Uganda records upsurge in gender-based violence cases

Joy Namitala escaped the shackles of bondage when she fled her matrimonial home after her husband threatened her life.

“My husband was a contract builder. He was not living with us because he was working far from here. He had found himself another woman and they even had children. I told my children to leave him in peace,” she told Daily Monitor in a recent interview.

Namitala, a resident of Kyetume in Mukono District, says her husband turned violent after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country in March 2020.

She says the situation was amplified by the economic distress that took a toll on him.

“When the first lockdown was ordered, he returned to live with us, but he did not have any money yet for us we had grown our food. He wanted sex all the time yet I didn’t even know where he had been. That is the point he started beating me,” she revealed.

Her children fled home to escape the wrath of her husband.

 “I was fed up and I didn’t want to get pregnant because I am getting old. I came to the health facility to ask for family planning. When I reached home he questioned me and demanded that I remove the contraceptive. However, I lied to him that I had removed it,” Namitala narrates

She adds: “He demanded that we give him the money that we had so he can send it to the other woman who was not working. He would demand for money to go and drink and if you don’t give it him, that is a beating.”

Namitala says she asked the area councillors to come to her rescue.

“They came and talked to him and advised him against infidelity, and he changed,” she says.

Namitala’s tribulations are symbolic of the dark underbelly that continues to afflict communities in Uganda.

In an inaugural study conducted by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) published in November, 56 percent of more than 5,000 women interviewed across the country had experienced both sexual and physical violence from their partners.

The survey shows that 54 percent of women say their men insisted on knowing their whereabouts at all times while 46 percent reported being suspected of unfaithfulness.

It further states that 71 percent of men wanted to control how their wives spent their money, 29 percent and 16 percent women reported that they were kept away from seeing their friends and family respectively.

The Uganda Police Annual Crime report of 2020 indicates that 17,664 cases of domestic violence were reported to police compared to 13,693 reported in 2019.

The report further shows that more than 14,000 cases of gender-based violence and defilement were registered but less than 10 percent of the files were sent to court, resulting into a paltry 900 convictions.

The Assistant Inspector General of Police and the Force’s chief political commissar, Mr Asan Kasingye, says he is keen on improving evidence gathering which can lead to the prosecution of such offenders.

“Every year, cases of defilement and rape are high in this country. It is very sad to see that such cases do not see the light of day because someone did not take such cases to the courts of law. If you know these people, why don’t you arrest them and throw them in jail,” Mr Kasingye says.

On August 31, police arrested Benson Okongo for beating his wife.

This followed a video clip which went viral online and showed Okongo attacking his wife.

The Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson, Mr Luke Owoyesigyire, said Okongo was charged with causing grievous bodily harm and domestic violence against his wife.

His file was forwarded to court and Okongo was later remanded to Kitalya prison.

At least one out of five women aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence at some point in their life, according to the Uganda Demographic Health Survey of 2016.

Some experts argue that government and civil society organisations ought to take this fight to communities where cultural taboos and complicity by law enforcement officers have led to an upsurge in cases of this nature.

“As a country, we need to prioritise sexual and gender bases violence and interventions that are geared towards this includes sexuality education, increasing funding but also improving the enforcement mechanisms that are needed to convict people who commit such cases,” Ms Rose Wakikona, the programme officer at Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), says.

Wakikona says more effort should target interventions that support investigations.

 “We need to do more in terms of improving our forensics science, making sure that our police officers can collect evidence appropriately, introducing rape kits within our health facilities,” she says

Mr Hassan Ssekajolo, the executive director of Men Engage Gender Equality Network in Uganda, says: “The men need to be supported to get into these sessions, to start these conversations with men so that they get to understand what does it feel, what is it that I should do to make sure that women and girls are not violated.”

The Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Steven Kazimba, says: “For us our main tool is preaching the gospel, using counselling sessions, using in-built organisations like mothers union and father’s union.”

Ms Elizabeth Mushabe of UN Women says: “We saw the Police Crime Report telling us the numbers of those defiled and the excuse they are giving is that these are children doing domestic work that stay home without anyone observing them. Doing domestic work is a problem alone, why then add defilement, its pathetic, we should reject it.”

At Kyetume Health Centre in Mukono District, where we found Namitala, Mr Henry Kayondo, the officer-in-charge of the facility, says they do not usually handle matters of sexual and gender-based violence as it is not their mandate.

“We receive 40 to 60 women a day but they come seeking different services. But, we have a counselling department where sometimes you get to know what the client is going through. We got some issues during the Covid-19 period where couples disagreed about family planning so you would find that the woman comes without the husband’s consent which starts off arguments,” Kayondo says.

According to the Domestic Violence Act 2010, Local Council courts can hear such cases and accord appropriate punishment, which includes imprisonment not exceeding two years, a fine or both for offenders found guilty.

But usually the victims fear to speak out.

“I did not go to the police because it was difficult to move and I feared that my husband would get arrested. I also feared the kind of picture I would portray to our children once they know that their father was imprisoned because of me,”  Namitala says.

These societal prejudices usually render the law toothless.

The negative consequences of sexual and gender-based violence on an individual’s wellbeing, are many.

For women and girls, these include unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, increased vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy complications, disability or even death.

Mr Peter Buyongo, the programme officer at Population Services International Uganda says: “We observed that GBV greatly interferes with decisions to take up and use sexual reproductive health services and commodities. For instance, women suffering from intimate partner violence are less likely to adopt contraception and that 46 percent to 69 percent are more likely to have unintended pregnancies. Abusive partners are 83 percent more likely to coerce a pregnancy for forced intercourse or birth control sabotage.”

During the Generation Equality Forum hosted in Paris, France, governments and donors committed more funding to research and supporting programmes geared towards ending sexual and gender-based violence.

Ms Angella Nakafeero, the commissioner of gender and women affairs at the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, says government has registered successes despite constrained budget allocations.

“We have managed to reduce physical violence from 51 percent in 2016 to 44 percent in 2021. However, sexual violence has increased and in terms of future planning we are going to put emphasis on sexual and online violence.”

It is estimated that government loses about Shs77 billion annually as a result of the rising and unresolved cases of sexual and gender-based violence.

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