The world has never faced a hunger emergency like this, experts say. It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by the end of this year.
Source: World Helath Organization
A clearer picture of the global impact
New research from the Global Maternal Sepsis Study (GLOSS), a major WHO/HRP initiative, shows that infection has a much larger impact on global maternal mortality and morbidity than previously thought.
Source: CNN
The coronavirus crisis has forced schools in Kenya to close, but Wawira Njiru believes this is no reason for children to go hungry. In 2012, the 29-year-old nutritionist founded non-profit Food for Education in her hometown, Ruiru, on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Her mission is to provide cheap and nourishing lunches to primary school children from poor families. To date, the organization has provided over 1 million meals.
Source: IAWL
Since the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) broke out in December 2019 in China, it has affected more than a million people and caused the death of thousands of people worldwide. The crisis caused by the virus, and the attendant measures to manage the ensuing crisis, have resulted in documented increases in violence against women and girls around the world, in the current global and local contexts where access to justice remains a challenge.
On 11 March, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a global pandemic-a classification used once an epidemic grows in multiple countries and continents at the same time. Most countries in the world have registered at least a COVID-19 case with numbers in Africa, as of this week, hovering over 10,000.
The first case of the ‘novel’ coronavirus was reported on March 22, it was a 36-year-old male who arrived from Dubai. President Museveni subsequently announced an extensive list of measures to stop the spread of the virus, including closing the Ugandan borders both land and air, Closure of all institutions of education, a ban on both public and private transport, 14-day lockdown followed by a 7 pm curfew. Resident district commissioners (RDC’s) were given new powers as the sole granters of permission for the sick to access health centres.
"Pandemics have very uncanny ways of magnifying all existing inequalities between class, gender and race, in any capitalist patriarchal society."
Conversely, for the case of Uganda, deadly virus or normalcy, violence against women is unceasing. With the ban on public transport and curfew, business came to halt as the media reported hundreds of traders stranded in different towns with no means to head back home, families stuck home with no food. According to the Uganda Bureau of statistics 2016 report, womyn were more engaged in the trade (55 per cent) and manufacturing (51 per cent) sectors compared to men.
The country then saw the impromptu, massive deployment of combined army and Police forces, armed with both guns and batons. Staying true to their colonial legacies of brutality towards the very people they are supposed to protect, social media was awash with images of police beating women vendors. Media published images of old women, young men all arrested for failure to adhere to the curfew time. As I type, Uganda has reported 52 COVID-19 cases and zero deaths.
Women in patriarchal systems of power
This coronavirus pandemic has found key political institutions at the centre of response led by womyn. Dr Jane Aceng is Health Minister, Janet Museveni doubles as Minister for Education and wife to President Museveni, Amelia Kyambadde is Trade and Cooperatives Minister, and Rebbecca Kadaga is Speaker of Parliament.
It is accurate to say that at the forefront of this fight is women, coincidentally, the most affected also happen to be women. There is no question that women presently hold a considerable amount of power – or at the very least, are seen to be holding a substantial amount of power during this pandemic.
The critique then is, how this power is yielded in a patriarchal system that is centred around men.
"Do individual women hold power when it comes to decision making?"
Has the feminist cause gained from the rise of individual women? In many ways, even with crucial institutions led by womyn, we continue to see increased violence against womyn.
The violence that women continue to face transcends class and authority, from the clobbering of women vendors to assaulting womyn in charge of enforcing the presidential directives. For example, in Bunyangabu district, the chair, Mr James Ategeka assaulted Ms Jane Asiimwe, a Resident District Commissioner on duty, while she was attempting to enforce one of the lockdown measures.
Violence against women exacerbated
Meanwhile, the lockdown enforcement comes with routine addresses by the president, these addresses happen at 8-ish. Just like the regularity of the presidents’ address, the media has consistently reported on the violence and helpless situations womyn find themselves as a direct result of the COVID-19 lockdown and curfew.
The Daily Monitor newspaper last week ran with a picture of a womyn in Kampala market during the night. She is clothed in a blue-grey hoodie seated on what looks like a sea blue tent, a checked lesu (wrapper) covering feet, next to her is a mosquito net and behind her are sacks of food. Her face is emotionless. This picture clearly illustrates the plight of many market womyn under the restrictive corona measures, who cannot walk home because of the curfew, so their only choice is to camp in the market.
Ugandans on social media reacted to the picture, sympathizing; however, President Museveni praised the womyn, citing her situation as model behaviour to traders during the lockdown. The president never raises any questions on hygiene or even her security.
“I was very happy to see a picture of a woman who made a make-shift bed at her work stall, and put up a mosquito. The struggle against COVID-19 is a war, not convenience. We are fighting for survival”.
According to the 2018 Uganda Police annual crime report, the crime rate decreased by 5.2%; however, there was an increase in homicides, rape and defilement cases.
By the end of 2018, a total of 17,682 persons were victims of sex-related crimes, out of whom, 15,469 were female juveniles, 277 were male juveniles, 1,849 were female adults, and 87 were male adults.
The same report highlights an increase in defilement (rape of minors) cases to over 15,000, in 2018, when it comes to domestic violence, a total of 13,916 cases were reported.
A report by WHO highlighted that one out every three women globally experience violence, making it the most widespread human rights abuse among human rights.
Furthermore, On March 31, President Museveni again addressed Ugandans, this time round he casually dismissed domestic violence on live television.
“The guidelines are simple, you either respond to health or childbirth, we are not dealing with all problems, that some are drunk and has beaten his wife if you ring me and I am on duty, I will say you finish that one from there,”
This response is comparable to permission granted for all abusers in Uganda to go ahead and hit their wives, after all, there is no consequence of such violence.
While research in China, Italy and South Korea showed that the virus kills more men than women, in less obvious ways, the coronavirus disproportionately affects women. The lockdown side effects like emotional labour, that comes with childcare because of school shutdowns, to other house chores that overwhelmingly fall onto women. Not to mention the maternal health of expecting mothers who suddenly have no access to hospitals.
It is likely that violence in this COVID-19 time, will kill Ugandan women before the virus does.
An essay titled The Pandemic is a Portal, Indian author Arundhati Roy in the Financial Times talking directly to the reader she says:
“Historically pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew, this one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world and ready to fight for it.”
Reading this last paragraph, I wonder, is there a possibility of a world where women can walk with light luggage? Is a new world free of violence against all women?
Source: Al Jazeera
Sitting outside her grass-thatched house, in a lush part of the northern Ugandan countryside, Jeanette Aromorach described how her son became a victim of the coronavirus pandemic - even though he had never contracted the pathogen.
Source: Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence
The Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE), notes with grave concern the rising incidences of systematic state security crackdown targeting women as the country goes through the third week of the government-proclaimed lockdown meant to stop the spread of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Source: African Arguments
Abigail*, a young woman who lives in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare became pregnant by a much older married man when she was 14. She had left school because her mother couldn’t afford to pay for her fees, books and other school supplies. Her mother was also struggling to buy food and other basics for the family. The man had given her money. She felt she couldn’t refuse him as he was helping her.
Source: The New Humanitarian
Coronavirus is taking its toll on Madina’s family. Her 17-year-old daughter, Asli, who had been working in a restaurant near the airport, lost her job when the government banned international commercial flights.
Tanzania has buckled under pressure from human rights groups, activists and the US will henceforth permit pregnant girls to resume formal education as prescribed by the Secondary Education Quality Improvement Project (Sequip) financed by the World Bank.
Source: Daily Nation
small van zips through the streets of Casablanca to deliver food to single mothers, as economic paralysis caused by the coronavirus crisis puts pressure on Morocco's poor.
The United Nations has called for specific action for women on the frontline in the fight against COVID-19. It urged governments to take action for women who make up about 70% of staff of health and social services, adding that the stress and mental burden they often face at home requires specific action.
Source: IPS
In 1991, the share of seats held by women in the Ethiopian parliament was under 3 percent. Today it stands at 38 percent, almost twice the ratio of women in the United States Congress. Experts say when women are better represented in government office, the gains are likely to spill down and improve the lives of all women.
Source: UN News
The dire warning from António Guterres is laid out in a policy brief which details how the new disease is deepening pre-existing inequalities which are in turn amplifying its impacts on the lives of women and girls.
In the visitors’ books of Eshowe’s many guesthouses and hotels, tourists inspired by verdant sugar cane fields and blossoming trees write about “a corner of Eden”.
Locals and specialists know the small town set high among the rolling hills that run along South Africa’s eastern coast for another reason.
In Kenya, Always pads use a cheap material that causes irrituation for many. In Europe and the US, they don't.
For more than three decades, Procter & Gamble had a near monopoly in Kenya’s sanitary pad market. Its “Always” pads are most likely the first brand girls become familiar with, long before they even know what menstruation is. Over time, the name has also become synonymous with superior quality. Consumers feel they have no reason to try other brands.
Source: GroundUp
The Covid-19 pandemic will affect women in specific and distinct ways. It may amplify existing gender inequalities and may especially affect women who survive on the peripheries of the economy.
Source: africanews
The COVID-19 pandemic is set to exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities and the virus’s impact will disproportionately affect women, according to the United Nations Population Fund in Sudan.
Source: 263Chat.
The Zimbabwe Gender Commission has called on the government to prioritize the needs of women and persons with disabilities during the ongoing national lockdown meant to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
Being free to refuse sex is key to women's empowerment, UNFPA says.