Cyber criminals can be stopped, says an expert

CYBER crimes remain a serious problem in Tanzania, targeting mostly financial transactions through financial institutions and mobile money transfers in addition to intrusion of privacy. The Managing Editor of Tanzania Standards (Newspapers) Limited (TSN), Dr Jim Yonazi, said in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday this week that, there was need for more public awareness campaigns to educate the public against misuse of technology. “The government made a good move to enact the Cyber Crime Act; however there is still a need to create awareness on advantages of technology,” Dr Yonazi who is an ICT expert said when officiating at a workshop aimed at demonstrating cyber security and forensic tools organized by the University of Dodoma (UDOM). The varsity has conducted a research on Tanzania’s cyber realm and developed a forensic tool which is able to detect digital information which has been doctored such as photos, videos and speech. Dr Yonazi explained further that apart from usual cyber crimes, there are as well cyber warfare between countries and big corporations worldwide. “There is thus a need to train our people to acquire required skills to mitigate effects arising from the offences committed through technology,” he emphasized. Dr Yonazi said the TSN was ready and interested to partner with UDOM to conduct public awareness through articles to be published in the company’s newspapers. The TSN publishes Daily News, Sunday News, HabariLeo and SpotiLeo. In a briefing to journalists, the Dean of School of Informatics and Virtual Education at UDOM, Prof Leonard Mselle, said the institution had been developing the forensic device. “The devised technology will assist to protect the country against cyber threats arising from within or outside the boarders,” the don explained. Adding; “This is why we have included at our workshop participants from the police force, the army and the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB), among others. ” The innovation by UDOM College was inspired by the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) which three years ago called on experts to make efforts which will help to boost the Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

LSF donates computers to regional paralegal officers in the country

THE Legal Service Facility (LSF) has donated a total of 160 laptop computers to regional paralegal officers in a move that aims to facilitate their communication activities to their clients in the country. The computers which are worth over Tshs. 150 were donated last week in Dar es Salaam at a colourful ceremony which was graced by the Denmark Ambassador accredited in the country Einar Jensen as a guest of homour. Also in attendance were various paralegal officers representing 26 regions in the country, and legal officers from the Ministry of Justice and constitutional affairs. LSF’s Chief Executive Officer Kees Groenendijk said during the handing over ceremony that, his organization has donated such tools in order to help the officers communicate with easy and facilitate their daily legal activities to the needy people in the country. He further noted that, the paralegal officers do experiences lots of challenges while executing their duties in local communities for lack of sophisticated use of Information and communication tools such as these, hence they get some difficulties to reduce the problem. “The computers would help the officers to communicate with the local people as well as preserve their documentations for their work which they does of providing legal aid to the people especially the marginalized groups in their communities”, he said. However, he further underscored in an exclusive interview, the importance of the computers that would provide effective communication linking them and the general public through links of communication channels such as emails, instagram and face book. In addition to that, Groenendijk noted that, the facility would also help them share legal experiences with their clients in some parts which are remotely located in the country. “Our aim is to give the capacity building and further to mobilize local resources and create a a firm national base in order to grow and become sustainable”, he said adding that in Tanzania the paralegal officers work in great difficulty as the country is so vast an aspect that the access of legal aid is very little and so we need organization” he affirmed. He exclusively noted that, “what his organization is trying to do in order to bring closer to the people at least about one paralegal officer to represent one ward in the country”, he said and added that his organization is targeting to reach that goal in order to have all people access the services with easy. Speaking in an exclusive interview, earlier the Danish Ambassador Einar Jensen noted that his country has signed a long term agreement whereby it would disburse $ 11 million in starting from 2016 ending 2021 to specifically help to facilitate legal services in the country. He noted that this is a history of the past 15 years as his government through his Embassy office has been supporting the number of paralegal officers in the country in two different phases.  However, h has underscored the importance of paralegal services noting that it should mainly focus the women and children who constitute greater number of the most marginalized groups in the country. On her part, the Director of the Morogoro Paralegal Centre Ms. Flora Masoi has thanked the donor funding organizations especially the Republic of Darmark and DFID for this help which she noted has helped them facilitate smoothly the activities lies ahead of them. She also thanked the National Assembly which recently passed a bill that recognised the activities done by the paralegal officers in the country. In the just passed bill, the paralegal officers would not work at liberty to help community especially the marginalized group solve their various social problems besetting them at a community level. Among the most vulnerable activities being undertaken by the paralegal officers includes processing divorce cases, civil cases, land crisis  and many others which are impediment to be solved by the marginalized groups in the community, said a University don Dr. Benson Bana who is also a Board member of LSF. He also extended his appreciation for the government of Denmark to have extended fund for facilitating the work of the activities taken by paralegal in the country

An NGO Calls for new role model to protect rights of women and girls

 “A new model should be adopted to protect women and girls from gender-based violence and other forms of discrimination in Tanzania,” said a legal expert, Jamal Omary during an interview “As a country, we need to change ways of dealing with rape, sodomy, battery…it seems national strategies have failed to stop these problems,” he noted. Expert suggestion comes against a backdrop of massive discrimination and human rights violations, targeting especially girls and women in urban and rural areas across the country. According to latest reports released by the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC), rape and sodomy cases have increased from 1,585 to 1,765 between last year and this year. Although the report indicates an increase in sodomy and rape cases of both male and female children, a comparative analysis shows that over 1,200,000 are reported to have been raped and sodomized during the period under review. “Figures could be higher as some victims do not report these cases to police stations,” local media quoted the LHRC Executive Director, Dr Helen Kijo-Bisimba, as saying, using statistics collected from police-gender desks countrywide. Recent independent studies indicate a drastic increase in the number of rape, torture and kidnapping cases of girls in Tanzania. Surveys conducted by the Tanzania Women’s Media Association (Tamwa) and a number of human rights organisations show that Zanzibar is notorious for rape cases that involve schoolgirls, early pregnancies and early marriages with most of the cases not reported to any law enforcement organs. “Let me tell you something; in Zanzibar raping a girl is considered as a normal practice. It is just part of the culture for coastal people…you can find such reports in many families and nobody takes the trouble to report them to police,” said one villager from Kimzikazi, South-Unguja Region. In an exclusive interview, NashonMsangi, a paralegal based in Kibaha said girls and women are often subjected to multiple forms of violence at domestic and national levels, noting that “long-time efforts by activists, human and women rights defenders, and government agencies have not managed to rectify the situation.” “Yet, perpetrators of these acts are still at large, police investigation and prosecution take years,” he said, adding that the police needed to do more to secure prosecute the culprits in a country where nearly one in three girls experience sexual abuse before the age of 18, according to the United Nations Children's Fund. Recently, local media quoted an official statement by Tamwa, calling on the government to do more as regards to timely prosecution. "If security organs and the responsible ministries take action against the perpetrators of such inhuman acts against children and women, the country will be a peaceful place to live in," notes Tamwa’s statement.

However, in all cases a new approach is needed to stop against gender-based and other types of violence against girls and women in the country. “You may believe me or not, but the fact is that legal and social protection of women and girls in the country has failed to produce expected results. We need to change,” said Fortunata Kitokesya, programme officer--in-charge of women affairs at the Legal Services Facility (LSF), a basket funding, which provides both financial and technical support to legal aid organisations involved in the provision of legal aid services in Tanzania. “Women and girls have suffered for many years and they will continue to suffer unless we change strategies,” she said. As an organisation, she says, LSF has come up with a different approach “legal empowerment” - a bottom-up model, which she believe could save millions of women and girls from escalating human rights violations. Legal empowerment entails enabling communities—local leaders, traditional and religious leaders, with the view to making them understand key concepts—women and girls’ rights to land/property ownership, inheritance, social services, lead a happy life, etc. With legal empowerment, according to the LSF official, community, local and family leaders are educated and sensitized to respect the rights of women and girls and fight against early pregnancies, early marriages, rape, battery etc. “After understanding these concepts, these leaders can easily tell their people to stop those backward practices. It’s hard to change people’s behaviour through statements or directives issued by national leaders,” she noted.  “We impart knowledge to leaders, who spread the same to their people. This is the best and effective way of ending gender-based violence against women and girls and ensure protection of their rights,” added Kitokesya. In 2014, LSF incorporated legal empowerment in the protection of women and girls’ rights in three pilot projects--Mvomero District, Morogoro, Dar es Salaam, and Siha, Kilimanjaro. In the process, the facility created a pool of change agents/makers, who go around educating their communities on the need to respect the rights of women and girls and stop discrimination against the vulnerable social groups. “Change of people’s altitudes and perceptions towards girls and women at the grassroots level, can change the entire country and this translates into changing the mind-set of national leaders, mind-set of government ministers…automatically change the mind-set of everybody, hence influence significant change in laws, policies that discriminate against women and girls,” said the LSF official, who doubles as in-charge of women affairs. LSF has duplicated the same model in its projects implemented in 158 districts across Tanzania—bringing together paralegals, community leaders in addressing women and girls issues, according to Kitokesya.

How can women access their rights?

 According to independent studies, millions of women are getting difficulties in accessing justice in our society across Tanzania. There are many forces/factors behind such scenario--including complexity nature of social and cultural norms, deeply rooted legal structural obstacles and discriminatory gender norms—all of these prevent women from accessing justice.  Some barriers are typical ignorance of the law and its procedures and knowing where exactly to go to access justice, unavailability of widely circulated legal aid scheme in the country.  One can ask do we have laws which protect rights of women. If they really exist, are they gender sensitive and well-structured, are they fair and balanced? How are they are enforced, particularly when it comes to the question of addressing grievances of women in the society?.  Are there any mechanisms that enhance women to get to know their rights, are there laws that are on their side. Is there any informal system that addresses women’s grievances?  “Of course, we have laws that these are bias and discriminatory to women, because there are millions of women who are still suffering in the presence of the so-called women protection laws,” said James Marenga, High Court Advocate and Media Consultant based in Dar es Salaam.  “Most of the cases about women rights are resolved through informal systems which are not effective, they left women unprotected,” added Marange.  The United Nations and the Rule of law provides that in developing countries, up to 80% of the cases are resolved by informal justice systems often referred to as “traditional”, “indigenous”, “customary” or “non-state” justice systems. This signifies that most women in the developing world access justice in a plural legal environment.  In Tanzania, women are facing injustices simply due to their gender, some injustices are justified by cultural norms and others are given authority by laws for example  in the customary law such as Declaration Order of 1963, which considers women as second class citizens after men. This law do not allow women to inherent land, places them under the supervision of men, something which is against CEDAW obligation to state parties. CEDAW is an international Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The international treaty was adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. Described as an international bill of rights for women, it was instituted on 3 September 1981 and has been ratified by 189 states, including Tanzania. The treaty requires state parties to modify gender stereo types (article 5(a) and address socio-cultural barriers that prevent women from claiming their rights.  In fact, the instrument plays an important role and it is an essential tool for advancing women’s rights and gender equality. With strong practice of rule of law, with an accessible and just legal system, women can succeed and contribute to the system. The rule of law lays principle of non-biasness of laws and non-discrimination laws that are equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and consistent with international human rights norms and standards. As such, a strong and effective legal system based on the rule of law is central to assisting women to become equal partners in decision-making and development.  CEDAW committee gives direction through its General Recommendation No. 33, 2015 on Women Access to Justice in para. II(A) which provides issues that are barrier to women to access justice. The non-availability of judicial and quasi-judicial bodies in rural and remote areas, the time and money needed to access judicial bodies, the complexity nature of proceedings, the lack of access to quality, gender competent legal aid, as well as the deficiencies of quality of justice systems for example gender-insensitive decisions due to the lack of trainings, delays and excessive length of proceedings, corruption all of these prevent women from accessing justice.  The committee proposes six interrelated and essential components — justifiability, availability, accessibility, good-quality, accountability of justice systems, and the provision of remedies for victims are necessary to ensure access to justice. Justifiability requires the unhindered access by women to justice as well as their ability and empowerment to claim their rights under the Convention as legal entitlements. Also it encourages cooperate with civil society and community-based organizations to develop sustainable mechanisms to support women’s access to justice. Availability requires the establishment of courts and other quasi-judicial or other bodies across the State Party in both urban, rural and remote areas, as well as their maintenance and funding.  Accessibility requires that all justice systems, both formal and quasi-judicial systems, are secure, affordable and physically accessible to women, and are adapted and appropriate to the needs of women including those who face intersectional or compounded forms of discrimination.  Good quality of justice systems requires that all components of the system adhere to international standards of competence, efficiency, independence and impartiality and provide, in a timely fashion, appropriate and effective remedies that are enforced and that lead to sustainable gender-sensitive dispute resolution for all women and take account of the increasing demands for justice by women. Provision of remedies requires the ability of women to receive from justice systems viable protection and meaningful redress for any harm that they may suffer .  Accountability of justice systems is ensured through the monitoring of the functioning of justice systems to guarantee that they are in accordance with the principles of justifiability, availability, accessibility, good quality and provision of remedies. The accountability of justice systems also refers to the monitoring of the actions of justice system professionals and of their legal responsibility in cases in which they violate the law.  According to field reports prepared by the Legal Services Facility (LSF), most of women facing injustices to go to seek justice from cell-leader, Village executive officers, ward executive officers, religious leaders, family members, but few of them go to formal judicial mechanisms.  The trends raise several critical questions—are these informal mechanisms meet standard of good quality justice systems in addressing women’s issues? Do women access justice from such type of informal bodies, how are these bodies exposed to gender sensitiveness of handling such cases?  Also looking at women’s status quo in legal knowledge and redress, how are they empowered in claiming their rights when facing grievances in the society?  “We need to adopt proper and workable approaches in order handle women cases/issues professionally and make sure they access rights,” said Fortunata Kitokesya, programme officer and in-charge of women desk at LSF—a basket funding mechanism which provides funding to legal aid organizations involved in legal aid services to the needy people across Tanzania.  She says are multiple approaches to address hindrance of women accessing justice. One is legal empowerment approach which can play pertinent role to address the women justice predicament. Legal empowerment entails giving power to the people, enabling people to use law to advance their rights. In accordance to IDLO’s study on Access to Justice: models,, strategies and best practices on women’s empowerment--2013, there are ranges of legal empowerment approaches that aim at empowering women to access justice. For example, legal education provided by trained paralegals, legal training to informal leaders (who are closer to the community and first to be approached by victims) on gender equality, strategic litigation which aims at changing discriminatory laws and the provision of legal services and the creation of a space for women to question and negotiate discriminatory ‘cultural’ norms. “Legal empowerment strategies can progressively empower women by making them know the law, use the law and change their lives through laws that are gender sensitive.  By empowering women to claim their rights, women are better strengthened to bring about change in their communities.”  “However, the legal empowerment framework should be bottom – up approach, involvement of community, middle level interventions which includes local government and upper level where judiciary, central government institution are involved to make women empowerment meaningful. With availability of trained paralegals in the country who are in every district, there is room of mitigating the unavailability and inaccessibility of legal aid in the country,” said LSF official.  To make it much productive the legal empowerment of women should go hand in hand with legal and institutional reforms and finally make progress in making women’s rights a reality, according to her.

Television set to become an expensive tool for use in Tanzania

Negotiations are underway between multiplex operators and content service providers for the television stations operating in Tanzania over the possibility of letting viewers to pay all local channels upon the expiry of a selected bundle.  The East African newspaper has observed. Currently television viewers in the country continue enjoying the five free to air local channels being transmitted by multiplex operators since the newly introduced terrestrial digital transmission systems was adopted in the country three years down the lane. The free recommended local channels are TBC, Channel 10, Star TV, TV 1 and Clouds Tv. Under the system, the government through its regulatory body, the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) ordered the operators not to switch off the five free to air local channels for specific agreed conditions that aimed all Tanzanians view televisions without pay. Both representatives of multiplex operators and television companies met mid this week in Dar es Salaam in a four hour public hearing meeting led by the TCRA’s inquiry team led by Engineer James Kilaba who is also the Director General of the TCRA. The meeting discussed cost based DTT Transmission fees currently in controversy among the digital television transmitters in the country. Both stakeholders upheld with a proposed sum of money to be paid by television viewers starting with the minimum Shs. 6,000 per month. The negotiations which ended in a deadlock had been suspended with the proposed idea which was left for the government to agree or disagree whether television viewers should pay the proposed amount of money or not. During the negotiations, both stakeholders presented their views and claimed about the higher taxes imposed on the communication sector and more severely representatives from television stations complained that are frequently incurring huge expenses while preparing various television programs for their viewers. They also asked the government to review the huge amount of money of $ 3,800 earlier slated to be paid by the television stations/companies per site to multiplex operators as transmission fee per month. According to them, the amount is so huge compared to the services offered and in view of this, have asked the government through its regulator to sit on the table to review. Investigations have discovered that, since the switching off of the analogue transmission came into effect three years down the lane, multiplex operators have been operating in desperation after having noticed that the television companies became reluctant to pay the transmission fee due for them at the right time. In an exclusive interview with one of the multiplex operators who proffered anonymity, said that, there is a conflict within the sector for they are not paid as earlier agreed. He further noted that, in order to harmonize the situation, and have level playing ground let the television sets operate just like mobile phones which uses prepaid recharged vouchers in order to receive signals from operators like the way is happening in other parts in the world. Further investigations has discovered that, as the stakeholders are looking for a solution to the matter, some members of the public in Dar es Salaam city have their television decoders cut off and owners have sent them text messages requested them to buy the bundle in order to be connected for use. In an exclusive interview, Robi Chacha, a resident of Ukonga ward in Ilala Municipality on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam city, said that he suddenly found his television set not showing images and thought might have overcome a technical fault. But he came to discover that, his Star Times decoder which he is using had been switched off, and when he consulted the authorities concerned, was informed to pay as the system has changed that all customers have to pay. Peter Mrefu, another complainant told this writer that, he had received a text message on his mobile phone from the Star Times the previous day saying that his free bundle has expired and that he was ought to buy another in order to be connected. To his great dismay, he was surprised to have seen that even the free five local channels supposed to be left were all blocked and wondered how this has come about. Another customer Mr. Haruna Salema who is subscribed to Star Times digital decoder also met the same fate three months ago when his decoder suddenly stopped working in the daytime. When he inquired to find out reasons from the authorities concerned, was informed that the free channels are no longer available as the company has entered into a realm of new operational systems whereby all customers have to pay for the channels. When contacted for comments, the top most officials of the Star Media Company who are dealers of the Star Time decoders who preferred anonymity said that, the government had imposed a lot of taxes and have no choice other than switching over the free channels for their customers. “This is one way to solicit fund that would compel our customers into letting them pay in order to be connected”, he affirmed. Tanzania and other East African member states became the first country in mainland Sub-Saharan Africa to switch off its analogue television signal in December 31, 2013.. A survey by TCRA indicates that in 2010 about 41 percent of Tanzania's populations of 45 million watch TV although this is sharply divided between urban and rural populations. TCRA began preparations for DSO shortly after the ITU Regional Radio Conference 2004 (RRC-04), at which digital terrestrial broadcasting was planned for Europe and Africa.