As part of Gamcotrap’s continued efforts to promote and protect children’s rights, a one day sensitization programme on traditional practices, sexual and reproductive health rights was organized for thirty five Alkalolu and their Chiefs from the kombos. The programme that was organized in partnership with save the children Sweden regional office based in Dakar, Senegal was facilitated through the office of the Governor of the Western region as a strategic entry point to reach the traditional rulers who are the custodian of traditional practices in the Gambia.

During the workshop recently at paradise suite hotel the Paramount Chief, Alhagie Demba Sanyang who is also the head Chief expressed gratitude to be part of this important programme since it is about issues dealing with the health of women and children.

In his keynote speech the Governor of Western region, Mr. Lamin Sanneh noted that it was indeed a great pleasure and honour to be accorded with the privilege to make the opening statement on the auspicious training of local government authorities on traditional practices, sexual and reproductive health and rights. “Children and women are the most important productive element of the economy therefore they deserve the protection of the state and its apparatus, local government authorities and society at large”, he emphasized. Different sessions were dealt, on session one it was about their expectations for the workshop, this session dwelt on capturing the expectations of the Chiefs and Alkalolu. Their expectations were focused on the need to gain more information and knowledge about children’s rights, and issues on female genital mutilation. Some touched on learning the future direction on women and children’s right. Most of them argued that the current debates about children’s rights are not clear to them and they hope that the workshop will give them the opportunity to learn more about the issues and what their role is. This discussion also centered on the importance that Gamcotrap attaches to working with traditional structures especially the Chiefs and the Alkalolu in the pursuit to the realization of its aims and objectives.

Session two was on child rights and principles, this presentation looked at the definition of what rights are and how people perceive the whole issue of children’s rights. The discussion touched on the needs of children and how the fulfillment of these needs relate to basic and indivisible rights of all children. The presentation also looked at the issue of protection as a fundamental aspect of children’s rights. Some of the critical issues raised included protection from harmful traditional practices i.e. FGM and early marriages, other issue highlighted include sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

On the comments, the Chiefs noted that the programme should be further strengthened to reach out to more people; they also acknowledged learning the truth and will offer their full support in the process. On his comment the Kartong Alkali said “the advocacy of Gamcotrap is difficult with challenges but there is hope for success”, he pledged the support of the Alkalolu on any resolution on children’s rights.

On the third session that was about Isam and religion was presented by Imam Baba Leigh and Muhammad Sanuwo, these two religious Scholars, talked about the religious perspective of culture and practices. They touched on the historical perspective of female genital mutilation and the point of contestation surrounding the practices of FGM.

The presentation also highlighted some religious misinterpretations and preaching by some religious Scholars who continue to have access to the media zith their pro FGM

propaganda. They gave a crystal clear religious explanation about male circumcision and female circumcision and concluded that there is no where it is prescribed for women in any divine religious text. After this session it was observed in their comments that the information they receive on the public radio is contrary to what they have heard in the workshop. They noted that the information from the workshop is correct and every citizen should have the right information to make the right choice for their children. They observed that the government should give access to organizations with the right information to promote positive development and enlighten the population using the radio. In the light of these observations the following suggestions were made:

v           Religious leaders should come out and discuss the issues and the truth for people to get the right information.

v           People have to look at those who talk on the media and who mandated them to talk on the Radio as pro FGM campaigners and that should be stopped.

v           They highlighted the need for Gamcotrap to have access to the radio and discuss the issues of concern to the general public and they promised to look into the matter.

On session four: Components of reproductive health.

This session reported on the current situation regarding reproductive health and rights of women and children. It highlighted the increase in sexually transmitted diseases and the number of children affected. Participants were taken through the nine components of reproductive health which highlighted some very common household problems in relation to reproduction and the need to maintain and protect the health of women and children. Some of these include proper family planning procedures and safe motherhood practices to ensure the protection and maintenance of the health of women and children.

On session five: role of community leaders.

This was one of the most powerful sessions which evoked the sensitivities of the traditional decision makers and their role in various communities. For the Chiefs they cover a large jurisdiction in which several village heads exist. They lamented on the effects of lack of knowledge and the misconceptions which have been cleared by attending the workshop. Each of them made comments and the following represents the general ethos towards the fights against FGM and promoting children’s rights.

v           To ensure that a law against FGM is put in place so as to help the Chiefs and Alkalolu effectively engage with the people. This will help the elimination of harmful traditional practices.

v           To also engage and strengthen the capacity of the village development committees, in order to strengthen the advocacy at the community levels.

v           The paramount Chief of the Gambia pronounced joining Gamcotrap and offered to support in the advocacy to eradication of FGM.

v           All Chiefs and Alkalolu present at the workshop agreed to work together and protect the children. “Therefore we need one voice and come together to eradicate the practices.

v           Gamcotrap should conduct similar programme with all the chiefs in the Gambia with their national assembly members in order to make more declarations against harmful traditional practices.

v           The children’s act and the women’s bill should now be reinforced and this should

      be advocated for.

Chief of Kombo Central Dembo Santang Bojang, in giving the vote of thanks commended Gamcotrap for providing knowledge to the community leaders in the midst of ignorance about the practices of FGM. As enlightened leaders they will engage with the people and the women to ensure that the practices stop.

For her part Aja Nyimansata Sanneh Gamcotrap board member also thanked the staff of Gamcotrap and community leaders through the paramount chief and the governor of western region. She noted that the empowerment of women cannot be truly realized without the attainment of good health for Gambian women and children. “Government is aware of the advocacy work to eradicate FGM. As community leaders {Chiefs and Alkalolu} they are aware of the cultural issues in the societies and with their support, the practice can be eradicated”. She urged the leaders to mobilize their communities and spread the knowledge gained.

Thank very much for your kind attention.

Foroyaa has reported an alleged case of sexual harassment in the workplace in recent days. Of course that particular case is still just an allegation but its reporting does raise important issues. How many people are being sexually harassed and are afraid to report it?

This is a very serious matter. It must be made clear to all employees by their employers that this behaviour is simply not acceptable. It can make life hell for the person at the receiving end.

The difficult thing is that it can be very difficult to prove. For this reason the person being harassed must keep a very careful log of the abuse and gather as much evidence as possible to use in proving the case. Evidence is vital in these kinds of situations as it can often be just one person’s word against another. What many people forget is the effect this harassment can have on a person even when they are not in the work place. The negative effects of such behaviour can often continue to torment a person when they are at home trying to enjoy their well earned rest. Sexual harassment can be easily defined as any behaviour –of a sexual nature- which causes a person to feel uncomfortable. It can take many forms including verbal and physical. Many people have different levels of tolerance for behaviour of this kind. Obviously in a work place inappropriate touching or overt comments cannot be tolerated. But if any comment or behaviour of a sexual nature leads one person to tell another they are uncomfortable and the behaviour persists it is harassment. 

Unfortunately it can often happen that harassment goes hand in hand with the abuse of power. For this reason all employers must introduce strict codes of conduct that will allow and employee to get satisfaction in relation to a claim even if the offender is the head of the company. In this case an outside agency should be established along the lines of the ombudsman but applicable to both the public and private sectors.

What is perhaps most important is that we create a climate whereby the person suffering the abuse is not afraid or ashamed to come forward and report the situation. There is no shame in being the subject of this kind of behaviour and this must be made clear to all. This will create an open and accepting environment where the scourge of sexual harassment in the workplace can perish in the cold light of day.

One in three Swazi women has suffered some form of sexual abuse as a child; one in four experienced physical violence, a new United Nations survey revealed this week.

The study by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) is the first of its kind conducted in a country where anecdotal evidence suggests an alarming number of female children are victims of abuse. More disconcertingly still, the mushrooming population of orphans and vulnerable children in Swaziland provide yet more opportunities for sexual exploitation to occur.

In two years, 200,000 Swazi children will have been orphaned by AIDS - more than one-fifth of the current population, according to UNICEF. With HIV prevalence at 33.4 percent among people aged between 15 and 49, the country has the world's highest infection rate. As a result, life expectancy has halved from nearly 60 years in the 1990s to just over 30 years today.

"Disabled children, children out of school and orphans are some of the most vulnerable groups," said Jama Gulaid, UNICEF representative in Swaziland. "Poverty and the high prevalence of HIV create high numbers of marginalised children."

The survey, the National Study on Violence Against Children and Young Women, based its findings on interviews among rural and urban communities. Disturbingly, it concluded that violence and sexual assault against girls primarily took place at home.

"We found that 75 percent of the perpetrators of sexual violence were known to the victim," Gulaid said. "It is not surprising that sexual abuse of girls is a household problem, because Swazis reside in multi-generational homes, usually isolated farms. Relatively few girls are raped by strangers in towns because less of the population resides in towns, and there is a heightened awareness of security there".

Rapists don't use condoms

Often the abusers are the girls' own fathers and boyfriends. Only 43.5 percent of girls said their first sexual experiences were freely willed and devoid of coercion: a little less than five percent said they had been introduced to sex as rape victims.

Underscoring the urgency of addressing violence against girls was the AIDS crisis.

"Rapists don't use condoms, and if a father or uncle are so inclined to rape a daughter or niece, or a boyfriend forces himself on his girlfriend, the danger of HIV transmission is rife," said Victor Ndlovu, a voluntary testing and counseling officer in the central commercial town of Manzini. "Add to that the reluctance of girls to report abuse or in many instances to rightly understand they have been violated, we are faced with a serious public health challenge, aside from the individual suffering incurred by the girls."

A third of Swazi females interviewed for the study reported they had experienced emotional abuse. Often, the perpetrators had been abused themselves as children.

"The established 'hand me down' passing on of abuse is evident from what we were told," said Pamela Dlamini, a sociology student at the University of Swaziland, who was one of the survey interviewers. "Emotional abuse of girls is mostly carried out by the girls' female relatives, who were abused themselves. Sometimes there is jealousy. Instead of reporting an abusive husband or unable to police [the girl], the girl's mother or aunt will treat the girl as a rival. This comes from a culture where any post-pubescent girl is considered eligible for marriage in a polygamous household, even if she is 13, although Swazi culture does not allow for the incest we find rampant in households where abuse occurs."

Although officially a middle-income country, the UN Development Programme estimates more than two-thirds of Swazis live in chronic poverty, about the same number - over 600,000 - currently depend on food assistance from the World Food Programme and other donor groups.

The report noted that "Violence can damage the emotional, cognitive and physical development of children and thereby impact economic development of Swaziland by degrading the contribution of affected children".

The way forward

Less than half of sexual assaults and other abusive crimes are reported to the authorities. Swazi children were found to have sought help from the police or social welfare counselors in only one out of five cases that resulted in injury serious enough to consult a doctor.

The way forward appears to be through education, instructing girls about what constitutes abuse. "I spoke with many girls who said they did not understand that they had been abused. They felt abused, physically and psychologically, but no one told them this was not normal," said Dlamini.

The report backed Dlamini's observation, noting, "The numbers suggest a lack of understanding of what sexual violence is and how and where to report such incidents".

Educational programmes in schools would assist in a country where primary school attendance is relatively widespread, and instruct girls on the type of behaviour acceptable when they return home.

"The large numbers of sexual violence incidents happening in the home underscores the hidden nature of sexual violence and presents one of the largest challenges in preventing sexual violence in Swaziland," the report said.

The Monam group of rape survivors in the northern town of Bossangoa in the Central African Republic (CAR) does what it can to keep going, but morale is low and money tight.

"We've been left to fend for ourselves. We get little help from outside. Many of our members have died," the group's chairwoman, Pelagie Ndokoyanga, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Monam, which means "common good" in the Sango language, was set up in 2006 to bring together female survivors of sexual violence committed in 2001 and 2002 amid the mayhem leading up to the most recent of CAR's numerous coups d'etat that brought Francois Bozize to power in March 2003.

As well as providing a forum for solidarity, revenue-generation and wellbeing for women who have suffered gender-based violence (GBV), Monam also aims to combat such abuse, identify its perpetrators and fight against the stigmatisation of women in general and rape survivors in particular. According to Ndokoyanga, several members of the group were abandoned by their husbands after they were raped.

When an HIV testing and counselling centre was set up in Bossangoa in 2005, many of the first HIV-positive cases were the result of rape.

Among them is Nkokoyanga, who also works with the Bossangoa Association of People Living with HIV.

"It's normal to tell relatives when one is infected, it's not a sin," she said when several dozen members of the association met IRIN/PlusNews. "But they are the first to spread the news."

"Nobody has a job here. I have all my certificates but I never get a job because people know I am HIV-positive," she added.

Both organisations would like to enhance their incoming-generating activities such as market trading, but lack of the necessary capital makes it hard to get such projects off the ground.

With UNAIDS estimating CAR's HIV prevalence at 10 percent, with just three percent of HIV-positive adults on life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy, there is a clear and urgent need to scale up HIV education, testing and treatment, but continued armed conflict and insecurity have made this difficult in many areas of the country.

Many rapes, little data

Accurate, detailed statistics about the number of women who suffer GBV in CAR are unavailable. This is partly because of the stigma attached to such attacks, but also because the government barely functions outside the capital and international humanitarian actors have only recently begun working in the country in significant numbers.

In late February 2007, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that "sexual and gender-based violence strikes well over 15 percent of women and girls" in northern CAR.

Such attacks increased during the pre-coup unrest and during rebel clashes in early 2006 and early 2007.

One of the main areas of investigation opened in May 2007 by the International Criminal Court (ICC), following a request by the CAR government, is the "many allegations of rape and other aspects of sexual violence perpetrated against hundreds of reported victims...during a peak of violence in 2002/03", according to an ICC statement.

The court’s prosecutor is also closely monitoring reported incidences of GBV committed after 2005, when two rebellions emerged in the north.

“[Following a failed coup attempt in late 2002] there emerged a pattern of massive rapes and sexual violence perpetrated by armed individuals. Sexual violence appears to have been a central feature of the conflict," the ICC statement said, adding that at least 600 victims of GBV had been identified over the course of just five months.

Those targeted included elderly women, young girls and men, the ICC said.

"There were often aggravating aspects of cruelty such as rapes committed by multiple perpetrators, in front of third persons, sometimes with relatives forced to participate," the statement added, noting that the social impact of such crimes "appears devastating".

Programmes slowly getting off the ground

For now, there is little outside help for those directly affected by GBV. Clients of the Organisation pour la compassion et le développement des familles en détresse (OCODEFAD), a domestic NGO, have given testimony about sexual attacks against them to the Bangui office of the ICC prosecutor.

OCODEFAD was founded by Bernadette Sayo, a secondary school teacher whose husband was killed in front of her in 2002 by DRC rebels allied to CAR's then president Ange-Félix Patassé amid a coup attempt. The gunmen subsequently raped her.

OCODEFAD registered hundreds of women and dozens of men, as well as young children and elderly people, sexually abused during this period of unrest. It was largely thanks to pressure from this organisation and international rights groups that the government in Bangui called on the ICC to open its investigation.

In terms of foreign assistance, one NGO, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), set up a GBV programme in the northern town of Kaga-Bandoro in May 2007, providing free medical care and psycho-social counselling for its clients, raising awareness about GBV in nearby communities and holding discussions with various military groups.

Language, as well as stigma, was an obstacle in the beginning. "It took us a month to get a definition of rape. There's no word for it in Sango," Catherine Poulton, IRC GBV coordinator in CAR, told IRIN/PlusNews.

Since it began, the IRC's programme - which covers households along a 50km stretch of road - has handled 1,040 cases of GBV, dealing with associated problems such as sexually transmitted diseases, trauma and rejection by families.

Another seven GBV programmes are in the pipeline for 2008, involving agencies such as the UN World Health Organization, UNICEF, the UN Population Fund and Comité d'Aide Medicale.

In the case of CAR, where the data is so limited, donors may need to break with the tradition of seeking detailed assessments of a problem before signing their cheques. According to some analysts, one has to assume widespread prevalence; in IRC's experience the data emerged from the programme, rather than vice versa.

Several thousands of women and young girls have endured rape and other sexual violence in the conflict-torn north of the Central African Republic (CAR).

Research suggests that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) strikes well over 15 percent of women and girls in the region.

Rape cases are being reported in northern CAR on a weekly basis. The most recent reports mention two twelve-year old girls, who were raped while searching for firewood in the bush near their shelter. A local newspaper also described the ordeal of a thirteen-year old girl assaulted earlier this month on her way to sell palm oil at a market. Health workers in the western province of Nana-Mambéré have expressed shock at the increasing number of rapes of women and girls.

“Sexual violence is a disturbingly common feature of the insecurity in the north of the Central African Republic,” said John Holmes, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “We must ensure that those responsible are brought to justice,” he added.

Aid groups in the country are providing rape victims with medical and psychological care, including HIV testing and counselling. Among 20,000 displaced persons in the north of the country, more than 1,000 rape survivors have been assisted in the last six months. Networks of victims of sexual abuse are being supported by providing small amounts of money for productive activities.

“There is a dire need to expand the programmes that support the survivors of sexual violence and help communities to prevent it in the future,” affirmed Toby Lanzer, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in the country. “The joint [non-governmental organisation] NGO - United Nations aid programme for 2008 includes seven projects extending services to survivors of sexual violence in crisis zones,” he added.

The 2008 action plan for CAR, as outlined in the Common Appeal Process (CAP), asks the international community to contribute $92.6 million in assistance funds. So far this year, some $7.4 million, or close to 8 percent of the amount required, has been received.