Gender Discrimination: Massive Legal Security Needed

By Author: Osoro P.J. Nyawangah
Total Articles: 4
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without comprehensive approach and a coordinated strategy laid and implemented effectively by committed team, tackling women's problems is going to be a nightmare!
Legal assistance denial from the law enforcer institutions in Tanzania is a major obstacle hindering achievement of the millennium development goals. In September 2000, 142 heads of state and government, and 189 nations in total, in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, committed themselves to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want. They acknowledged that progress is based on sustainable economic growth, which must focus on the poor, with human rights at the center. Measurable goals were defined for combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environment degradation and discrimination against women. Last 8th day of March, women allover the world gathered in their respective areas to commemorate their day. They snatched the opportunity to air their views on how to be empowered as per the International day's theme and how they are being denied that right. Tanzanian women were not ...
... left behind on this. The theme for this year is Women empowerment: the key to achieving the millennium development goals Now, in Tanzania as in most of the African countries, implementation of the women empowerment is being threatened by gender discrimination caused by incorrect myths and misconceptions of the community. This and other obstacles force the Tanzanian woman to face environmental burden: which is the result of unequal participation in education and decision - making at family, community and political levels. She therefore falls prey to rape, physical violence, gender harassment and abuse while denied legal assistance. The treatment one Magdalena Ndilla (69) got from Magu district administration is an evident story of the stern picture. Herself a widow resident of Yitwimila village Mwanza region is a survivor of incorrect myths assault. In 1996 her assaulter stormed her room at right mutilated her with a panga six times. After six months' treatment in Magu and Bugando hospitals respectively, she survived with palm less right hand, scars on both shoulders, left hand and two on the head (one penetrated right damaging her left eye). A sad side of the story is that even though she and her daughter saw and know her assaulter, the man roams the village freely since then. Since we live in the corrupt community, neither government nor the police had come to her assistance. The district commissioner Elias Maarugu in an interview with this correspondent agreed that she has not been given legal assistance defending the police negligence that it was the duty of the claimant to write statement to the Police! I am not a lawyer myself, but whose duty is to take statements of assaulter and accident victims in hospitals and thereafter? While the world is fighting to empower women as key to achieving the millennium development goals, the government and law enforcers should play their role effectively for the sake of community's welfare. The legal and social exclusion and their resultant gender division of labour are product of the patriarchal power relations. These and others like low education, financial instability, and lack of access to strategic resources like land, immovable property etc. are factors that constrain growth of women's welfare. Others are gender-stereotyped activities, inability to access and use modern technology, heavy workloads, inadequate social support and discriminatory laws. Women's participation in social, political and economic affairs can also be realized through implementation of policies which guarantee improved women security, health etc., mostly by freeing them from laborious domestic chores and violence. Because of lack of legal security, illiteracy and poverty, people like Magdalena Ndilla are bound to live a terror-stricken life in a free and liberated country: unsafe from physical violence, abuse and abandonment. The country in which their contribution to family, community and society is no longer recognized. I am worried, without comprehensive approach and a coordinated strategy laid and implemented effectively by committed team, tackling women's problems is going to be a nightmare! About the Author freelance journalist, district political party secretary and african cultural advocate.