Archive for May 5th, 2009
Kenyan women’s organisations have called for a nationwide sex boycott to force feuding male politicians in the coalition government to resolve their differences.
The women say they are prepared to pay prostitutes to withhold their services for a week to make the campaign more effective.
The boycott has been sparked by a feud between Mwai Kibaki, the president, and Raila Odinga, the prime minister, over who runs the government agenda in parliament.
The women have sent emissaries to the wives of both men to encourage them to join in the boycott which reflects growing public anger with the pace at which the coalition government is tackling the underlying causes of last year’s post- election crisis.
Kenya was gripped by violent ethnic protests that almost pitched the country into civil war and resulted in the deaths of some 1,500 people in the aftermath of disputed elections.
The coalition government formed to end the crisis has been beset by corruption scandals and internal feuding even as 10m Kenyans face starvation.
A recent survey showed that over two-thirds of Kenyans no longer have confidence in the government.
“This is a call to mass action to protest poor leadership,” said Ms Patricia Nyaundi, executive director of the women’s organisation, FIDA. “The other option was to take to the streets with placards, but we would have been clobbered by the police. So this is a political protest from the safety of our homes.”
The boycott recalls Greek playwright’s Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata, about a sex boycott staged by Athenian women to end the Peloponnesian War.
“Our leaders are taking us in the wrong direction. Last year this feuding ended in violence. If this were to recur, it is the women and children who would bear the brunt,” Ms Nyaundi said
Some men interviewed for an opinion poll within hours of the launch on Wednesday last week said they would go elsewhere for sex if their partners got involved.
NGOs involved in the campaign plan to provide financial support to commercial sex workers, estimated at 7,000 in Nairobi’s central business district alone during the boycott.
Some critics object to the boycott strategy on principle. “As a feminist I’m not sure how I feel about being regarded as a mere provider of sex,” said Wangari Kinoti.
Sex in Kenya was a taboo subject until recently. However, official acknowledgement of the HIV/Aids crisis has changed that.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b8a23436-35e8-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html
The federal Government will provide an additional $41.5 million to tackle domestic violence, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced last week.
“The Government’s position on violence against women is zero tolerance,” Mr Rudd said. “Laws must be strong enough to hold perpetrators to account and offer justice and safety for victims and their families.
“We must also educate young people to prevent violence in future generations.”
Research commissioned for Time for Action report on ways of tackling domestic violence by KPMG released today says violence against women will cost the Australian economy around $13.6 billion this year, rising to $15.6 billion in 2021/22 if appropriate action is not taken.
The government will immediately invest $12.5 million in a new 24 hour, seven day national telephone and online crisis service. The new service will be run by professional staff and make active referrals to follow-up services.
The government will also spend $26 million for primary prevention activities, including $9 million on respectful relationships programs for school students and $17 million for a public information campaign focused on changing attitudes and behaviours that contribute to violence.
$3 million will go towards research on perpetrator treatment and nationally consistent laws.
The government will also request the Australian Law Reform Commission to work with State and Territory law reform commissions to examine the consistency of laws covering the safety of women and their children and establish a violence against women advisory group.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25403246-2702,00.html
Shortly after they were elected in 2001, the Liberals cut support services for victims of domestic violence as part of a wide-ranging effort to reduce spending and lower taxes. In their second term in office they changed the focus of services, putting more money into programs such as counselling and less into groups demanding changes in the way the welfare system, the courts and the police respond to violence. This year they are spending almost twice as much as in 2001.
The Liberals can legitimately boast about their support for safe homes. But a room to escape violence is only a small part of a network of services with gaping holes that the Liberals have shown no interest in filling. Advocates for women’s rights say housing designated for women escaping violence is being used for the homeless. They fear the government in its third term may privatize the facilities, undermining the services.
“This period of time between 2002 and 2009 in the province of B.C. has been a devastating one for women,” said Shelagh Day, co-author of a report, Inaction and Non-compliance: British Columbia’s Approach to Women’s Inequality, submitted last fall to a United Nations committee on the elimination of discrimination against women. Ms. Day, a founder of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) and international advocate, was among six Canadians who last fall received the Governor-General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case.
“The Liberals have been on a course of policy decisions and cuts that had a very negative impact on women of this province,” Ms. Day said in an interview. “The Liberals won’t acknowledge it and the NDP are not openly fighting back.”
Government funding was eliminated for 35 of 69 community-based victim-services programs in 2002, according to the report submitted to the UN. The government began to reverse direction in 2005, with funding for 43 new outreach programs to counsel and assist women.
About $48-million will be spent this year on programs for women and children leaving violence, an increase of more than $20-million since 2001. The province currently has 63 transition houses, 27 safe homes and nine so-called second stage houses. Last year around 13,000 women and children took advantage of the transition-house program.
The government provides financing for community groups that support women fleeing violence and training programs to help health-care workers recognize signs of violence and sexual abuse. Policy changes have enabled women leaving abusive situations to receive immediate income assistance, waiving normal wait-times requiring a search for work and independent living.
The government record, though, is under a shadow. Ms. Day’s report to the UN cites the elimination of the provincial ministry dedicated to promoting women’s equality as evidence of the government’s determination to erase women’s issues from the public agenda. Additional setbacks listed in the report include granting more discretion to police and prosecutors on whether to arrest and charge those involved in domestic violence, restricting legal aid for family law except for situations involving domestic violence, and relying more on alternative programs such as counselling and mediation, which in some cases provide opportunities for further abuse.
The vast majority of Iraqi women face domestic violence on a regular basis and many commit suicide because of it, the United Nations said last month.
Iraq and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan should take measures to stop violence against women, including honour killings and genital mutilation, the UN mission in Iraq, known as UNAMI, said in a regular report on human rights.
“The sensitivity of Iraqi communities to issues concerning women is such that families are frequently not reporting to the authorities incidents of violence against women,” it said.
To “escape the cycle of violence”, many women turned to suicide.
Iraq should “investigate incidents involving gender-based violence, in particular the so-called ‘honour crimes’ perpetrated against women, and take measures to ensure that persons found responsible for committing these crimes are held accountable and brought to justice”, UNAMI said.
UNAMI said it was concerned about threats against women because of the way they dressed, and it repeated a statement from November that women were threatened by rape, sex trafficking, forced and early marriages, murder and abduction. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion triggered a ferocious Sunni Islamist insurgency and sectarian bloodletting between once dominant Sunnis and majority Shi’ites. Religious extremists filled a vacuum of lawlessness, imposing conservative policies that were particularly intolerant of women’s rights.
The violence has fallen sharply and, as extremists retreated, their influence waned.
Plight In Kurdistan
The U.N. report, which covered the second half of 2008, said it paid special attention to the plight of women in Kurdistan, an area where ethnic Kurds, who are mostly Muslims, have enjoyed virtual independence since the end of the first Gulf War.
It said 139 cases of gender-based violence were recorded in the second half of the year in Kurdistan, which comprises three of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
“Out of the total number, 77 women were seriously burned, 26 were victims of murder or attempted murder and 25 were cases of questionable suicide,” the report said.
A total of 163 women were killed as a result of domestic violence in Kurdistan in 2009, compared to 166 in 2007.
Honour killings were a significant concern, it said.
The report cited an example of a father who shot and killed his 16- and 22-year-old daughters when he found out one of them was having a relationship. The father was not arrested.
The report expressed concern about female genital mutilation in Kurdistan, where many people think it is harmless and required by Islam. Some efforts were being made to address the problem, including the possibility of a law to make it illegal.
Still, a survey in the last quarter of 2008 by a German organisation found 98 percent of women in 54 villages in one area had undergone genital mutilation, the report said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSLT869223
When heads of districts describe efforts to fight sexual violence as a waste of resources, it raises questions about the leadership’s commitment to deal with the matter.
Such is the situation in northern Uganda where district commissioners, have dismissed sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) as non-existent, asking that donor funds for psychosocial support for survivors of SGBV be directed to other sectors.
“They say we are wasting money and that it should go to building roads, and schools destroyed during the war instead. These are government representatives in the districts. What they are telling us is that SGBV is not important, while women and girls have been severely affected by the war,” Betty Akulu of the Women and Rural Development Network (WORUDNET) in the northern Ugandan district of Pader told IPS.
Pader is one of the worst affected districts by the 20-year old conflict between government forces and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, where forces from the two sides have been accused of numerous atrocities against civilians. Women and girls have been beaten, raped and maimed. “You find many of them with their mouths and limbs cut, and even eyes gouged out,” Akulu noted.
Though no definitive figures of the number of violations have been collected, Human Rights Watch says abuses were widespread particularly during the peak of the war, and continue even after the war has subsided in recent years.
A regional programme seeking to chart ways of jointly addressing gender violence in conflict and post-conflict situations in five countries has been launched by the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD).
The Regional Gender Programme targets five countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. Gender and human rights experts from these countries met in Nairobi Apr. 7-8 under the theme “The hidden war crimes: challenging the impunity for sexual and gender-based violence in the Great Lakes Region” with a view to exploring how to address gaps in the fight against SGBV in the region.
“We want to conduct an audit to establish the state of play on legislation, the health sector, the police, in terms of handling matters of violence against women. We are saying this is a societal issue and we must target all sectors in order to end this problem successfully,” said Akoth Aketch, ACORD’s Gender and Conflict Thematic Manager.
What is clear is that while some of these nations have legislation explicitly outlawing SGBV, these laws are not working. Marie-Josée Bimansha, the only female judge presiding over the High Court of DRC attributes this to a severe lack of operational funds.
“The courts have practically no budget from the state. We cannot conduct our own investigations because we have no funds to do so. We have to wait for evidence from the police, and you know most of them are men and some do not believe there is rape,” she told IPS.
Rape in DRC carries a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, and if a victim dies as a result of the crime, it becomes a capital offence. But Bimansha, who is also the president of National Association of Women Judges of DRC noted that because of a lack of funds for investigations and therefore lack of evidence on their part, fewer cases are convicted and sentenced. Worse still, perpetrators are convicted on lesser charges.
Rape cases are widespread in the country. Of the 10 files she receives weekly, five deal with rape. Fighting between government forces and rebels has been escalating in the volatile provinces of North and South Kivu provinces of eastern DRC since last year, displacing over 250,000 people. A 2008 United Nations survey indicates that 55 percent of displaced women experienced sexual violence.
In addition to the failure of the justice system to protect women, rape survivors receive little help from the health system. Many public health facilities in the country are ill-equipped with Post Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), a short term antiretroviral treatment that reduces the likelihood of HIV infection after potential exposure to the disease. This is despite the requirement by the World Health Organisation that countries ensure PEP forms part of a comprehensive health service delivery plan.
In Northern Uganda’s Pader district, where 300 of the 412 gender-based violence cases reported last year dealt witht rape, survivors are unable to access PEP, not because it is unavailable, but due to lack of qualified medical personnel to administer the therapy, according to WORUDNET.
“PEP could be available at health units, but when we refer the survivors there for medication, they find no one to help them. There is a shortage of doctors here because many of them do not want to work in remote areas like Pader,” Akulu said.
It is feared that the shortage of qualified medical personnel to examine and treat rape survivors may deny them vital supporting evidence should they take their cases to court.
The experts who met in Nairobi are documenting these systemic failures and compiling reliable statistics from their countries. Once completed, this information will be used as an advocacy tool to press policy makers for reforms in areas that are key to tackling SGBV.
The ACORD initiative is also targeting change from below. A programme called Agents of Change is focusing on transforming cultural attitudes in Burundi.
A 12 year civil war between Tutsi minority and Hutu majority has resulted in atrocities including massive numbers of rapes. Lucie Nyamarushwa, previously worked with the human rights organisation ITEKA (the Kirundi word for dignity); she noted that in five years of work with ITEKA, they documented more than 1,500 rape cases each year.
“Addressing SGBV starts with changing attitudes at the household level. You start by telling your own children while young that both women and men, girls and boys deserve respect. And this teaching will live with them for ever,”said Nyamarushwa, who is now with ACORD- Burundi.
The Agents for Change programme, presently a pilot project in five provinces of Burundi, involves couples who are trained to spread anti-SGBV messages to their households, each couple trying to reach at least 10 people, who will in turn act as “agents of change” for 10 others in the extended family, spreading a message against gender violence through the community at large.
In keeping with the ACORD’s overall intent with the Regional Gender Programme, the Agents project is also investigating specific cultural practices that promote gender violence.
By assembling comprehensive data and research on SGBV in these five countries, ACORD hopes to end impunity for gender-based crimes and strengthen protection for women and girls at the local, national and regional levels.
The parliament in Nepal has enacted laws making domestic violence and violence at health institutions and health professionals punishable.
The Domestic Violence and Punishment Act 2065 passed on Sunday defines physical, mental, sexual, financial as well as behavioral violence as domestic violence.
The Act has a provision of slapping up to four months of imprisonment and Rs 6,000 fine on perpetrators of domestic violence, and half the punishment to accomplices. In case of physical or psychological injuries to the victim, the perpetrator will have to bear all treatment costs.
The law says victim will have to file complaint at a police office, local body or Women’s Commission within 90 days of facing an act of domestic violence. Hearings on such cases will be held in closed sessions.
A person once found guilty of perpetrating domestic violence will face double penalties for each new act of domestic violence, the Act says.
The government will establish service centers for victims to ensure security, treatment and rehabilitation. Such centers will provide victims with legal aid and psychological counseling, among other services.
Meanwhile, the Act to protect health institutions and professional says anyone attacking a health institution or professional can be jailed for three months to five years, apart from having to bear compensation for all damages.
President of Nepal Medical Association Kedar Narsigh K.C. welcomes the law but doubted its enforcement if lawlessness continues in the country.
“During my two years’ tenure alone, there have been 40 cases of violence against health institutions and professionals. Not a single person was prosecuted,” he said.
In recent years, the country has seen an alarming trend of relatives of patients, who die in the course of treatment, attacking health institutions and professionals accusing them of carelessness in treatment and demanding compensation.
http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=4062
Father Adrian, a Catholic priest in Musina, a South African town on the border with Zimbabwe, established a shelter for women and children fleeing, first, the violence, and then the socio-economic conditions in Zimbabwe.
Conditions in the shelter in the old Catholic church in Nancefield, a Musina township, are basic, but the Church provides meals to the about 100 or more people who bed down each night.
The women and their children are given temporary shelter while they apply for asylum seeker permits giving them temporary legal status. This usually takes about three days but can take longer, depending on the efficiency of the Department of Home Affairs. Father Adrian told IRIN about the shelter.
“The whole thing started soon after the [March 2008] elections when [Robert] Mugabe lost the presidential elections and ZANU-PF [the ruling party] lost the parliamentary elections, and he [Mugabe] then mobilized the so-called ‘war veterans’ straight away to intimidate the people and they simply started pouring across the border.
“They have terrible stories to tell, both of brutality and all the rest. One woman came to us after they had burned her husband and burned her house – she literally had to run from the graveyard to get away. Other people have different stories to tell, but people maybe arrive here with a little knapsack.
“The church shelter is for the women and children. There is a shelter to accommodate men elsewhere because the sexual abuse is something shocking.
“I believe at the [Musina] showgrounds [where as many as 5,000 people were sleeping while waiting to apply for asylum seekers permits until the authorities closed it] men walked up to women and said, ‘You are my wife tonight’, and the women had no choice but to go with them. There are a lot of things like that.
“We are able to provide nutrition for the young children, some of who have been born here. We started this food parcel scheme in mid-April, or so, in 2008.
“It started at one day a week and we very quickly had to change to five days a week. There were 30, then 40, then 50 – the number kept increasing and by mid-July the numbers were at about 100 a day.
“Finally, towards the end of last year, there were 300 people queuing up and we had food parcels for about 270 people, and then began to divide up the food parcels to share the food out, and that is the way things have been going.
“When people leave here after they have received their documentation, they go south to Johannesburg and Pretoria generally.”
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/32ffe4427662cb0cf2da2050853d2801.htm
Awa was killed by her husband last November in Guelendeng, 150km south of the Chad capital N’djamena. Her death was the tipping point for the town’s women, who, appalled by the rampant violence they face, have decided to fight for their rights.
In December dozens of women took part in a protest march, the first of its kind in Guelendeng, to condemn the violation of their rights and to call the government to account over the impunity that prevails.
Murders, beatings, underage marriage, sexual violence – the list of violations is long. “There have been so many cases of violence that we can no longer sit and do nothing,” Catherine Ndaokaï, information and awareness officer for the Violence Against Women Monitoring Committee, told IRIN. “This violence is so widespread that men even sit around and chat about it.”
Involvement in the march posed a threat for many participants, said Martine Klah, president of the monitoring committee that was created the day after the march “so that the movement does not stop here”.
In this region where men are traditionally seen as the “dominant ones”, Klah said, “Men told us that they were going to kill us one by one for having held that march.”
Cultural beliefs constitute one of the greatest obstacles to fighting the violence, the women said. “Women are at the bottom of the [social] ladder and are seen as property”, said Delphine Kemneloum Djiraibe, national coordinator of the Monitoring Committee to Call for Peace and National Reconciliation in Chad. “People can do whatever they want to a woman.”
The prevailing context of violence in a country where attacks on civilians by armed groups and general instability have been the norm for decades has undoubtedly exacerbated violence against women, human rights activists say.
“Men say that women are behind the [violent attacks], but back in the time of our grandparents people did not kill each other,” information officer Ndaokaï said “Even if a women was caught [doing something wrong], a man would have just got rid of her.”
The women of Guelendeng recognise there is a lack of support for victims of abuse. “We don’t know the basic legal documentation to defend the rights of women,” monitoring committee president Klah said.
Chad has laws on the books, including on reproductive health, but the implementing decrees were never published, rights activists say. A Family Code bill, drawn up several years ago still has not gone through Parliament. Human rights activists say the delay is due to conservatives who think the law gives women too much power.
In the meantime magistrates are attempting to use existing documentation from the Penal Code, such as sections relating to ‘bodily harm’, Lydie Asngar Mbaiassem Latoï, director of the promotion of women and gender integration unit at the Ministry of Social Affairs, told IRIN.
But existing legal remedies are inadequate, women say. The gaps and the prevailing tendency for impunity mean that the perpetrators of this violence are almost never prosecuted – and men know this, which encourages them to continue these acts, Larlem Marie, President of APLFT, an organisation promoting basic rights in Chad, told IRIN.
“Recently a man who wanted to attack his wife told her he could kill her because either way he would get away with it,” Larlem said. “He pointed to a case in which a man killed his wife without the slightest repercussion,” she told IRIN.
Women often fail to file a complaint because they are terrified of retaliation. Djiraibe pointed out that even were a woman to pursue a case, she would have nowhere to go to be safe from her attacker, as no facilities are available for victims of violence, particularly domestic violence.
“There is opposition to [creating facilities of this kind] on the grounds that it encourages women to leave their homes,” she said. “So there is no alternative [to the conjugal home]; if women [lodge a complaint] they will end up on the streets.”
While Guelendeng’s women are speaking out, many more women around the country suffer in silence, rights activists say. Humanitarian and human rights organisations report that the phenomenon is widespread but a lack of studies makes it difficult to determine the extent.
The Social Affairs Ministry plans to launch a nationwide survey this year that will in part measure the extent of violence against women, with support from UNFPA, according to Mbaiassem Latoï. And the ministry and UNFPA are working on a free helpline connected to the police, aimed at giving victims legal and medical help.
Aid workers say it is an issue that demands immediate action. “There is no sense of urgency even though we are facing a growing level of violence and there are more and more reports of feelings of insecurity,” said Marzio Babille, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in Chad.
Human rights activists say support from the authorities is critical to protecting women’s rights. The women of Guelendeng said they are fortunate in this respect. “We can go and see the [regional] prefect if we have a problem; he listens to us and supports us,” said one of the women.
Gabdibe Passore Ouadjiri Loth, the prefect, has been involved in several human rights cases and has links with the Ministry of the Interior and the presidency. “If a man will not protect his own mother, whom will he protect?” he said. But he recognised that the country was still run by “male chauvinists”.
The Ministry of Social Affairs’Mbaiassem Latoï said: “Things are moving forward slowly but surely. Everything is under construction: laws, policies.”
She added: “The [economic and security] crisis has turned everything upside down: many women have become heads of households and men are realising that they should not neglect them. This awakening has not reached its peak, but it will come. Either way, civil society will not stop”.
SIDEBAR “If she dies, it is her own fault” When Habiba was 12 her deceased father’s brother gave her away to be married to a military officer in his 50s. She became his third wife and gave birth to a son the following year. Habiba, who said her husband regularly beats her, has run away from the family home in N’djamena several times to seek refuge with her mother in Guelendeng, a town 150km away. But her uncle has sent her back to her husband each time. During one of her last escape attempts a few months ago her husband tried to kill her.
“It was around 7pm when he arrived [in Guelendeng] and found me at the side of the road. He told me he had just come to kill me and go. Then he stabbed me twice in the back,” said Habiba, who is alive only because passersby intervened.
The regional prefect, Gabdibe Passore Ouadjiri Loth, was alerted to the situation by human rights organisations and women’s groups in Guelendeng and he intervened. “I tried to get the parents, the husband, [local and traditional] chiefs and the young girl together,” he told IRIN. “We organised four meetings but the husband refused to come.”
According to human rights defenders, the husband, who was released after what one referred to as “a so-called arrest” in N’djamena, continues to make death threats to Habiba.
Now 16, Habiba said she also receives threats by her in-laws pressuring her to return home.
“I have to hide. I cannot sleep at night because I am scared [my husband] is going to come back. I have lost my appetite. The family does not leave me alone and my husband is spying on me. I do not know what to do. I just want to be away from him, that’s all.”
Local human rights activists, who have tried to establish a dialogue, have also received threats.
Mahamat Abdoulaye, Habiba’s uncle, said that she alone is responsible. “Customary marriage lays down certain rules,” he told IRIN. “We gave [Habiba to her husband] so that he would look after her for us. If she did not want it, she should have come to see us [the paternal family] to give back the dowry that the man paid, as our Muslim tradition states. She did not say anything to us and so [her husband] took action. If she dies it is her own fault”.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/d120a7fc5f92126d6978ca26973297a7.htm
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