“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.
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