By Doreen Bazio (Media For All, Uganda).

According to the 2023 annual Uganda Police crime report, 15,184 people countrywide were victims of domestic violence, of whom 11,941 were female. In West Nile, at least 817 cases of domestic violence were recorded in the sub-region. A cross-section of stakeholders in the Ma’di Subregion of West Nile has now attributed climate change to the rise of cases of gender-based violence (GBV) in the region.

With between 500-1000 cases of domestic violence reported so far this year since January in only 3 of the 11 districts in the region, the number is likely to rise or double. Several factors are contributing to this crisis, with refugee areas in the lead

The situation in Adjumani and Testimonies

Juan Scovia, a mother of five and a refugee from Agojo Refugee Settlement, acknowledges that climate change is impacting her family negatively following the reduction in the food ratio by the World Food Program.

She reveals that, as a result, she resorted to the sale of firewood to earn money to buy basic family needs, pay school fees, and cover health care further attesting that due to climate change, she is forced to move more than 15 kilometers to look for firewood.

“I move with my two daughters up to 15 kilometers to get firewood, the challenge is we don’t just get the firewood but face challenges from the landlords who sometimes take away the firewood we have collected, After spending many hours, when we reach home, we face more challenges at home for coming home late,” Juan laments.

Gloria Mania, a charcoal seller in Awindiri Market in Adjumani Town also confesses that she used to buy more than 10 sacks of charcoal and earn about shs 250,000/= weekly adding that now due to the impact of climate change, she can only afford less than 4 sacks which has made her resort to selling in basins. This was however misunderstood by her husband.

“I can no longer earn the money I used to get, I hardly earn shs 100,000 in a week, and this has caused us problems with my husband, My support at home has reduced, My husband thinks I am not honest with him yet this is a problem which is beyond my control,” Mania states.

Garang Bul Gak, the Refugee Welfare Councilor III – Adjumani, who is located in the Baratuku Refugee Settlement, laments that there are so many cases of domestic violence recorded at the 19 refugee settlements in Adjumani ranging from child neglect to domestic fights due to the challenges of climate change.

He also adds that most refugees now prefer to settle in Western Uganda where the government has land – hoping to have access to government land for farming.

“Currently, the refugees have been forced to move from one settlement to the other in research of better and fertile land for growing crops, most of the refugees now move to Kiryadongo where there is government land. Most of them have left their families suffering, others have left children alone, while others opt to go back to South Sudan,” Bul said.

Similarly, women are also the biggest victims of land conflicts heightened by climate change due to land fragmentation. According to Justine Alule, Adjumani District Agricultural Officer, the number of women involved in agriculture has reduced because of domestic violence leading to reduced productivity thus food insecurity in homes.

“Climate Change has caused land fragmentation and this has increased land conflicts in the region with women as the biggest victims,” Alule said.

William Amanzuru, an award-winning environmentalist and the team leader at Friends of Zoka says that while there has been a lot of environmental destruction worsened by the influx of Refugees in the area, not even a presidential order has been able to stop the burning and selling of charcoal and transportation of forest products with women at the forefront as victims.

“The more charcoal burning is taking place, the more women are suffering,” Amanzuru said.

The Situation in Yumbe District.

According to Lona Keji, a refugee in the Bidibidi Zone II Refugee Settlement, the cases of GBV are equally common in Yumbe District refugees’ areas and it’s very difficult to control the cases related to Climate Change.

“Firewood has become a big issue in the settlement and women move more than 10kms to look for firewood in the bush yet it’s very risky to their lives. When they are assaulted or sexually harassed, they refuse to report to their husbands because of fear that they could be divorced,” she observes.

On the other hand, Serbeet Kawawa, the Yumbe District Natural Resources Officer, says that the various effects of climate change are anthropogenic factors (factors mostly aggravated by the men), and if you go into the business of charcoal burning, very few women about 45% are involved but the rest are men.

“If you come to the effects of charcoal burning, it’s mainly the women who face it. One thing is that because of the scarcity of wood fuel as a result of deforestation that has been fuelled by the men, women trek very long distances to look for firewood and there are a lot of things that happen when a woman goes very far to look for firewood. We have cases where women are raped including girls in the process of looking for firewood in the bush. Cases of school dropouts rate high among the girl child because they abandon school to go and look for firewood,” he added.

Kawawa also added that domestic violence heightened by climate change is also common because women and girls move long distances to look for water and yet their spouses at home also expect them to do house chores and prepare food on time.

“You can see that, there are a lot of injustices being administered towards the women by the men and yet looking at the gender roles at home, while the woman is doing other works, the man is supposed to come in and help but in our African setting, there are a lot of responsibilities we think is for the women,” he stressed.

On food security, Keji says the environment in Yumbe is not conducive for farming because of the harsh weather. Worse still, she also observes that single mothers are being grabbed off their farmland or sometimes some men claim to help them but they end up harassing them sexually.

Meanwhile, Austin Andemani, the Yumbe District Community Development Officer, reveals that his district had set an annual target of recording  300 GBV cases but within 3 months spanning January to April 2024, this number has already been surpassed and they were still entering data to establish the actual number. This he adds, however, only covers cases that have been reported officially and omits those in the community that are directly linked to effects of climate change. To avert this challenge, the department ensures that cases related to violence are managed at all levels.

“When the cases come, they do case management where some of them are done at the Police level, and then others are done at the community services level right from the Community Development Officers up to the probation office where the spouses are counseled,” Austin revealed.

Kawawa now says to address climate change, there is a need for active male engagement in solving issues of climate change heightened GBV. He observes that GBV is caused due to low levels of awareness, cultural differences and norms, and poverty among others making the issue gender sensitive.

The concerns from Obongi District

In Obongi District, the story is a little different. Domestic Violence is the driving factor for climate change and reduced involvement of women in food production.

According to Johnson Opigo, the Obongi District Production Officer, the situation in Obongi is worrying as the increasing cases of violence against women account for the deteriorating quality of food produced per homestead each year.

“With women being mostly the breadwinners of their families, violence against them easily translates negatively on any productive work they are doing. Besides, there are increased incidents of both animal and plant diseases and pests which has led to reduced production and productivity,“ Opigo observes.

Still unique to the district, women have decided to take the front seat when it comes to dealing with this challenge. Lilian Mashia, the Executive Director of West Nile Women’s Advocacy Platform, a CBO that operates in the Madi Sub Region, notes that when people talk about adaptation to GBV challenges, there is also a need for women to be at the forefront of advocacy, just as they are the most affected. 

“When developing public policies, women should be the leading voices for large-scale measures such as strengthening or relocating infrastructure from wetland areas, building infrastructure able to withstand more extreme weather conditions, enhancing early warning systems and access to disaster information, developing insurance mechanisms specific to climate-related threats, and creating new protections for wildlife and natural ecosystems should be applied,“ Lillian notes.

Lillian also says it is very important to empower communities because they are at the frontline of climate change in locally-led, or locally-appropriate action which can be addressed by fixing information and knowledge gaps to have accurate climate data that is easily available and accessible. 

Measures to address the challenges

According to Austin, as district authorities in Yumbe District, they give support to vulnerable women through interest group-focused government programs like the Youth Livelihood Program (YLP), special Grants for Persons With Disabilities (PWDs), and Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Program (UWEP). These programs, although not related to climate change, build synergies that link beneficiaries to farming opportunities so that they can earn supplementary income.

While the Natural Resources department in Yumbe District has also made efforts to promote adaptation measures to improve resilience amongst women by establishing a central nursery bed where they can work for a small income and promoting energy efficiency technologies to lessen the dependency on firewood; its Production counterpart is implementing climate-smart Agriculture in response to the current climate crisis with a focus and bias on actively involving a considerable number of women.

In Obongi District, authorities have also focused on mitigating possible climate change-igniting factors like bush burning, and deforestation to reduce the negative effects of climate change on food production. They have also focused most of the adaptation measures at the local level because the rural communities have a big role to play among others planting crop varieties that are more resistant to drought and practicing regenerative agriculture, improving water storage and use, managing land to reduce wildfire risks, and building stronger defenses against extreme weather like floods and heat waves.

With the most refugee settlements in the West Nile Region, Adjumani District, through the Work of Friends of Zoka, a pressure group founded to save Zoka Forest Reserve but with a mandate to primarily among others advocate and lobby for the protection, preservation, and conservation of the bigger environment in Adjumani; the district has made strides with adapting to Climate change effects. As a solution to the alarming climate change, Amanzuru says, they have scaled up sensitization efforts especially for women, to protect the environment and ensure that their interventions are always gender sensitive.

Although Uganda as a country is experiencing the impacts of climate change exhibited by the increase in temperatures, reduced precipitation, and increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts and floods among other related calamities, the West Nile sub-region and particularly the Ma’di Sub Region remains very vulnerable to climate change and its effects due to the low adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers who form majority of the population thus further compounding household poverty, food insecurity and poor health among other challenges. With climate change affecting agriculture, water resources, forestry resources, land, and ultimately the community livelihoods; a joint approach towards averting its effects especially those through violence against women, would be a step forward in the right direction.

This story was published in partnership and with funding from Northern Uganda Media Club.

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