WUNRN
|
Rights activists say violence against women in Niger is
rampant and remains taboo |
NIAMEY, 6 December 2007
(IRIN) - The news that 70 percent of women in parts of Niger find it normal
that their husbands, fathers and brothers regularly beat, rape and humiliate
them came as no surprise to human rights experts in Niger.
“Women here have been indoctrinated by their families,
by religious officials, by society that this is a normal phenomenon,” said
Lisette Quesnel, a gender-based violence advisor with Oxfam in Niger, which
produced the statistic from a survey of women in the remote Zinder region of
eastern Niger in 2006.
The frequency of the crimes and the impunity granted to
the attackers partly explain the broad social acceptance of it, activists say.
Rape is increasingly common in the capital Niamey.
Beatings and mental and physical abuse are “frequently”
part of life in a typical Nigerien polygamous family, said Fatima
Ibrahima, who designs projects meant to prevent this kind of violence in Niger.
And women are often made destitute overnight when their
polygamous husbands throw them out on the street. Divorces are passed by judges
without even hearing “one word” from the women involved.
Taboo
The full extent of the abuse goes unrecorded because no
national statistics on the incidence of violence against women have ever been
drawn up by the police or the medical services.
Hospitals and health centres keep records of injuries
people are treated for, but not whether injuries were caused by violence, even
when a woman’s bruised face and broken bones are clearly the result of a
physical assault, activists say.
“Violence against women remains an absolute taboo in
Niger,” said Ibrahima.
“We talk about it in consultations but the phenomenon is
seldom acknowledged publicly."
Oxfam's Quesnel added, “If a woman goes to the police,
they will tell her she must have been a bad woman and ask her what she did to
deserve it."
...If a woman goes to the police, they will tell her she must
have been a bad woman and ask her what she did to deserve it...
|
Even talking to families
about violence is frowned upon, especially when the accused is a husband in a
marriage arranged by the woman's parents.
“When a woman is beaten, she can’t even tell her
mother,” said Mariama Moussa, President of the Nigerien NGO, SOS women and
children victims of family violence.
“If she does tell her mother she will often force her to
keep it private and tell her to go and sort things out with her husband.” In
some cases, the insistence that a woman return to an abusive husband has
resulted in the woman's death – cases in which the men have not been arrested.
Driving change
Human rights workers have tried setting up centres for
abused women in Niger, but found most women stay away for fear of being seen
even going to the centres.
Now, SOS women and children, and a consortium of other
Nigerien NGOs, are focusing on discreetly providing made-to-measure assistance
to women, ranging from legal advice to medical care. They have set up an
information point at one of the main markets in Niamey.
Activists say that if real change is going to happen, it
must be driven by the highest levels of political decision-making, and be
enforced on the religious and legal authorities.
“We need strong political leadership to help women,
otherwise their rights will never be respected,” said Salamatou Traoré, a
prominent Nigerien women’s rights activist.
Activists want Niger to institute unequivocal laws
banning all forms of violence against women, including rape, underage marriage,
physical abuse and arbitrary divorces.
Girls also need to be educated about their rights and
given the intellectual tools to survive in a society dominated by men,
activists say. At the moment, just 15 percent of women in Niger can read and
write, compared to 43 percent of men.
And women need a push to get into the workforce.
Currently, just under 7 percent of women are employed in official income
generating activities, compared to 81 percent of men. The imbalance means Niger
has one of the highest overall unemployment rates in the world.
Men failing
Niger’s male-dominated government has shied away from
anything more than tokenism when it comes to women’s rights, according to
activists.
Despite a law that institutes a quota for women’s
representation in government, only 13 percent of the seats in the National
Assembly are filled by women.
|
Women
in Niger are gradually becoming more aware of their rights |
According to the national employment agency (ANPE),
just 22 percent of the 46,906 government officials, known locally by the French
word 'fonctionnaires', are women.
When Niger in 1999 signed the United Nations anti-discrimination
instrument, the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women,
it made reservations on key articles governing a married woman’s right to
choose her own place of residence and to divorce.
Negotiations over a family code which was to include
several new rights for Niger’s women descended into what activist Traoré called
a “farce” when on the final day of drafting parliament backtracked on promises
for new far-reaching rights for women.
“Men started saying that we just wanted these laws so
women could marry women and that lesbianism and women were going to take over
Niger now,” said Traoré. “It was ridiculous – of course that’s not what we
want.”
Progress
Despite the odds stacked up against women, rights
activists in Niger say they are nonetheless seeing a gradual awareness among
some women of their rights, even if men do not offer the same respect.
“At one school seminar I attended a young girl put her
hand up and asked why her parents want her to get married and whether she
should,” said Oxfam’s Quesnel.
On 25 November, to mark the international day for
eliminating violence against women, hundreds of women turned out for a march in
central Niamey.
“Women walked through the centre of Niamey, some of them
with tears streaming down their faces, as they realised for the first time that
they are not alone in what is happening to them,” Quesnel said.
“That said to me that change can happen.”
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