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WOUGNET Office

WOUGNET is located at Plot 55 Kenneth Dale, Off Kira Road, Kamwokya. Directions: After the Kamwokya market as you travel along Kira road, turn off to your left onto Kenneth Dale, (just before the football field and Kira Road Police Station). Once on Kenneth Dale, look out for the WOUGNET sign post on your left towards the end of the road. Click here for a map.

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Violence against women continues to be widespread and socially tolerated despite the fact that it’s a human rights violation. Domestic violence disempowers women and negatively affects women’s health and productivity sometimes resulting into death. In addition, the cost to women, their children, families and communities is a significant obstacle to reducing poverty, achieving gender equality and ensuring a peaceful transition for post-conflict societies. Violence against women has as its root in the structural inequalities between men and women that result in the persistence of power differentials between the sexes. Women’s subordinate status to men in many societies, coupled with a general acceptance of interpersonal violence as a means of resolving conflict, renders women disproportionately vulnerable to violence from all levels of society: individual men, within the family and community, and by the state (ACGSD 2009[1]).

In Uganda many women and girls in Uganda suffer from sexual and gender-based violence committed by state actors, military services and rebel armies, as well as non-state actors within the family and the community. The persistence of patriarchal patterns of behaviour and the existence of stereotypes relating to the role of women perpetuate the discrimination of women within Ugandan society. The difficulties women face are not only due to intimidation, hostility and ridicule from the community, but also due to the states inaction in ensuring redress.

ICTs can play a major role in combating VAW and a number of women’s organisations are making use of ICTs such as the internet, TV, radio, news papers and other print media to highlight VAW including rape, victimisation and harassment.

The Internet can be a useful tool to get information about gender based violence as well as raise awareness around such issues to the general public and global community. Mobile phones provide women with an opportunity to avoid being domesticated by opening links with the outside world for business, social networking and reporting or obtaining support in abusive relationships.

Use of the Internet, websites, e-mail, SMS and mobile phones can be useful in cutting through bureaucratic barriers that are faced in addressing VAW and mobilising local, national and International attention.

Women of Uganda Network for example administers discussion lists to which subscribers contribute free of charge. The women’s movement discussion list and the list for the task force of the African Protocol on Women’s Rights are used for advocacy purposes; sharing, discussing and stimulating debate on gender and rights related issues. The lists are accessed by a wide audience including policy makers, parliamentarians, civil society actors as well bi-lateral and multi-lateral donor agencies. Short Messaging Service (SMS) has been used to participate in global campaigns such as the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence, an initiative run by WOUGNET and other partners. Isis–WICCE has used documentation, internet and email to leverage and has played a critical role in addressing violence against women. Women have mobilized to advocate against violation of collective and individual rights.

There are cases where women have used the telephone to contact local police and other authorities to help in situations of violence against them. By providing the opportunity for women to access law enforcement, mobile telephones can play a critical role in avoiding bureaucracy and exhibit a potential for addressing gender based violence.

However, only a handful of women’s rights activists and women organisations are actively and strategically using ICTs to address violence against women and girls. In collaboration with the Association for Progressive Communication Women’s Network Support Programme (APC WNSP), WOUGNET is implementing the “Strengthening Women's Strategic Use of Information and Communications Technologies to Combat Violence against Women and Girls project”. The project builds on the APC WNSP’s work on VAW and ICTs and is aimed at helping women participants negotiate the fraught terrain of the new digital landscape in which ICTs hold out both the promise of greatly increased freedoms and also the growing concerns about privacy and security. The project will use a multi-faceted approach to the intersection between ICT use and violence against women and girls, which includes skills, knowledge, advocacy and community building.

[1] ACGSD (2009), Draft Situational Analysis in Gender Based Violence

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