WUNRN
UGANDA:
Poverty, Wars and Alcohol Perpetuate Domestic Violence
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Families in northern Uganda: Conflict, poverty, alcohol
abuse and cultural attitudes are responsible for the high incidence of
domestic violence in Ugandan communities |
KAMPALA, 15 July 2008
(IRIN) - Armed conflict, poverty, alcohol abuse and cultural attitudes are
responsible for the high incidence of domestic violence in Ugandan communities,
according to a report presented to parliament by jurists.
Some 92 percent of 6,000 people surveyed by the Uganda
Law Reform Commission reported some form of domestic violence was taking place
in their communities.
The highest levels were recorded in northern Uganda,
which is struggling to emerge from more than two decades of conflict between
the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army and government troops. From 1996, the Ugandan
government moved much of the north’s population into crowded “protected
villages”.
“Over-congestion in the camp makes people put up with
other people’s bad behaviour, which includes fighting. The situation here is of
fear, suspicion and jealousy. All these encourage domestic violence because we
are over-congested. We also have a problem of ignorance … we do not know our
rights and duties,” a displaced person in Pabbo camp of Gulu district said in
the report.
The report cited several types of domestic abuse,
including sexual violence, drunkenness, psychological torture, confiscation of
property, physical and bodily harm, adultery, use of abusive language, nagging
and marital rape.
The commonest form of domestic violence reported was
physical abuse and child abuse, including beating, torture, biting and
stabbing, which accounted for 36 percent of the respondents, while 25 percent
was psychological abuse and alcohol abuse. Some incidences have resulted in
loss of life.
Cultural attitudes
In some parts of the country, the violence appears to be
entrenched in cultural traditions that do not allow for the concept of a
woman’s lack of consent to sexual intercourse. The report noted that under
‘akikamuni’ or ‘atokore’, a marital custom in the Karamoja region, if a woman
rejects a man, “when you find her you wrestle her and force her into sexual
intercourse. This can happen anywhere, even in a public place. The purpose of
the act is to extract consent.”
“The culture here connotes that a women is there to be
ruled and not a partner in marriage,” an attorney in Kabale district in
southwestern Uganda said.
In Gulu district, there is a belief that to be a “true
married wife” a woman should have lost a tooth as a result of being battered by
her husband.
The report also cites the custom of paying a “bride
price” at marriage as another potential source of abuse, since it reinforces
the idea that men have “proprietary rights over their wives”. A fear of having
to return the “bride price” keeps many women trapped in unhappy marriages.
Trouble with the law
The law is not much help in cases of abuse, according to
the report. Richard Lumu, a Kampala-based lawyer specialising in family
matters, said Uganda lacks specific legislation on domestic violence, something
the Uganda Law Reform Commission would like to change.
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Lumu told IRIN another problem with prosecuting cases
of domestic violence was the intimate relationship between the accused and the
victims. “Victims are competent but not compellable witnesses, victims do not
want their abusers jailed or to suffer too much,” he noted.
The report quotes an ordeal of a police officer who was
found in Gulu and narrated to the researchers an incident while he was still
working in Moroto. A woman who had been severely beaten by her husband and had
sustained serious injuries that rendered her unconscious was admitted in
Mataany Hospital. However, as soon as she regained consciousness, she marched
straight to the police station and accused the police officers of trying to
break up her marriage by locking up her husband.
“She went on to say that she found nothing wrong with
her husband having beaten her especially since he was her husband after all!
She left the police officers perplexed because at the end of the day she was
the would-be principal witness in the case,” the report states, adding that the
imprisonment or fine does not only affect the abuser -who is usually the
breadwinner - but the rest of the family as well.
The report further notes that the attitudes of judges
and judicial officers and their response to domestic violence often frustrates
battered women because the perpetrators may be treated leniently.