Harsher laws sought to contain rising GBV

THE government has promised to continue creating a safe environment by enacting laws and introducing directives focused on reducing gender based violence against women and children.

The pledge was made in Dar es Salaam yesterday by Vice-President Samia Suluhu Hassan, while launching a sixteen-day campaign against the vice. The launch was jointly coordinated by Women in Law and Development Africa (WiLDAF) and Network Against Gender Based Violence.

Foreign guests at the event were Ireland’s Ambassador to Tanzania, Paul Sherlock, US Charge d’affaires Inmi Patterson, UN Tanzania Resident Coordinator, Alvaro Rodriguez, Norway’s Ambassador Hanne-Marie Kaarstad and Canadan Ambassador Ian Myles.

In Ms Hassan’s speech read on her behalf by Minerals Minister Angela Kairuki, she reiterated that the government would continue to relentlessly implement strategies aimed at reducing gender based violence, as well as discouraging cultures and traditions that violate the rights of females.

She said a bill had already been sent to Parliament, for amending the education sector legislation, for protecting school girls from premature marriages. “After the envisaged amendment, a person who would be found guilty of marrying a student or facilitating the ritual, would face up to 30 years imprisonment,” she emphatically explained.

However, the Minister of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, Ms Ummy Mwalimu, said the sixteen-day campaign had come at the right time, given a steep rise in the incidence of gender based violence, and the compelling need to curb it.

In a speech read on her behalf by the Deputy Minister, Dr Faustine Ndugulile, Ms Mwalimu said community members should realise that gender based violence had a bearing on everyone, and in whose campaign to curb all well-intentioned people should spiritedly participate.

She pointed out that much valuable time that would otherwise be invested in economic productivity, was spent on resolving disputes stemming from gender based violence.

“We incur a lot of costs for the treatment of gender based violence victims; this trend slows down economic activities, and grassroots leaders spend much time in efforts to resolve disputes related to the vice, instead of addressing attention to economic activities,” she said.

The WiLDAF Acting Director, Advocate Anna Kulaya, noted that 40 per cent of women aged between 15 and 49 had experienced gender based violence. She said different researchers had established that the abominable acts were perpetrated by close family members.

“It is deeply saddening that these cruel acts are predominantly perpetrated in family settings like homes, that are generally perceived as safe. We are therefore earnestly requesting the government to introduce stiffer laws for penalizing the culprits, as a means of curbing them,” do what it can do to put laws that will end this act,” Ms Kulaya remarked.