When Henriette Tine was brutally attacked recently by her husband with a large wooden pestle the size of a bat, hundreds of women from her native Casamance rose up in protest.
As Tine recovered in a hospital 450 km away in the capital, Dakar, the women organised a march to the regional governor’s residence and presented him with a declaration condemning the actions of Tine’s husband and demanding that he be severely punished.
Their call to action reveals a growing awareness amongst West African women of their rights. As the United Nations on Saturday marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, human rights workers say West African countries continue to make slow, yet promising, progress towards protecting women from abuse.
“Regionally, by surveying the countries in which we work we’ve noticed that small advances are being made,” said Pierrette d’Almeida, programme director for Togo for the NGO Women in Development and Law in Africa (WILDAF).
Legal action needed
WILDAF seeks to promote the rights of women through legal action and development. One of its key activities is lobbying for the ratification and implementation of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. When the Protocol came into force a year ago, eight West African countries had ratified it, including Senegal, Cape Verde, Benin, the Gambia, Mali, Mauritania and Nigeria.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s in-depth study on violence against women, released last month, reported that one of the most effective ways to fight abuse is to enact and implement laws.
“More and more, governments are opening up,” said d’Almeida, citing countries such as Ghana and Togo that have drafted bills on domestic violence and sexual harassment.
In both cases, however, the legislation has yet to be passed, revealing that in many countries there is still a cultural acceptance of violence against women.
“Fighting this scourge requires us to change a mindset which is still too common and deep-seated - to demonstrate once and for all that when it comes to violence against women there are no grounds for tolerance and no tolerable excuses,” said Annan in his address marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
One of the ways that WILDAF is trying to change views is by working with authorities such as judges and policemen to help them understand the rights of women.
“There was a case in Benin where a judge sentenced a man to a heavy fine for beating his wife. Judges are starting to recognise women’s rights,” said d’Almeida.
Seeking guidance
There are still many societal obstacles, however, to curbing violence against women, particularly when it comes to domestic abuse, which the secretary-general’s study said is the most common form of violence against women.
“They [women] know it’s illegal but customs and the social environment prevents them from going to the authorities. They are afraid of reprisals from their husbands and their stepfamilies,” said d’Almeida.
This is a phenomenon that has often been witnessed by the Committee to End Violence Against Women (CLVF), an NGO based in Senegal that provides support to women in situations of violence, guiding them towards legal and psychological help.
“We tell women what their options are and inform them about the law. Sometimes we will try to do family mediation first. We always try to boost the morale of the women, but ultimately it is up to them to make the final decision whether they want to press charges,” said Fatou Bintou, CLVF’s coordinator in Dakar. She said on average three women per week come to her office seeking help.
First steps
Like many countries in West Africa, the opportunity for legal recourse against domestic abuse is only a recent development in Senegal. The CLVF actually came into existence in 1996 in preparation for Senegal’s first domestic violence case to go to court.
Fatou Dieng had been abused by her husband, a retired army general, for more than 22 years when she finally decided to leave him and take legal action. The only problem was that there was nowhere for her to turn. She approached the African Network for Integrated Development, which formed a committee to deal with her case. It became the CLVF.
Protests and media attention placed pressure on authorities to act and eventually Dieng’s husband was arrested and convicted.
“He only received one month in jail, but it was a battle won,” said Bintou.
Since then, the law has evolved in Senegal to recognise the problem of conjugal violence.
“In 1999 a law was created specifically to provide protection for vulnerable groups like women and children. Men can receive up to five years in prison for domestic abuse,” said Bintou.
She said that one of the other impediments to helping women out of situations of domestic abuse is a lack of resources.
“Sometimes, the women sleep here in the office because there are no shelters," she said. "And others tell us they have no way of supporting themselves, so they prefer to live in this state of misery [with the abuse of their husbands] for the sake of their children, otherwise they would have left long ago."
mad/kdd/cs
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As Tine recovered in a hospital 450 km away in the capital, Dakar, the women organised a march to the regional governor’s residence and presented him with a declaration condemning the actions of Tine’s husband and demanding that he be severely punished.
Their call to action reveals a growing awareness amongst West African women of their rights. As the United Nations on Saturday marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, human rights workers say West African countries continue to make slow, yet promising, progress towards protecting women from abuse.
“Regionally, by surveying the countries in which we work we’ve noticed that small advances are being made,” said Pierrette d’Almeida, programme director for Togo for the NGO Women in Development and Law in Africa (WILDAF).
Legal action needed
WILDAF seeks to promote the rights of women through legal action and development. One of its key activities is lobbying for the ratification and implementation of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. When the Protocol came into force a year ago, eight West African countries had ratified it, including Senegal, Cape Verde, Benin, the Gambia, Mali, Mauritania and Nigeria.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s in-depth study on violence against women, released last month, reported that one of the most effective ways to fight abuse is to enact and implement laws.
“More and more, governments are opening up,” said d’Almeida, citing countries such as Ghana and Togo that have drafted bills on domestic violence and sexual harassment.
In both cases, however, the legislation has yet to be passed, revealing that in many countries there is still a cultural acceptance of violence against women.
“Fighting this scourge requires us to change a mindset which is still too common and deep-seated - to demonstrate once and for all that when it comes to violence against women there are no grounds for tolerance and no tolerable excuses,” said Annan in his address marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
One of the ways that WILDAF is trying to change views is by working with authorities such as judges and policemen to help them understand the rights of women.
“There was a case in Benin where a judge sentenced a man to a heavy fine for beating his wife. Judges are starting to recognise women’s rights,” said d’Almeida.
Seeking guidance
There are still many societal obstacles, however, to curbing violence against women, particularly when it comes to domestic abuse, which the secretary-general’s study said is the most common form of violence against women.
“They [women] know it’s illegal but customs and the social environment prevents them from going to the authorities. They are afraid of reprisals from their husbands and their stepfamilies,” said d’Almeida.
This is a phenomenon that has often been witnessed by the Committee to End Violence Against Women (CLVF), an NGO based in Senegal that provides support to women in situations of violence, guiding them towards legal and psychological help.
“We tell women what their options are and inform them about the law. Sometimes we will try to do family mediation first. We always try to boost the morale of the women, but ultimately it is up to them to make the final decision whether they want to press charges,” said Fatou Bintou, CLVF’s coordinator in Dakar. She said on average three women per week come to her office seeking help.
First steps
Like many countries in West Africa, the opportunity for legal recourse against domestic abuse is only a recent development in Senegal. The CLVF actually came into existence in 1996 in preparation for Senegal’s first domestic violence case to go to court.
Fatou Dieng had been abused by her husband, a retired army general, for more than 22 years when she finally decided to leave him and take legal action. The only problem was that there was nowhere for her to turn. She approached the African Network for Integrated Development, which formed a committee to deal with her case. It became the CLVF.
Protests and media attention placed pressure on authorities to act and eventually Dieng’s husband was arrested and convicted.
“He only received one month in jail, but it was a battle won,” said Bintou.
Since then, the law has evolved in Senegal to recognise the problem of conjugal violence.
“In 1999 a law was created specifically to provide protection for vulnerable groups like women and children. Men can receive up to five years in prison for domestic abuse,” said Bintou.
She said that one of the other impediments to helping women out of situations of domestic abuse is a lack of resources.
“Sometimes, the women sleep here in the office because there are no shelters," she said. "And others tell us they have no way of supporting themselves, so they prefer to live in this state of misery [with the abuse of their husbands] for the sake of their children, otherwise they would have left long ago."
mad/kdd/cs
cs
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
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