Moses Baluku
Chairperson National Council - We Can Campaign Uganda
Tel: +256 772 072022, +256 702 911969
E-mails: [email protected] , [email protected]
Abibo Fred Arowa
General Secretary National Council - We Can Campaign Uganda
Regional Coordinator We Can Campaign, West Nile
Tel: +256 755 246666, +256 772 652858
E-Mail: [email protected]
Flavia Birungi
National Coordinator
We Can Campaign Uganda, Programme Officer, ACORD (Uganda)
Tel: +256 753 871 050, +256 414 267 667
E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]
Godfrey Binaisa Lodik
Regional Coordinator We Can Campaign – Northern Uganda
Kitgum Concerned Women's Association
Tel: +256 772 695636
E-Mail: [email protected]
Khadijah Babirye
District Coordinator We Can Campaign – Kampala District
Uganda Muslim Women Vision – Kampala
Tel: +256 779 586436
E-Mail: [email protected]
Henry Titus Kayondo
Regional Coordinator We Can Campaign – Central Uganda
Kyetume Community Based Health Care Program (KCBHCP) - Mukono
Tel: +256 772 329890
E-Mail: [email protected]
“We Can” refers to the global campaign to end violence against women. The full name of the campaign is ‘We Can End all Violence Against Women’. The campaign is currently active in six countries in South Asia, Europe and North America, East Africa (Kenya and Tanzania), Democratic Republic of Congo. We Can is a unique, innovative and ambitious large-scale campaign that seeks to reduce the social tolerance and acceptance of violence against women. Key aspects of the campaign include:
Alliance building based campaigning: We Can works through building a broad based alliance of diverse range of organisations, communities and individuals in local campaigning to challenge and influence change of attitudes and behaviour that make violence against women socially acceptable. Focus on attitude beliefs and behaviour change: We Can Campaign works to achieve a fundamental shift in social attitude, beliefs and practices that legitimise violence against women. Community based campaigning focusing on individual attitude and behaviour change: We Can focuses on influencing personal change of attitudes and behaviour in ordinary women and men and what they can do within their own spheres of influence to reduce violence against women in their communities. The campaign works through change makers i.e. Individuals who renounce violence against women and commit to change their attitudes and behaviour, also reach out and influence ten other people they know to do the same, thereby generating a cumulative social movement to end violence against women. Innovative and engaging communication materials: We Can raises awareness of men and women through materials and messaging on familiar situations that encourage people to question their beliefs and behaviour. Positive based campaigning: We Can moves the discourse on violence against women from blame-based approach and confrontational activism to a benefits based approach that promotes involvement by all. The campaign influences change of attitudes by positive example and encouragement and by persuading people to take responsibility for changing their attitudes as opposed to putting perpetrators on the defensive by condemning and ‘ naming and shaming’. Prevention of Violence Against Women (VAW) is at the core of the ‘We Can’ campaign. The campaign seeks to change social norms, attitudes, beliefs that have set the boundaries of acceptability of VAW and convince people that violence is neither acceptable nor inevitable. The ‘We Can’ approach and model of change is adapted from the Raising Voices resource book ‘Mobilising communities to prevent domestic violence’. This approach recognises that individual change is essential to promote social change. It focuses on introducing and framing the issue of prevention of VAW in a manner that:
Stimulates critical thinking;
Promotes change by positive example and encouragement;
Empowers and persuades;
Gets personal, provides options and alternatives;
Is inclusive, non confrontational yet challenging; and
Is positive, promotes community involvement and is benefits-based. The ‘We Can’ campaign applies the process of change based on stages of change behaviour model (SCM). The idea behind the SCM is that behaviour change does not happen in one step but is a process that takes time; people tend to progress through different stages of behaviour change and at different rates on their way to successful change. Why the “We Can”
Violence Against Women (VAW) remains a critical health, human rights and socio-economic problem world over. Globally, at least one in three women and girls are beaten or s*xually abused in their lifetime making VAW part of an epidemic that devastates lives, fractures communities and stalls a country's development. According to the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (2006), 68% of ever-married women in Uganda have experienced Domestic Violence. The Uganda Law Reform Commission (2007), reports that 78% of women are subjected to domestic violence in Uganda. Rural women (61%) suffer more than urban women (54%) because of high levels of dependency on men, lower levels of education and strong cultural values; likewise uneducated women suffer more violence than their educated and liberated counterparts. Studies globally show that 70% of violence faced by women is within their homes, yet their homes are also where future cycles of violent attitudes and behaviour are developed as well as a place for alternative, more equal attitudes to emerge. It is also proven that as many as 77% of women in Uganda believe that their husbands’ beating them is acceptable behaviour. The community accepts domestic violence as a regular part of daily life and women continue to suffer in silence. It is the more violent forms of violence that get noticed and addressed – like r**e, honour killing, FGM, etc, however, the more insidious but equally debilitating forms like domestic violence still remain within the bounds of “private” concerns. HIV/AIDS prevalence is on the increase and studies are increasingly highlighting its direct implications on domestic violence. DV increases women’s risk to HIV infection as it inhibits the effective use of the ‘ABC’ method of HIV prevention. Women in violent relationships are powerless to resist s*x with their husbands or to insist that unfaithful husbands stop having extra marital affairs or use condoms. Women living with HIV are blamed and sometimes beaten by their husbands for having the disease while on the other hand; men who are infected with HIV still assume the right to have s*x with their wives without a condom irrespective of their status. Steps so far taken by organizations and government to address domestic violence include lobbying for the passing of the Domestic Violence Bill in2009, mobilisation of communities and institutions to raise awareness and take action against domestic violence in Uganda. Despite some progress in addressing domestic violence over the past decade, levels of domestic violence in Uganda remain high. It continues to occur unabated in homes, communities and institutions as a socially acceptable practice. Efforts to address VAW in Uganda have tended to relate it to conflict, tackling it from a response rather than a preventive approach hence a focus on conflict-affected communities. According to Kabananukye (2008), VAW is a result of negative social attitudes towards women yet most Programmes are not addressing the root cause. The same report highlights that 34% of VAW actors in Uganda are involved in health service delivery, 23% in strengthening capacity while only 3.1 % are focused on community mobilization. Further more organisations continue to act against the issue in isolation; there is no unifying campaign that brings together different actors to create visibility and common voice against domestic violence in Uganda. Preventive efforts have also not fully engaged religious, cultural and traditional institutions, yet they are the custodians of cultures, norms and values including some that perpetuate or condone DV. Of the actors involved in the prevention and response to VAW in Uganda, 56% are CBOs, 10% are FBO, with little to no engagement of cultural institutions in the fight against VAW in Uganda. The State itself is not a neutral institution and is ultimately responsive to the dominant interests, in this case dominant patriarchal interests that ‘normalise’ VAW and offer impunity to offenders. Studies reveal that weak coordination & networking, inadequate skills, cultural practices, weak laws and traditional systems of justice in Uganda among others fuel or undermine efforts to curb DV. It is gravity of the situation that convinces Oxfam GB of the need to work towards change, reducing the incidence and the acceptability of DV. We believe that culture and traditional beliefs, the community; family and the individual play a critical role in perpetuating and promoting gender inequality and VAW. E.g. 56% of respondents in a study reported that wife beating is justified if a women goes out without informing the husband, for urging with the husband (40%) and 31% and 23% of men and female respondents said DV is justified if a wife denies a husband s*x. Thus, even as states are being made responsible for the safety and integrity of all citizens equally, it is imperative that a Change Maker’s movement is catalysed that rejects DV at a personal and community level, and changes culture and social norms to make DV unacceptable. Without a change in the social and cultural perception of VAW, we believe state-level action will remain limited in form and reach. Campaign Goal
To “reduce social acceptance and tolerance of Violence Against Women in Uganda
Campaign Objectives
1. Create a fundamental shift in social attitudes and beliefs that perpetuate or condone VAW
2. Create a popular social movement made up of a range of local and national partners and CSOs working towards ending VAW in Uganda
3. Mobilise men and women from all sections of the community to engage as change makers and question the ‘normalisation’ of domestic violence and other forms of VAW
Key campaign messages
1. That DV is a public, social issue and not a private, individual problem
2. That change is possible, that ordinary people can lead such changes
3. That everybody has a responsibility to end DV
4. Domestic violence can increase the risk to HIV infection
5. That men’s actions can go a long way in restoring the well being of their family
6. That men and women together can work to end DV
7. That attitudes and practices alternative to traditional concepts of masculine and feminine ideals can be viable and effective
8. That such alternative practices enhance the quality of life of people involved and of those around them
9. Equal relationships are violence free
10. Men and women have a right to live free from violence
Register as a Change Maker
I want to be a Change Maker and help end all violence against women. We Can Global Network Declaration:
We, the Change Makers of the We Can global social movement, commit to foster change within ourselves to end violence against women, and motivate others to join in this journey towards equality, justice and peace. I commit to:
Reflect on my own attitudes and behaviors, so as to support gender equality and non-violence
Speak out against violence against women and promote actions to end it
Encourage at least five others to join the We Can campaign
