African Church Information Service
Vincent R. Okungu
8 April 2002
Nairobi — 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.
COVAW 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 continue to prevent many women from lodging complaints against their abusers.
Recently, the Ugandan Vice President, Dr Speziosa W. Kazibwe, abandoned her long-time husband accusing him of battery. In Uganda, domestic violence against women, including rape remained common throughout 2001, according to the US State Department country report.
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 Bill is expected in Uganda, 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. Out of a total 62 murders reported between January and September last year, 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," says Martha Koome, FIDA-Kenya's chairperson She adds that domestic violence is a major public health problem in Kenya.
Between January and November 2000, the Kenyan media reported some 50 deaths and 69 cases of severe injury resulting from domestic violence.
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 at home.
However, organisations like COVAW have argued that the reported cases are just a "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. Many sexually abused children do not get justice, especially when it happens within the family.
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 Nairobi.
They had deemed the women "improperly" dressed, because they were wearing slacks.
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.
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 continues to be practiced the world over.
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 recent US State Department report.
Besides, the report says the police do not have adequate resources to protect victims of FGM. 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.
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.
*The views expressed in the above article areas attributed or are the writer's
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