Recently the Embassy of Sweden has prepared webinar about the impact of COVID-19 on the rights of women and girls in Ethiopia. Ann Bernes, Swedish Ambassador to Ethiopia, shared the experience of Sweden’s enacting feminist foreign policy for Gender Equality. “While admitting and promoting equality regarding gender issues, everything you do is not just right things to do but also strategic and effective. The COVID-19 crisis is the new challenging and it is an eye opener to understand more about gender equality and see our gender structure,” she said.
Filsen Abdella, Minister at Ministry of Women, children and Youth said that most governments have issued stay at home measures for the respective citizen in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Fortunately, the measures taken by most governments seem to be working. However, they have imposed negative social and economic effects. Women and girls are definitely being baring the brand of this global crisis. While the data is at the early stage, the number of confirmed rape cases and domestic violence in Ethiopia is increasing by 25-30 percent. The instances of the violence have been executed by close relatives and abusive partners.
In addition to domestic violence, there are also reported sexual assaults and rape against girls including by close family members. Different regional states have also reported early marriage cases that have been conducted as a result of schools’ closure.
Furthermore, the increasing violence and harmful traditional practices are other problems. The pandemic has also paused risk to women’s sexual reproductive right and access to health services. Health facilities are facing the pandemic challenges and quitting critical services such as pre and post mental care. Access to contraceptive materials is being neglected which is additional risk to gender right. This will lead an increase in maternal mortality, unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortion affecting the life and health of women and children, she noted.
In the economic affair, women are the majority workers in the informal sectors with low income and little or no savings. As the solution mechanisms are rare because of the lockdown, many women will lose income even for daily livelihoods. The financial stress may also push many women and girls to be engaged in highly exploitative and dangerous work. Women spend an average three times more than men on unpaid care and domestic responsibilities. The pandemic has added extra burden as women have to care for the sick elderly and children at home as a result of schools’ closure.
As part of concerted effort, the government has taken initial steps on educational awareness campaigns through disseminating information to women, children and youth during the pandemic. Besides, collecting and distributing necessary aids like food items, hygiene materials; personal protective equipment for survivals of the violence, migrant returnees, school girls and economically disadvantaged women has been started.
The next duty of the Ministry is working with other Ministries and Civil Society Organizations to pick vulnerable women and children from streets. Currently, the process has already begun and it is underway. It is also working with several partners to unify quarantined women and children returnees from different gulf countries with their respective families after their isolation period is over.
As these activities requires strong social work force, struggling with the existing limited social workers and strain is unbearable. Therefore, planning to engage the national social work force and integrating with responsible stakeholders is the best solution.
“We prioritize working on women in the informal sector and daily earner with taking immediate actions to provide food and hygiene materials. We also pay utmost attention to protect women to not suffer in silence from domestic and gender based violence. We open rehabilitation centers and shelters and hot line services to share information and provide social and psychological support. We are working closely with the Attorney General, Federal Police and the Court to strengthen our urgent task force and to control violence against women and girls during COVID-19,” said the Minister.
Lensa Beyene from Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA) for her part said that violence against women has been threatening issue in Ethiopia. There have been many cases regarding violence against women. Researches show that one in three women worldwide has experienced either physical or sexual intimate partner violence throughout her lifetime. And also in Ethiopia this is remaining threaten.
In order to address violence against women the government has created a legal policy environment that is conducive to promote the rights of women and children in Ethiopia. And Ethiopia has also signed various international human rights agreements and the constitution also established the equal right of women across economic, political, social affairs.
The government has taken initiative to tackle violence against women and has been doing especially on the legal framework such as adoption of the family code and revision of criminal code which can be noted in this regard. Basically Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA) is playing its role in enforcing laws such as family and criminal laws. So these policy frameworks have been done in good way in Ethiopia. As a result of the Civil Society Organization has been playing a great role to address violence against women, there were good movement and intervention at least since the establishment of EWLA almost 25 years ago. During all these years, this issue has been aggressively entertained.
However, actions taken by the government during the past 10 years were challenging for EWLA to function properly. This also created a bit gap in the organization that has been working in advocating this issue aggressively. EWLA has three programs rendering the free legal service such as public education, research and advocacy. “Most of the programs we engaged in addressing violence against women have been minimizing the problem somehow. We were focusing on rendering free legal services for victim women and we have entertained many cases u till now,” said Lensa.
In this pandemic time there are cases that come to EWLA as usual basically cases related to child abuse. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Ethiopia and other countries violence against women is rising. And some countries have taken various measures. The crisis opens the eyes of how Ethiopia to deal with the issues of gender based violence and gender budgeting, noted Lensa.
The Ethiopian Herald June 23/2020
BY ESSEYE MENGISTE
