popular mainly with the female Jumma students, the Nari Sangha primarily aims at reaching out to the vast majority of the Jumma women other than students and making them politically active, because without their active participation we cannot expect our struggle to succeed.
However for a Jumma woman to be politically active is not that easy: because first of all she has to live under military occupation with constant fear of sexual assaults. Second, although she enjoys a considerable measure of freedom within Jumma society, still she lives in a patriarchal society which denies her equal rights and which views politics as a sole domain of the male members of the society. Third, she is subject to double oppression – as a member of an ethnic nationality she shares national oppression with her male counterparts; as a female member of that ethnic nationality she is subjected to additional oppression in the form of sexual violence. It is under such an environment that the Nari Sangha and HWF have to organize Jumma women in the CHT.
The Nari Sangha views their movement for equal rights, which is essentially of political nature, within the broader framework of the national Jumma struggle, and opposes its NGO-ization as well as any attempts to restrict it to the legal boundary.
The Nari Sangha is committed to democratic values and equal rights and dignity of all nations and national minorities in and outside the CHT.