Lira enacts by-laws to address sexual abuse

Leaders in Lira District are in the process of enacting by-laws and ordinances aimed at curbing rampant child sexual abuse.

Police data indicates that children in Amolatar, Alebtong, Apac, Dokolo, Kole, Kwania, Lira, Otuke, and Oyam districts  are subjected to various forms of abuse, including defilement or sexual exploitation, neglect, and torture, often perpetrated by parents, caretakers, peers, and strangers.

Ms Christine Anono, the Lira District community development officer, revealed that boys, too, endure sexual abuse silently due to a lack of awareness about this form of violence.

“Due to rampant child sexual violence in Lira, boys just like girls are dropping out of school,” she said.

“When we went for an outreach in Agweng Sub-county recently, one boy got up and told us that they used to know that boys, are not supposed to report violence. The Primary Six pupil in Agweng was telling us that his in-laws touched his private parts. These are women married to his brother.  That is sexual violence,”  Ms Anono said.

Nonetheless, leaders in Ogur and Aromo sub-counties and Lira City have been trained and supported by Women Leadership Development (WLEDE) to formulate local laws against sexual gender-based violence (SGBV), child marriage, and teenage pregnancies, which are rampant in Lango.

The move is spearheaded by a project dubbed ‘strengthening women’s participation in local governance to improve service delivery.’

Funded by the African Women’s Development Fund, the three-year project (September 2021- August 2024), aims to enhance accountability and advocacy for improved maternal healthcare for women and retention of girls in primary education in the sub-counties of Aromo, Ogur, and Lira City.

Ms Edith Ssali, the executive director of WLEDE, said they have so far trained 58 women and youth councillors in different areas, including monitoring and evaluation, advocacy, lobbying, and leadership skills.

“Now we have taken them to the next level of development of by-laws and ordinances so that they can be able to bring the policies to their respective councils, and in this case, we have early marriages, teenage pregnancies, and sexual gender-based violence,” she told Daily Monitor at Lira District headquarters on Tuesday.

Ms Margaret Pauline Namagembe, a public administrator and human rights activist, told their project participants that policies or by-laws and ordinances should be written in a clear, concise, and gender-neutral tone.

“A policy should be known by all those affected by it. If you are to arrest any parent who has not taken his or her child to school, the parent needs to know such a policy before you start implementing it,” she said.

Ms Ssali said local leaders are uniquely positioned to shape, advance, and exercise a leadership role in establishing by-laws and ordinances for preventing SGBV and child sexual abuse and ensuring such local laws are enforced within the community.

“So, what we do is to train these very leaders to be able to stay in the communities and do what they’re supposed to do to ensure that access to social services improves,” she added.

“In the area of education, our particular area was about retaining girls in school up to Primary Seven. This is because we realised that so many girls would enroll in lower classes; Primary One, Two, Three, and Four, and then they start dropping out in Primary Five. In Primary Six and Primary Seven, the number of girls is normally 35 percent. This time, the number of girls is at 75 percent.”