Uganda: Women in danger

Crimes of violence against disabled women are endemic in her East African homeland, says activist Laura Kanashu. But now, demands are being made on the Ugandan government to take action
 
I come from Uganda, I am a disabled woman who contracted polio at the age of two.

I am a lawyer by profession, currently I work with an organisation called Legal Action for Persons with Disabilities Uganda. This is the only organisation that provides legal assistance to disabled people in Uganda.

While it is generally difficult for ordinary citizens to access justice, it is even harder for disabled women especially in situations of violence.

The majority of disabled women and girls continue to suffer various forms of violence including assault, rape, battery, forced and child marriages.

These victims of violence describe court procedures as discriminating and intimidating.

This is made worse by the under-representation of women (not to mention disabled women) in the justice institutions, right from the lower levels up to the district, and the lack of concern on the part of male-dominated institutions for the special needs of the women.

Patriarchal family systems also hinder women’s access to justice. For example most of the clan courts are presided over by men who perceive women, and most especially women with disabilities, as secondary citizens and therefore do not take their concerns seriously.

Mothers or caretakers will stop incest rape cases from proceeding to court where the father of the victim, the breadwinner, is the accused because the detention of the breadwinner leads to economic hardship.

Remaining family members will blame and mistreat the child victim for reporting the abuse.

There’s the case of Nabongwe, a deaf blind child who was raped by either her father or brother. We followed up. Police for once were cooperative and they were willing to arrest the two suspects.

But when we explained to the mother of the victim that we were going to arrest the two men and carry out DNA tests on both so that we could identify the real culprit, she was not supportive at all! She actually gave her husband money to run away so that we couldn’t arrest him for the DNA test.

I will never forget a woman with multiple disabilities who came to our office to ask if we could provide financial aid. She said: “I thought this organisation can pay my rent and give me money to start a small business because I am tired of this man who comes to my house every night and forces himself on me. He is the father of my two kids. I cannot tell you who he is because he will stop looking after me and my children, and if you take him to court and expose him he will kill me because he warned me never to tell anyone that he is the father of my kids. He is ashamed of being associated with me because of my disability but he keeps coming to sleep with me because he says that of all the women he has slept with, no one is as good as me in bed!”

Defence lawyers ask victims embarrassing and intimidating questions to scare and confuse them. If the case is adjourned before she has finished giving her testimony, she probably will not come back to finish it when court resumes.

Open court systems allow for offenders and their families to intimidate victims as they wait for their case to be heard. Repeat offenders know how the system works whereas the victims may have never been to court and therefore are unsure of the procedures and language used.

There is urgent need for lobbying and policy advocacy for the enactment of specific laws, including family law, to effectively address the issues of violence against women and girls.

Additionally, there is need to build the capacity of the law enforcement officers, the justice institutions, and the judicial systems.

More efforts are also needed to engender and transform the cultural and religious institutions to recognise the rights of disabled women as human rights.

To address the issues of violence against women and girls with disabilities, there are local, regional as well as international frameworks that Uganda ratified. But these would need to be embedded in society and reinforced to benefit women and girls with disabilities.

These include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa and The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

We also want the Ugandan government to do a number of things towards stopping or at least properly prosecuting crimes of sexual violence against disabled women. First we want them to allocate secure, long-term government funding, or actively seek donor funding, to ensure that appropriate shelters are set up across the country in sufficient numbers, in collaboration with NGOs experienced in working to protect women with disabilities from violence.

We also want the government to set up a panel to identify obstacles to effective investigation and prosecution of crimes of sexual and gender-based violence. The investigation panel should include members of the police force and delegates from other relevant government bodies as well as delegates from NGOs that work in this field. The investigation panel should give particular attention to the situation of disabled women, especially those living in rural areas.

Meanwhile, Parliament should prioritise the passing and adoption of pending legislation that addresses sexual and gender-based violence, and draft new legislation which prohibits all acts of violence against disabled women regardless of who commits them.