RIGHTS-UGANDA: Unending Tales of Domestic Violence

By Evelyn Kiapi Reprint | | Print |

Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura

KAMPALA, Mar 10 2003 (IPS) - It happened fast, without a warning. Madina Nakamya died after her husband poured acid on her because she refused to sleep with him without a condom. Both were HIV positive.

In the southern city of Mbarara, Alien Mutari was battered and killed after she refused to have sex with her husband, after suspecting he was unfaithful.

These are some of the gruelling cases recorded by the Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET) in February, which bring to six the average of women who lose their lives to domestic violence every month.

In Uganda, the issue of domestic violence was swept out of the bedroom last year when Vice-President Specioza Wandera Kazibwe publicly revealed that she was a survivor of domestic violence. She has since walked out of the relationship, seeking divorce.

A recent study by a U.S. institution shows that about one in three women living in rural Uganda experiences verbal or physical threats from their partners. Fifty percent of them receive injuries as a result.

The study, conducted by John Hopkins University, highlights the links between domestic violence and the consumption of alcohol, as well as a partner’s perceived risk of HIV infection.

”Fear of HIV infection may lead women to avoid sex with their partner, which in turn may precipitate threats of violence or physical abuse,” the report says.

A total of 70 percent of male and 90 percent of female respondents viewed beating of a female partner as emanating from neglecting household chores, disobeying a husband or elders, and refusing to have sex, the report says.

The survey was conducted in Rakai, a district at the centre of the country’s HIV/AIDS epidemic.

”The stories are too painful to recount,” says Jacqueline Asiimwe-Mwesige, co-ordinator of the Uganda Women’s Network in a message to the International Women’s Day.

”Of course one would argue that murder is the extreme manifestation of domestic violence. However, the fact is that there is an even greater number of women who endure domestic violence on a daily basis,” she says.

Currently, there are no laws protecting women from domestic violence. A battered woman can only file a case based on assault, and often, the police ignore the depth of the crime, referring to it just as a ‘domestic issue that needs to be sorted out at home’. Women are waiting for the Domestic Relations Bill, the Equal Opportunities Act and the Sexual Offences Act. But, parliament is dragging its feet over them.

”All these bills have not been supported because the parliament is male dominated. They feel we are stepping on their dominance. But we need a legal framework,” says Linda Nabusayi, an activist in the capital, Kampala.

Asiimwe-Mwesige says: ”We want to challenge government that one way to save the women of Uganda is to put in place a law against domestic violence. There is enough legal and policy backing for parliament to move a motion that an act be passed to stop violence against women.”

Uganda’s 1995 Constitution stipulates that no person shall be subjected to any form of torture, cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. And women shall be accorded full and equal dignity as enjoyed by men.

”Domestic violence is clearly one form of torture to which a vast number of women are subjected…A law prohibiting domestic violence would go a long way to effectuate women’s rights. However, seven years after the promulgation of the constitution, there is not even a whisper of such a law in the corridors of parliament,” Asiimwe-Mwesige regrets.

The worst form of violence against women is inflicted in situations of armed conflict, according to Isis Women’s International Cross-Cultural Exchange.

”When there is war, women are faced with daily violence and extreme danger. They are maimed, abducted, raped, forced into marriage, to head households…all under very difficult circumstances.

”The rape and sexual violence they experience exposes them to many diseases, including HIV/AIDS,” the organisation said in a message to the International Women’s Day on Saturday.

Women and girls constitute 48 percent of the 197,000 refugees in Uganda, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The refugees come mainly from the Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

”Female refugees and asylum seekers are exposed and vulnerable to sexual assault, exploitation ands abuse,” says UNHCR’s Community Services/Education Co-ordinator Linnie Kesselly.

Rights groups hope to eliminate the growing cases of domestic violence in Uganda.

”What we promise to do as advocates against gender violence is to keep a tally of all the women who die from domestic violence in Uganda until our government does something drastic and meaningful to address their plight,” says Asiimwe-Mwesige.

Uganda, which diagnosed the first case of HIV/AIDS in 1982, has 1.5 million people living with the disease. The latest records show that the rate of prevalence has gradually fallen from a national average of 30 percent in 1992 to about six percent today, the lowest in the sub-Saharan region.