Project Title: Participatory Strategies to Combat Violence Against Women and girls (PSCVAWG)
Thematic Area: Human Rights; Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV).
Project Goal: To foster the Meaningful engagement of men and boys in raising awareness on different forms of Sexual Gender-Based Violence perpetuated against women as a human rights issue and bring psychosocial support to women in West Nile region for their mental well-being
Outreach goal: To enhance round table engagements with GBV, SV, VAWG Survivors, in order to bring psychosocial support.
Outreach Objective1: To record GBV Survivor’s stories, and cause mental wellbeing, educate and establish GBV reporting pathways to local women in Arua District.
Where: Pajulu Sub-County, Oluko Sub-County, Arua Hill Division (Central Division), Dadamu Sub-County.
When: August 17th 2020 – Sept 18th 2020
Gender Based Violence (GBV) is a long standing, complex, and global problem. It is a pervasive public health and human rights problem throughout the world. Anyone can experience GBV, but women and girls are affected more frequently than men and boys. It requires attention and effort from a wide range of actors. It is a priority protection issue. Medical and public health organizations, humanitarian aid organizations, United Nations (UN) agencies, governments, and private donors can and must cooperate to eradicate GBV. These actors have responsibility for taking action to ensure appropriate survivor support, to deal with perpetrators, and to establish effective prevention strategies.
‘Two of my neighbors daughters were impregnated; one by a relative and the other by a friend of the family. The girls have been neglected by their guardians and one of them has resorted to solicitation to cope with the situation and survive. Our community really needs help.’ said Candiru Margaret one of our respondents
In Africa, a great number of women has been victimized of different forms of GBV crimes exemplary Sexual Violence (SV), Violence against Women and Girls, Emotional Violence (EV), Physical Violence (PV) and much more, which have highly resulted into trauma, mental un-wellness and resentful. As estimated by the Uganda Demographic Health Survey (UDHS) 2016, many women in Uganda over 56% of married women have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence by their current or most recent spouse. The aftermath of Covid-19 has highly affected women in the West Nile region of Uganda more than men due to the torment they get beyond the economic lack in their households. Arua in particular is a highly conservative area affected by culture norms & women are looked up to in terms of home management and sustainability.
A baseline survey conducted by Feminature Uganda in Arua in July 2020 revealed that during the crisis, 92% of the women in the district did not receive any psycho social support to cope with the effects of the pandemic. This resulted into mental breakdown by 89% of the respondents of our study. Majority of the bread winners in the area women who have experienced all form of violence during and after the pandemic season.
While there are many non-profit human rights organizations in the region fighting to cause dignity through community interventions on human rights, the Central police Station (CPS) in Arua City was able to receive over 53 GBV cases which involved life threatening situations. The question is? How do these women and girls come out of the trauma caused to them during the pandemic and after the crisis? Who is reaching out the lowest person in the hard to reach area? And who is there to give a voice to women and girls experiencing domestic violence? This informs and is the basis for our community outreach to the most affected communities in Arua district through a tailored intervention to education them on SGBV forms, causes and preventive measures and also to establish effective reporting pathways for SGBV at local levels.
Contact us to find out more information on this with SGBV Survivors.
Violence is not the Solution; it is the PROBLEM!
RECOGNISE! REPORT! RECOVER! PREVENT
