Why violence against women persists despite interventions

Peninah Kabanda describes herself as ‘fat and healthy’ as she twirls around in her maroon dress. She says a few years ago, she was so skinny that one could pass her on the road without noticing her. 

“I have been married twice, and unfortunately, both men used to beat me. Sometimes, they would neglect to feed my children and I. I think those men had the same behaviours. I just did not notice the red flags,” she says.  

At 30, Kabanda, a hardware dealer, has four children. She got pregnant when she was 16. She was not going to school at the time.

“My father told me to go and live with the man responsible for the pregnancy. Two years after moving in with that man, he started mistreating me.  He battered me and whenever I harvested food from the garden, he sold it and disappeared with the money,” she says.

In 2010, Kabanda left that man and soon got into another relationship. That man also abused her physically and emotionally.

Violence against women and girls (VAW/G) is ingrained in our society inspite of legislation, such as the Local Governments Act 1997, the Anti Trafficking Act 2009, the Domestic Violence Act 2010, the Succession Act 2022 and Affirmative Action, that protect the rights of women and girls.Many suffer abuse in silence

Today, VAW/G remains the most widespread and pervasive human rights violation against women in Uganda. The 2021 National Survey on Violence against women conducted by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), indicated that 95 percent of women have experienced physical or sexual violence or both by partners and non-partners since the age of 15 years.

A 2020 UBOS survey also found that 56 percent of partnered women have experienced intimate partner violence of a sexual or physical nature or both. 

Unfortunately, like Kabanda who did not report the abuse meted out to her to the police, many women and girls suffer abuse in silence.

“When I was pregnant with our second child, I caught my second husband red-handed, having sexual intercourse with my sister. When I complained, he attacked me and hit me with a table. I lost an eight-month-old pregnancy. I bore it all because I thought that at least, he would remain faithful to my sister. After using her, he dumped her for another woman,” she says.

VAW/G should be a national issue

Despite a number of legislation passed and increasing opportunities for girls and women to go to school and improve their social and financial welfare, VAW/G still persists.

According to Rita Aciro, the executive director of Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET), VAW/G remains at the periphery of society because it has not yet been politicised.

 “Violence against women is still a private matter. It has not been brought into the public discourse and unless this happens, the cost of VAW/G will remain an impediment to the wellbeing of our country. Policy makers and the community have not yet understood the cost of VAW/G on national development and economic empowerment,” Aciro adds.

She says the amount of resources government spends in the health sector as a result of physical or psychological violence has not been calculated.

Flavia Rwabuhoro Kabahenda, the Woman Member of Parliament for Kyegegwa District, says the fact that a number of couples have sacrificed their parental duties at the altar of financial well-being, has in many ways exacerbated domestic violence.

“Girls and boys are learning moral lessons on the television or from the communities they live in.  We all know the kind of violence on television. And, our communities do not usually have peaceful solutions to domestic challenges. Instead, couples fight and abuse each other in public, and unfortunately, these are examples that our children are picking up,” she says.

Is the boy-child forgotten?

Kabahenda also expressed concern that while efforts have been put in place to fight VAW/G, human rights defenders seem to have neglected the boy-child.

“When the Committee on Gender, Labour and Social Development visited remand homes around the country, we found out that in Kampiringisa Rehabilitation Centre, out of the 194 children on remand, only four were girls. At the Fort Portal Remand Home, 75 boys and only one girl were on remand. Are these boys not tomorrow’s chief executive officers?

How can we only empower the girl-child, and forget about the boys? These are boys who are waiting to batter your empowered girls once they become adults. Perhaps this is why women are the human rights defenders today – because we left the boy-child behind,” she says.

Poverty, a leading driver of VAW/G

Hunger and poverty go hand in hand with violence against women and girls and Kabanda attests to this.

“I got pregnant at 16 because I believed my boyfriend would cater for my needs. I had dropped out of school and my father stopped taking care of me. When my husband battered me, I would go to live in the UWONET (GBV) shelters, until the women there advised me to start up a business or find a job to sustain my children. I started hawking eggs, and later started a hardware business on credit. Today, I can afford to educate my children in good schools,” she says.   

Kabahenda says a food and nutrition framework is important because hunger and poverty have lured a number of girls into abusive relationships.

 “In my district (Kyegegwa), two thirds of the girls who get pregnant are lured by food. Farmers are selling their food to middlemen when it is still growing in the gardens. Families are left with only money, but no food at home. The Food and Nutrition Policy, which has been shelved in the Office of the Prime Minister for years, needs to be fast-tracked to save these girls,” she says.

In 2005, the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, and the Ministry of Health, enacted the National Food and Nutrition Strategy, which provides that food and nutrition insecurity, is a critical component of the development challenge the nation faces and fundamentally undermines efforts to meet its development mission. 

 Kabahenda also decries the scarcity of social support to victims of abuse.

“In October, we lost nine school-going children to suicide. One of the girls wrote in a suicide note, that an uncle had been consistently defiling her. When her school grades declined, her parents hired a teacher to give her extra lessons. Unfortunately, the teacher also defiled her. She decided to commit suicide, saying this world was not her home. We need to strengthen our social support systems,” she says.

The way forward

Christine Nakimwero Kaaya, the Woman Member of Parliament for Kiboga District, says the most important thing now is to tackle the misconceptions that some men still have about gender equality.

“Some men insist that even though a girl has gone to school, is exposed and has money, she must behave the way her great-grandmother – who never left the home - behaved. Married life has become a kind of competition because, being a religious country, men believe they are supposed to be the heads of the home.

However, empowered women also do not shy away from showing off. So, the men, unable to cope with this kind of woman, abdicate their responsibilities. Men need to help women out with the chores at home,” she says.

Kaaya adds that when men and empowered women meet halfway, the issue of emotional violence will become a thing of the past.

“An educated man may not beat his spouse because he knows that is the quickest way to get arrested. But, he will abuse her emotionally or abandon her.

Such cases are rife at police stations. Men need to shift their thinking to match the modern woman and empowered women ought to respect their spouses,” she says.

Activism should be done daily

The Covid-19 pandemic intensified VAW/G and exposed deep structural inequalities, reversing decades of progress on women’s rights and raising the number of women living in extreme poverty.

Aciro says to end VAW/G, people should not wait to commemorate the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence (GBV) every December. Instead, she says, activism should be done on a daily basis.

“How are we empowering communities and duty bearers? How is the mother ministry resourcing women’s rights and gender equality works? Are women’s rights organisations being given the leverage and latitude to work and engage? Are they getting resources from the government? Government should stop seeing activism as a donor issue,” she says.

Aciro adds that instead of taking cultural and religious institutions as proponents of VAW/G, these organisations should be invited to the frontline of denouncing this violence.