International Women’s Day in an age of eroding accountability 

Bangladesh is confronting a disturbing surge in sexual violence. According to the 2025 annual  report of Bangladesh Mahila Parishad (BMP), 786 women and girls were victims of rape and  gang rape in 2025, compared with 516 in 2024—a 52.3% year-on-year increase. 

Girls account  for the majority of victims. Behind each number is a child, a family, and a future disrupted.  

Yet beyond the statistics lies a deeper, more uncomfortable truth: the crisis is not only legal or  institutional; it is cultural. 

We are witnessing a systematic erosion in how we speak about gender,  dignity, and responsibility. Words that demean women—questioning their attire, mobility,  ambition, or independence—are no longer fringe comments. They are repeated, shared, and  normalised until they become ambient noise in our social fabric.  

As historian Yuval Noah Harari has warned, in an era increasingly shaped by algorithms, the  stories that govern societies can be engineered and amplified at scale. 

Social media does not  merely reflect culture; it shapes it. When victim-blaming narratives trend, when "jokes" about harassment circulate widely, and when outrage becomes a fleeting performance rather than  sustained engagement, we allow algorithms to script our collective conscience.  

The normalisation of verbal abuse is a precursor to physical violence. Brothers advising sisters to  "cover up" so men are not tempted. 

Friends labeling single women who drive home alone as rebellious. Colleagues undermining competent women through rumor and insinuation. 

These are  not isolated incidents; they are signals of a gradual cultural shift. They create a shared but  fictional reality where women's autonomy is negotiable and male aggression is excusable.

Such myths do not need to be true to be powerful. They only need to be widely believed.  

This is where horizontal accountability collapses. Horizontal accountability refers to the  responsibility shared across society—families, communities, schools, civil society organisations,  and peer networks—to uphold norms, intervene early, and protect the vulnerable. When families  fail to instill respect and equality, when communities stop watching out for one another, when  institutions avoid uncomfortable conversations, the system weakens long before a crime is  committed.  

Instead, we default to vertical accountability alone—blaming government, law enforcement, and  policymakers. 

Social media is filled with grief, anger, and demands for justice. But the cycle is  predictable: outrage trends, debates intensify, and then attention shifts until another tragedy  forces the issue back into focus. 

In this pattern, mourning substitutes for mobilisation. The state  indeed carries primary responsibility for law enforcement and justice, but expecting the government  alone to solve a crisis rooted in culture is unrealistic.  

The breakdown of extended family structures and neighborhood cohesion has further fragmented  early warning systems. 

Once, informal community oversight—elders, teachers, neighbors—acted as protective layers. Today, nuclear households are isolated, and digital spaces replace physical  community interaction. 

Without deliberate reconstruction of collective spaces for dialogue and  prevention, accountability dissipates.  

International Women's Day (IWD) must therefore be more than symbolic celebration. In what may be one of the most brutal eras for women and children in Bangladesh, IWD should prompt  introspection: How do we rebuild horizontal accountability? How do we move from  performative solidarity to shared responsibility?  

One pathway lies with youth engagement. Bangladesh's young population spends, on average, significant hours online daily. 

While many express skepticism toward traditional news sources,  they are active creators and consumers of digital content. Rather than dismissing this as  disengagement, we can recognise it as untapped civic potential.  

Youth can serve as watchdogs—reporting abuse, challenging harmful narratives, and demanding  transparency. With proper training and professional guidance, they can participate in building  digital accountability systems: community-based reporting mechanisms, peer-led awareness  campaigns, and fact-checking networks that counter misinformation. 

They can bridge  generational divides between government, NGOs, and communities, translating policy into  relatable action.  

But youth engagement must be structured and supported. Schools and universities can embed  rights education and digital literacy into curricula. 

Civil society can mentor youth leaders in  ethical reporting and safeguarding principles. Government agencies can open participatory  platforms for consultation and monitoring. When young people feel ownership over solutions,  accountability becomes distributed rather than centralized.  

Horizontal accountability begins at home—with conversations that affirm equality and reject  victim-blaming. It grows in schools that teach consent and respect. It strengthens in workplaces  that enforce zero tolerance for harassment. It matures in communities that refuse silence. 

Only  then can vertical accountability—laws, courts, enforcement—function effectively.  

The rise in sexual violence is not inevitable. It reflects a convergence of cultural complacency,  fragmented communities, and algorithm-amplified narratives that erode empathy. Reclaiming  accountability requires confronting uncomfortable truths about our own complicity—how we  speak, what we share, and when we stay silent.  

This International Women's Day, Bangladesh must move beyond hashtags and ceremonies. The challenge is to reconstruct a culture where every stakeholder—family, community, institution,  and youth—recognises their role in prevention. 

The solution does not lie in outrage alone, nor  solely in state intervention. It lies in restoring shared guardianship over dignity and justice.  

If we can harness the energy, creativity, and connectivity of our youth while rebuilding  horizontal accountability across society, we may yet transform this crisis into a turning point. 

The safety of women and children depends not only on stronger laws, but on stronger collective  conscience.  

Anika Mahzabin is a brand and accountability strategist and could be reached at anika21mahzabin@gmail.com 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.