Special Report on violence against women

Throughout East Africa, human rights and women's lobby groups have achieved a measure of success in pushing for the recognition and legal protection of women's rights. Unfortunately, in practice, women still face economic, social and cultural disadvantages that continue to leave them exposed to violence and abuse, according to regional gender experts. Forms of violence against women common in the region include assault, psychological and emotional torture by spouses, rape, female genital mutilation (FGM), abductions in some cases, and even murder. The level of many of these forms of violence is increasing, despite heightened awareness and improved laws, according to Rosemary Mueni, a member of the Kenya-based Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW). "When we look at domestic violence and other forms of violence against women, the law and the practice are not matching. There is a lot of violence taking place within the family, and in society," she told IRIN. COVAW, a grouping comprising human rights groups, and men and women in their individual capacities, says it is particularly frustrated by culturally sanctioned practices tending to entrench discrimination on the basis of sex, and which contribute to violence against women within society. Eva Mulema, a member of the International Federation of Women lawyers (FIDA), Uganda chapter, argues that although Uganda is currently viewed as exemplary for its leadership in recognising women's rights by putting in place laws which criminalise domestic and sexually related violence, economic factors and the lack of supporting infrastructure - such as shelters for abused women - continue to prevent many women from lodging complaints against their abusers. "The law is not perfect. There are criminal provisions for domestic violence, but women don't want their husbands arrested and locked up in jail. So the law still does not meet their needs," she said. "It is generally agreed that gender-violence rates are quite high in Uganda. What worries us more is that the perception that it is a problem is not very apparent," Mulema noted. In Uganda, domestic violence against women, including rape, remained common throughout 2001, according to the US State Department country report, released on Monday. According to UN statistics, 31 percent of women have experienced domestic violence, it said. "Law enforcement officials, reflecting public opinion, continued to view beating as a man's prerogative and rarely intervened," it added. However, the problem of domestic violence is getting increasing public attention and a Domestic Relations Bill is expected, according to the US report. Meanwhile, police and court records indicated that cases of defilement (statutory rape) were increasing to a worrying level; the US cited figures from the Commissioner General of Prisons which showed that 4,000 - or 38 percent - of capital cases during 2001 were defilement cases. Some men of the Karamojong ethnic group in northeastern Uganda were continuing their cultural practice of claiming unmarried women as wives by raping them (during raids on neighbouring districts), the report said. According to the FIDA Kenya chapter's 2001 report, domestic violence was the most common human-rights violation in Kenya. Of a total of 62 murders reported between January and September 2001, 29 involved a man killing his wife. "This then means that 47 percent of all murders nationwide were the result of domestic violence. Other manifestations of domestic violence included breaks and fractures, amputations, other visible marks, and missing hair and teeth," said Martha Koome, FIDA-Kenya's chairperson, in a recent speech, received by IRIN. "If we factor in the psychological impact of domestic violence, then its negative impact becomes astounding indeed," she said. "Quite clearly, domestic violence is a major public health problem in this country." Between January and November 2000, the Kenyan media reported some 50 deaths and 69 cases of severe injury resulting from domestic violence, the Daily Nation newspaper reported on 3 November 2000. In 1999, FIDA-Kenya, had reported 60 deaths resulting from domestic violence, and said at least three out of every five women in the country had been assaulted in the home. However, organisations like COVAW have argued that the reported cases are just the "tip of the iceberg", because many cases of domestic assault are never reported, either due to women's economic dependency on their spouses, or pressure exerted on them by the families of their husbands. Over and above the abuse they suffer, victims of gender violence often have to confront hostile or insensitive police officers when they go to report their cases, according to Mueni. Moreover, sexual offences often take place in private, thus tending to leave the burden of proof on the victim, especially in the case of children, whose evidence must be corroborated by a witness, she said. "The major frustration is with children. Many sexually abused children do not get justice, especially when it happens within the family. It becomes an issue of family image," Mueni added. Another major cause of worry for many Kenyan women is the emergence of so-called cultural groups which have recently been making frequent physical attacks on women, sometimes stripping them of clothes they consider inappropriate. In October 2001, for a group of youths belonging to the controversial cultural sect known as "Mungiki" attacked and stripped six women in the Kayole area in the east of Nairobi. They had deemed the women "improperly" dressed, because they were wearing slacks. The incident sparked a public outcry. Jane Kiragu, FIDA-Kenya's executive director, argues that the emergence of "patriarchal groups" like Mungiki, which claim to assert true African values in women, are merely a response to male rejection of women's increasing share of power in society. She told IRIN that her organisation was persevering in its efforts to sensitise the public and the government on the need to recognise that women, too, had a right to self-determination. "We insist that groups which target women for violence, especially because of the way they dress, must be resisted strongly. Women are human beings as well, and should be accorded their rights as equally as men," Kiraga told IRIN on Tuesday. "These rights are not privileges, but are entitlements, which, when violated by groups of men, are clearly an affront to women's human rights and dignity. All these allegations of taking us back to our roots are just a guise to put women under their control," she added. FGM remains a serious concern in the region, despite the Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian parliaments having adopted legislation to outlaw it. Widely condemned by international health experts as damaging to both physical and psychological health, FGM continued to be practised among the Sabiny tribe in the rural district of Kapchorwa in southeastern Uganda, and by the Pokot (also known as the Upe) in the northeast (and in western Kenya), according to US State Department report on human rights in Uganda, released on 3 March. The are about 10,000 Sabiny people and 20,000 Upe (Ugandan Pokot), with initiation ceremonies involving FGM generally occurring about every two years, the report stated. The practice continued despite the Ugandan government, women's groups and the UN Population Fund continuing to carry out programmes to combat it through education, it said. "These programmes have received strong government support and some support from local leaders", in addition to significant media coverage bringing public attention to the problem, the US State Department added. In Tanzania, although the government officially discourages FGM, it is still performed at an early stage by about 20 percent of the country's 130 main ethnic groups, a problem attributable mainly to the lack of laws expressly prohibiting the practice," according to the this week's US State Department report on Tanzania's human rights practices in 2001. In addition, the report says the police do not have adequate resources to protect victims of FGM. Under Tanzanian law, it says, FGM is only covered under the Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act, which prohibits cruelty against children. Women’s rights groups have often blamed their governments for failing to do enough on the legal front and through public education on the issue. In Uganda, for example, a new Domestic Bill sought to address the culturally sanctioned gender practices responsible for much of the violence in the home, including the outlawing of polygamy. The bill was, however, withdrawn, after much protest from Muslims, who claimed it violated Islamic provisions permitting men to marry four wives. The bill is now undergoing "further work", according to Mulema. The situation of women is not very different in neighbouring Tanzania, where domestic violence is not expressly included in the law, according to Rehema Karefu, acting director of the Tanzania Women's Legal Aid Centre, in the capital, Dar es Salaam. Karefu's centre receives an average of 80 cases of domestic violence a day. Although common law - particularly that of Britain, the former colonial power - which prohibits gender-based violence is automatically applicable in Tanzania, its implementation has been hampered by a combination of socioeconomic factors, according to rights activists. "There is no law prohibiting domestic violence, so to say, but sexual offences provisions, which outlaw rape, child exploitation and trafficking of women, have covered some of it," Karefu told IRIN from Dar es Salaam. Of key concern to organisations like COVAW in Kenya is the continued under-representation of women in parliament (despite the fact that women form 52 percent of the country's population of about 28 million people), thereby reducing women's ability to fight for their rights. This is in contrast to Uganda and Tanzania, which have put in place affirmative-action policies that guarantee a critical proportion of women's representation in government. There are only eight women in the current eighth Kenyan parliament, as opposed to 210 males, and none in president Daniel arap Moi's cabinet - a fact which women leaders regard as a "sad reality" illustrating women's lack of political muscle to advocate for legislation to protect their rights. In November 2000, the Kenyan parliament published a Domestic Violence Bill, which, among other things, sought to provide stiffer penalties for domestic-related assaults and battery, but it has yet to be passed into law, according to Mueni. A regional forum which convened between 11 and 13 February in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, urged governments in the region to collaborate with nongovernmental organisations to help curb the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. The forum, organised by children's organisations in the region, recommended, among other things, the mounting of campaigns to sensitise communities, families, schools and the police on the rights of children, particularly those vulnerable to sexual abuse, the African Church Information Service (ACIS) reported on 28 February. In its latest efforts to curb violence against women, the United Nations Development Fund for Woman (UNIFEM) has launched a new publication, which showcases a number of strategies from around the world to end violence against women, according to a recent UNIFEM statement. [see http://www.unifem.undp.org/resour.htm] The publication, "Picturing a Life Free of Violence: Media and Communications Strategies to End Violence against Women", is a collaborative project between UNIFEM and the Media Materials Clearinghouse of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Communication Programs. "The publication seeks to facilitate information sharing between organisations working to end violence against women, so that strong and effective strategies used in one country can be replicated in other contexts," the statement added. In her address to commemorate the day to end violence against women on 25 November, Noeleen Heyzer, the UNIFEM executive director, expressed delight that the international community had recognised that efforts to confront gender-based violence were central to human security and development. "It is notable how the actions and networks to end violence against women [including FGM and so-called honour killings] have joined forces across nations, ethnicities, race, class, caste and other diversities," she said. "Violence against women is universal, and the struggle to put an end to it involves each and every one of us."