WOMEN and girls with disabilities are increasingly becoming easy targets for Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) as they struggle to report the abuse due to lack of disability friendly referral pathways for sexual abuse.
By Kudakwashe Pembere
This was said by Deaf Women Included board vice-chairperson, Ms Cleopatra Nyaku on Thursday on the sidelines of a Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and Disability Inclusivity workshop.
As DWI our position on Gender based violence is that our constituency which is mainly women and girls with disabilities particularly those with hearing impairments, are most vulnerable when it comes to gender based violence by mere fact of their disability.
“Because of disability, people target women with disabilities and a lot of women target them and a lot of underreporting happens. Most GBV happens within the family, and community setting and it is someone that knows and is usually close to the person with disabilities, thereby making their vulnerability worse. That is why there is so much underreporting of GBV particularly sexual gender based violence,” she said.
She also said they have helped assist persons with disabilities in Guruve and M Darwin.
“There are cases that we handled and assisted particularly in Guruve, in Mt Darwin where girls and women’s cases come to light because they are pregnant as a result of the sexual abuse.
“And it is not reported because some believe the children they bear will be their future caregivers. And yet the rights of girls and women with disabilities will have been violated,” Ms Nyaku said.
Ms Nyaku also called for Disability SRHR inclusion.
“In terms of Sexual Reproductive Health Rights, awareness among communities of persons with disabilities is also limited. There is a misconception that persons with disabilities are not sexually active and they do not require SRHR services and also the communication barrier.
“That also limits their enjoyment to the right to SRHR services. So even provision of services such as family planning, it is rather limited and we are advocating for inclusive SRHR services. That means providing information, communication that is disability inclusive, going beyond the communication barriers even for those with intellectual disabilities. They are supposed to be having information that is available to them in accessible format,” she said.
Added Ms Nyaku, “In terms of access to services to mitigate the gender based violence. First of all reporting it at the police, for some, or the majority, there is a communication barrier.”
She said they have embarked on the training of police, and health workers in sign language.
“With DWI, we have taken the initative of training police officers, traditional leaders, health officials, and health personnel and even those at schools basic sign language so that they are able to interact with girls and women with disabilities and their caregivers when they come making reports and when they come to access services.
“Of course this is not something we have done at a widespread level due to resource constraints. But we are also advocating that this will be a training of trainers that those who would have trained in sign basic language would also train their fellow workers so that every other person would be able to communicate better with the girls and women particularly with hearing impairments,” said Ms Nyaku.
Signs of Hope Trust official Ms Samantha Sibanda said persons with disabilities undergo forced sterilization.
“We have a huge gap in terms of reports of cases of GBV. There are many barriers that hinder persons with disabilities to report on cases. So statistics are not available. A trend we are seeing is that the cases we note come when the person is pregnant.
“ So cases of GBV for persons even with mental disabilities are only recorded when they are pregnant. Of which most of the times, the pregnancy will be visible. So we are now seeing forced sterilization.
