Social mobilization against sanctioned violence against girls and women

Experiences in Kembatta Tembaro Zone in Southern Ethiopia

“Democracy and the Social Question“: The sixth lecture in this academic year was given by Bogalech Gebre, Director of Kembata Women’s Self-Help Centre, an NGO working in the south of Ethiopia. The lecture took place on Tuesday, 27 March, in Goethe-Institute Gebrekristos Desta Centre.
In her speech Bogalech Gebre fights ardently against female genital mutilation, bride abduction and other socially sanctioned kinds of violence against women.
The lectures, organized by Addis Ababa University, FES and Goethe-Institute, with speakers from both the Ethiopian and international community in Addis Ababa, provide a podium for open dialogue on democracy issues. Capital is the media partner of this series.

“Boge” was born in the mid-1950s (without birth registration) in Kembatta, a Southern Region of Ethiopia that is today one of the most densely populated rural areas in Eastern Africa. Determined to learn to read she daily ran six kilometres to a missionary school and became the first girl from her village to be educated beyond the fourth grade. Her mother was occasionally beaten for allowing her to attend school.
Like millions of African and Asian girls, Boge underwent an ancient rite-of-passage called female genital excision, known locally as “removing the dirt”.
After escaping from four attempted forced early marriages by abduction, Boge accomplished the extraordinary feat of passing eighth grade matriculation, receiving government scholarships to attend Addis Ababa University and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where she studied Microbiology and Physiology. She was the first woman to join the science faculty at AAU. With the money saved from the her scholarship stipends she built a tin-roofed house for her father’s family, the first in the village. The people of Kembatta began to understand the value of educating girls …
In 1996 she ran six marathons gathering resources for a project she has been planning for some time: the Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma-Tope (KMG), a self-help Centre to empower women and their communities.

SANCTIONED VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMANKIND, perpetuates the subordination and discrimination of women worldwide.

I would like to focus on how our organization, Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma –Tope (KMG) –Kembatta Women’s Self-help Center -Ethiopia’s at grass- roots in Kembatta- Tembaro Zone, Southern Ethiopia, initiated an organic social movement against violence against girl children, particularly on female genital excision/ mutilation, bride abduction, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and created political space for women’s participation, self-empowerment, etc and is promoting possibilities for hope, change and transformation.
Sanctioned Violence Against Women and Girl Children is Endemic; it is from cradle to grave because of their sex; it is the most pervasive human rights violation in the world today. Gender based violence both reflects and reinforces inequities between men and women and compromises the health, dignity, security and autonomy of women and girls. It encompasses wide range of human rights violation, including sexual assault and abuse of children, incest, physical and mental abuse, force, coercion, murder; harmful customary practices such as female genital mutilation, bride abduction, sex trafficking, slavery, deprivation, directed at an individual woman or girl. This violence causes physical, psychological harm, humiliation and deprivation of human dignity and whole life. It is the sanctioning of commonplace violence on women that perpetuates female subordination and female poverty.
It is ironic that it is at home, the ‘woman’s place’, that women are most unsafe. Domestic violence, violence within the home, is a normally accepted phenomenon. It has no boundaries of, religion, region, caste or class. It is a ‘common’ ‘daily’ widespread affair. It is the most endemic form of violence that results in untold physical and life long psychological harm and suffering to women. Studies around the world indicate domestic violence against women and girls to be the largest cause of death for women (15-44 age group), more than AIDS, TB, or Malaria.
Sadly, women have culturally accepted violence as normal, ‘natural’ and a woman’s fate. Women bear the violence and suffer silently.
Home is also where children, particularly the girl child learns her fate from her mother. Even when she has a choice and opportunities to escape from the violence, she does not. This is because she had been so deeply conditioned to accept her fate. The home is also the very place where sons learn violence against women. They learn to value women as objects; as passive resources to be used abused, and exploited.
Thus it is essential when addressing violence against Girls and Women that we begin by looking at the root causes- the sanctioned and institutionalized violence against womankind- the Gender Apartheid.
Although, this may not be the forum to explore and compare and contrast Gender Apartheid against Racial Apartheid in depth, the two forms of apartheid are strikingly similar: Each is equally an offence against human rights and human dignity. Each elevates one category of humans as superior to another; leaving the subordinate category without a broad range of fundamental human rights. Racial supremacy gives privilege and power to whites over blacks while the parallel patriarchal system gives privilege and power to men over women.
Both ascribe "separate development", where the whites with their "superior" culture and skills naturally occupy the positions of power, whereas the blacks "naturally" occupy the more menial jobs, so equally sexual difference was used as the justification for male power over females. Thus, whereas racial apartheid confined the male black to the factory conveyor and cotton belts, so gender apartheid confines female workers to the kitchen. Racial apartheid was justified by the beliefs that whites are biologically and mentally superior to blacks, whereas gender apartheid is justified by the belief that men are biologically and mentally superior to women. Similarly. racial apartheid was justified that whites are morally superior to blacks whereas gender apartheid similarly ascribes moral superiority to men, giving moral weakness and blame to women. Both systems have socialized and conditioned their subordinates in inherent superiority of themselves.
Both, white supremacy and patriarchy claim to be the "paternal" and benevolent custodians of the welfare of subordinate groups. Both use their monopoly of power to maintain privilege, and disburse state benefits and services primarily to whites, and males, respectively. Such paternalistic and patriarchal claims are an offence against the most basic of democratic principles of representative democracy which states that all interest groups must be proportionally represented in the decision making process, in the making of laws and in the allocation of public resources. The mere existence of male domination of parliament (averaging 89 percent in Africa) should be enough to alert all women and those who support equality for women.
Human rights principles are directed towards ensuring that no one group in society can dominate another; turning another group into oppressed servants and slaves. Therefore the male domination of government, as with a white domination of government, automatically presents a prime example of a fundamental human rights issue – and an example of gender apartheid.
It is when we have better understood the nature of gender apartheid that we will be better able to abolish violence against women. When we have properly understood the close similarity between racial and gender apartheid, we will be better able to learn from the successful struggle against racial apartheid in the 20th century. From these lessons we can build the necessary strategies to fight gender apartheid in the 21st century.
As with the fight against racial apartheid, the struggle against inequality must begin with the clear recognition of the issues of discrimination and inequality as the basis for political and social campaigns to gain the necessary power to enforce the equal treatment of women.
Many governments weakly deny the existence of legalized discrimination against women. They claim, after all that women are equal in law and under the law and that gender equality is enshrined in the Constitution. Throughout Africa such claims are sham. Women in Africa are pervasively and routinely denied many of their basic human rights. Female genital excision /mutilation, domestic violence, -battered and shattered - as a mode of "discipline" by husbands, child brides –child abuse, sexual harassments, widow inheritance, women as legal minors (under the guardianship of husbands), disinheritance, women not controlling resources, women not participating in decision making, just to name few. In the more Islamic areas, the position is often worse because there is not even any pretence of a separation between Statutory and Customary laws, because both are subsumed under Shari'ah law. In these cases, there are no theoretical "statutory spaces' where women may claim gender equality.
Human rights are largely concerned with ensuring that there is no discrimination against any individual or group of citizens. Such discrimination is outlawed by adhering basic principles of equality in law and under the law; the right to dignity; the right to life, the integrity and security of the person, the right to equality of opportunity in access to resources.
Whenever an international debate on human rights of women arises, it is always on culture. Is culture fundamentally at odds with women’s human rights? Or are we using culture as scapegoat to deny, segregate, discriminate and devalue women?
What is culture? UNESCO’s broad definition of culture is: a set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group and… it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.
The relationship between culture and rights is a multi-faceted, complicated and seemingly elusive concept. In this age of globalization, culture does not belong just to “them”- to one group. We do not belong to only one culture but many cultures and our identity is multi-faceted; culture is neither static nor monolithic; it is constructed through human action rather than through super organic forces. Most importantly, culture is incorporated within structures of power for the construction of hegemony.
Each of us is entitled to our cultural rights. On the other hand, the principle of respect to human rights is not a matter of choice to any culture or social setting, but a universal value that must be upheld. Nevertheless, because human rights are founded on international consensus, they cannot be automatically enforced. Therefore, how do we identify ways of harmonizing the views and values in those cultures that violate human rights, particularly that of women and girl children? How can we facilitate change and transformation process, on one hand, and struggle to dismantle the fundamentals of patriarchal system that segregates women in the 21 century?
KMG, as an indigenous, non-governmental, woman focused, integrated community development organization, has taken steps to both harmonize cultural beliefs among communities and to struggle against gender apartheid. From its inception, KMG recognized the indispensability of freedom for women, and making women the principal social agency for change. The challenges, however, were to establish methods whereby the various components that make this freedom workable and practical could be effectively brought together?
In order for women to lead and be the principal social agency of change, women themselves must go through transformation, from a state of passive resources and objects to active citizens.
In struggle against white supremacy, it is easier to achieve black consciousness and lead organized political action compared to the problems of developing female consciousness and action. Taking the example of South Africa and of North America, the whites were in the northern suburbs and the blacks were in Soweto and segregated south, or urban ghettoes. They were physically segregated, and the oppressors are well identified. Women have no such geographical or community separation. Rather, they are isolated in their domestic location, and are dis-enfranchised. Very often the traditional forms of female political discussion and mobilization have broken down; especially with urbanization. Instead the oppressors are within women’s households – as husbands, fathers, sons, uncles, brothers and other community members.
Therefore, the women’s struggle for freedom and equality has to be different –qualitatively- that addresses the notion of “solidarity of humanity”, committed to the survival and wholeness of the entire people, female and male. It has to be the kind of struggle that men and women recognize the strength of the other.
KMG has had to find ways for women to recognize their position and value in society, and claim their places and spaces, and take leadership roles, develop strategies to struggle against the violent patriarchal psyche against women, including violence against children; and gain support within their households and their communities.
KMG’s Core Strategy is linking the practical needs of the communities and women with their strategic issues; linking ecology, economics, social and political systems. KMG created programs in health, livelihoods, environment, gender, democracy and human rights, making human rights and freedom real and relevant to the reality on the ground.
Through the processes of inclusive interaction KMG builds communities’ capacity to reflect and examine their own conditions against the historical period they live in, in relation to the rest of the world. KMG ensures the ownership of problems and concerns by the communities, and incorporate the beneficial aspects of culture that help build consensus against violence against women and girl children.
Women have become a critical link in this process. Most of them have never participated in any meaningful decision making process. This is a particular problem with women in rural areas, most of who have grown up thinking they were no better than the cows they milk. Property. Today, they are claiming their entitlement to a human society and personal agency, for the first time.
FGE/FGM has been so deeply ingrained customs in Kembatta –Tembaro zone; this painful ritual was called ‘removing the dirt’, because we could not utter the word for it. Currently, the movement of uncut girls and marrying in public and making their wedding a public mutual teaching/learning forum has become a common event; in the very heart of FGE/ FGM territory.
The main reasons why we are observing such positive change and transformation at the individual and community levels now in Alaba, Kembatta, and Tembaro is for the first time, the action was led by women –the principle victims, became owners of the problems –active citizens and teachers of their communities; our recognition of communities capacity has encouraged the communities to recognize and trust their own capacity to effect sustainable change.