Kathmandu, August 20
A media monitoring study has concluded that mainstream daily newspapers of the country have not given sufficient space to the issues related to safe abortion, and marriage equality.
Yuwalaya, a youth NGO, says it made the conclusion after monitoring the news reports published in 10 daily newspapers published from Kathmandu throughout 2019. The report was made public in Kathmandu on Wednesday.
Speaking at a function organised to launch the report, the organisation’s president Santosh Maharjan informed the study team listed 390 news stories related to safe abortion, marriage equality, and comprehensive sexuality education, but found that 75 per cent of them were related to comprehensive sexuality education only. Whereas other 13 per cent were crosscutting, marriage equality and abortion covered only eight and four per cents respectively.
“In the year, 10 ‘top’ newspapers of the country published only 14 news reports related to safe abortion,” the report reads, “The media’s focus is required to be distributed among all dimensions of sexual and reproductive health such as education, gender equality, sexual and reproductive information, consequences on lack of sexual and reproductive, gender and sexual minorities, legitimisation of same-sex marriage, safe and unsafe abortion practices, etc.”
