Violence against women remains widespread human rights abuse

There are not just two incidences where women have been horribly molested. There has been a string of femicides spanning from November 2016, where up to 40 young women have been maimed or killed. The perpetrators of many of this violence are yet to be brought to book, once again announcing the States’ boorish attitude towards issues of gender-based violence.

Violence against women and girls (VAWG) remains one of the most widespread human rights violations in Uganda and the world today. The Uganda Police Force’s annual crime reports have constantly placed the number of unreported gender-based violence cases at about 50,258.

Also, the 2017 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey has revealed that 22 per cent of women aged 15 to 49 in the country experience some form of sexual violence annually. Ideally, this translates to more than one million women exposed to sexual violence every year.

While these cases keep rising, they remain largely unreported due to the impunity, silence, stigma and shame surrounding them. It is never too early to interrogate circumstances under which we have dismally waned in our fight against the vice and to suggest solutions.

The wicked actions of violence against women have recently taken a twist. They no longer manifest in the routine physical, sexual and psychological ways.

The acts of battering, marital rape, femicide, female genital mutilation, child marriage are now overshadowed by new means of creating, furthering and perpetrating violence against women. These changes call for newer approaches.

A case in point is cyber harassment where obnoxious onslaughts are led against women because of how they have expressed themselves.

In another episode, fraught young females are shipped to the Middle East to do mysterious work, let alone the dismal attention of the State and the police towards reports of abuse of women and the corruption in the justice institutions where women lose their property and culprits are set free because the arbiter with authority has demanded kitu kidogo before anything can be done. All these continue because the means we have chosen ignore a few pertinent areas.

As we continue to caucus and assert ourselves on the rights of women, we realise that these seeming complexities are nothing beyond our feat. To date, a series of sensitisation activities among the masses continue to grow in a bid to create awareness.

The sensitisation, however, ignores certain pertinent areas like the role of the boy child, the police and other authorities, being showed the importance to desist from, and approach matters of VAWG with utmost urgency.

Just like any other battle, the battle against VAWG should originate from within the mind. That all our sensitization and outreach processes should emphasize the reinforcement of the minds of the victims to enable them rise above the vice and cope with the after aftereffects: And instantaneously dispirit the potential perpetrators from the most common acts or omissions which make them culprits.

In most cases, the reasons relayed by people who engage in gender-based violence and the stakeholders who omit to deal with this vice are premised on their perception of their victims, and also the influence which their cultures has had on them.

Efforts should, therefore, target in remolding the person whom the community had nurtured in a way that where a wrong is done, through beating, discipline is instilled.

We need to find means to prevent such brutal means of chastisement in the schools, for example, don’t continue to the home. We should not stop at simply talking about the deaths and batteries in the media, we should also move in with more practical approaches. It is a very well-known adage that “barking dogs seldom bite”

While we work hard to instill confidence among the victims to speak out, we should keep an ample data record. Data and statistics inform the scale of our input as an effort to counter the vice. The availability of data also enables us identify the most pertinent areas requiring immediate action.

Most of the statistics available on gender-based violence are from reports other than from government, which should be the custodian of more accurate data since it is closer to the people. All centres of local government should be able to keep a book wherein information and statistics on VAWG are kept.

We should as a country exhibit the utmost political will at all phases of fighting the vice. Our Parliament and institutions should enact laws and policies that act as vehicles to combat the vices.

Our politicians and Judiciary should show inextricable reverence for preserving the rights of women. Uganda still lags behind in implementation of policies on VAWG.

More resources should be dedicated to courts who are the custodians of the law to carry out outreach programmes and create justice mechanisms, equipped with human resource of inordinate expertise, and who can bring justice closer to the victims.

GBV is not a matter of politics split over a term. In each generation of legislators, executives and judicial officers; the roles should be continuing.

The constitution has provided a platform, asserting the equality of women with men. Through these provisions, women have been allowed to own land, and be administrators at the first instance in their late husband’s estates.

The Ugandan constitution also unequivocally provides for the right to a speedy trial. Appurtenant to this right is the obligation of the police to conclude investigations in all cases of abuse of rights.

The same Constitution protects the rights of women. It thus follows that in the protection of rights of women, the conduct of trials must be speedy.

Once trials involving domestically abused women are not given preeminence in this country, the result is that the disillusioned victims go back and live with a man that clobbered them, without hope of getting any remedy.

Ms Adeke is the National Female Youth MP