Lest we forget the right to life

This year’s 16 Days of Activism must be a time for conscientising and reminding governments in different parts of the world about women’s and children’s right to life. It is a moment of ensuring that governments reaffirm their commitment to safeguarding this fundamental right.

This year’s 16 Days of Activism must be a time for conscientising and reminding governments in different parts of the world about women’s and children’s right to life. It is a moment of ensuring that governments reaffirm their commitment to safeguarding this fundamental right.

This also is a time to commemorate women and children who have died from violence perpetuated against them, usually by men and boys of reproductive age.

Worldwide, women and children, mainly girls experience sexual and gender-based violence, some of which results in death. This violence takes many forms including defilement, rape , wife beating, early marriages, forced abortion, sodomy of minors and transmission of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), wishfully and knowingly.

Sexual and gender-based violence is prominent in settings of refugees and of the internally displaced; in rural areas among the poor; and in make-shift compounds in cities. These areas increase women”s and children”s vulnerability, because of harsh living conditions and poverty. And services, such as community and psychosocial counseling, medical, judicial, safety and security, are absent or insufficient.

Some die because of inadequate, inappropriate and bad quality services provided due to poor skills, attitudes and knowledge of handling gender violence survivours. Women and children who are raped, defiled or beaten require prompt and adequate screening, examination, treatment and follow-ups.

When women and children are not counseled on how to deal with blame and shame, some die from depression. Perpetrators acquitted, usually on flimsy grounds, continue to abuse survivours to death. And when this happens, communities are silent about it.

In areas lacking DNA and/or postmortem facilities to determine the cause of such death, a survivour is buried without redressing the violated”s right to life. As for the police, the death is enough ground to justify the closure of a docket.

For example, during the period April-July 2003, Zambia’s national media recorded three cases of girls defiled, impregnated and infected with multiple STIs, who eventually died. In the case of one of the girls, an 11-year-old, the perpetrator was not apprehended. The police dropped the case since she being the main witness, died before he was caught. Yet many more girls are at risk of being raped by the same man.

There is still a lot to be done. Governments must be encouraged to work closely with international and local non-governmental organisations to prevent and respond to human rights violations. At the national level, governments should ensure that  police and judicial personnel are fully vested in protecting and promoting women”s and children”s right to life.

Prevention implies implementing mechanisms that hinder sexual and gender-based violence from occurring and recurring. These mechanisms include, among others, awareness creations, community education, capacity building of service providers, apprehending, arresting and imprisoning perpetrators accordingly.

As for response mechanisms that address the needs of the survivours, more concerted efforts to ensure appropriate medication, counseling, referrals, the redress of violated human rights, the reintegration of survivours into societies that often blame them for the violence, as well as working on the knowledge, skills and attitudes of service providers, are needed.

Communities too must build capacity to respond to violations in their own settings. And the media must continue to inform governments and citizens about the scourges of gender-based violence against women and children.

The commemoration of the 16 Days of Activism must be used as a time to sensitise everyone on the need to establish effective mechanisms to protect and promote the right to life of the women and children who are still alive.

Chipo Gift K. Muponisi is an advisor/manager of  Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Programmes in Refugee Camps in Uganda.

This article is part of the GEM Opinion and Commentary Service that provides views and perspectives on current events.

janine@genderlinks.org.za for more information.