SPEAK OUT NOW

Stop Domestic Violence Against Men

The impression the society holds for a man is that, Men are strong, Men do not cry, men are the heads of the family, a woman cannot beat a man etc is absolutely wrong.

The Ugandan gender based laws tend to have bias towards men by focusing and directly protecting the plight of Women and girls as per the 1995 Ugandan Constitution, the ministry of gender labour and social development that is charged with the responsibility of handling gender related issues has a bias towards men and that is how it is termed as “Ministry of Women” all most all NGOs support and fight for children and women rights hence masculinity is the only defender of men in Uganda.

The Civil Society’s has been and still is majorly focused on plight of women and girls in Uganda, there is no single Civil Society/Non Governmental Organization (NGO) that work to help the men and boys regarding similar occurrences of domestic violence. The women plight is over rated yet at the helm of it all men equally suffer the same or even worse.

Biblically women are supposed to be submissive to their husbands and husbands are supposed to provide for their wives, this has greatly changed with the coming of gender equality. Women emancipation has changed the way women think, act and behave towards their male counterparts. The notion that all women are weak is equally not true because there are some women who are more powerful than some men in all aspects of life that is, physically, economically, politically and in a domestic set up. Women have become bread winners in some instances leading to tendency of men forget their position and responsibilities at home brought about by economic hardships and changing global trends, some women partially think men are useless in society because of the increased women emancipation, women in power and money that has threatened manhood leading to conflicts.

Whereas women who experience domestic violence are openly encouraged to report to the authorities; it has been argued that men who experience such violence often encounter pressure against reporting. Men who report to the authorities face social stigma regarding their perceived lack of machismo and other denigration of their masculinity. Intimate partner violence against men is generally less recognized by society than intimate partner violence against women, which act as barrier to men reporting their situation. Therefore, there is a need to break the silence.

According to Uganda Police Child and Family Protection Unit/Department (CFPU), few brave men report cases of domestic violence and can agree to speak about it; it’s a rare opportunity to find, a controversial and deeply taboo issue. About one or two cases can be reported in a mouth. However, in Uganda, survivors of sexual violence are at a risk of arrest by police, as they are likely to assume that they are gay, a crime in this country and in 38 0f the 53 African nations.

Men are willing to talk, for instance, Dr Chris Dolan, Refugee Law Project (RLP’s) British director, first heard of wartime sexual violence against man in the late 1990s while researching his PhD in northern Uganda, and he sensed that the problem might be dramatically underestimated. Keen to gain a fuller grasp of its depth and nature, he put up posters throughout Kampala in June 2009 announcing a “workshop on the issue in the local school. On the day, 150 men arrived. In a burst of candor, one attendee admitted. It’s happened to all of us here.” It soon became known among Uganda’s 200,000 strong refugee populations that the RLP were helping men who had been raped during conflict. Slowly, more victims began to come forward.

Research shows that women past experiences has a lot to do with violence tendency against men as a result of trauma from rape, disappointments, poor role models etc. but still, Society and cultural aspects that moulds an African man to be tough with a sense of authority makes women inferior and want to fight back. For long, the society and cultures has regarded men to be tough with sense of authority and that can defend and tend for themselves leading woman quest to fight back. This coupled with increased women emancipation and empowerment, amplified the desire for power, authority and financial muscle has guided them to demand for right of equality that has caused tension. Men have become more vulnerable and prone today to domestic violence

Therefore, Is Violence against men same as women? This idea reveals how much pertinent and salient this issue is in our society. In some cases, it goes to extremes of taking away someone’s life for instance, the circumstances that led to the death of Major General James Bananukye Kazini on Tuesday morning of November 10th 2009 after a night out with his girl friend, Lydia Draru a.k.a. Lydia Atim Draru.

The society cannot live in denial that female violence towards men in a domestic setting does occur, however, the Government and the majority of society focus only on men as perpetrators of violence towards women, do not believe or want to recognize that men can suffer from domestic violence in the same way as women. Why are there no laws covering violence against men, why do we know so little about this, and why the civil society only focus their entire efforts on female victims of domestic violence?

the objectives are;
• To create awareness on gender based violence against men in the community
• To discover why there is domestic violence against men
• To lobby policy makers to put laws in place that protect men
• To know why there is silence and why there is domestic violence against men
• To encourage men to speak out on gender based violence
• To encourage civil society to voice out men plea of suffering from domestic violence
• To advocate for a collective voice of men in society.

Domestic violence is a sensitive area of study hence extra care must be taken not to cause harm to others.