Netherlands earmarks Sh43bn for SRHR, SGBV

Thursday, 15 April, 2021

The Kingdom of Netherlands Embassy in Uganda, has earmarked sh43b approximately (10 Euros) to address issues of Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). This was communicated in a Press statement released by the partnership implementing the program as they celebrated women day to day March 8^th , 2021.

Under the 4 year project, Amref Health Africa in Uganda, Cordaid, MIFUMI and the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) will jointly implement the integrated SRHR programme for hard to reach and marginalized communities in nine (9) high burden districts in East Central, Central and Eastern Uganda. These districts include Kalangala, Bugiri, Mayuge, Iganga,Namayingo, Mbale , Budaka, Bukwo and Kween.

According to Amref Health Africa’s Michael Muyonga – Program Manager , “The partnership commits to place women and girls at the Centre of all interventions to ensure that they fully enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights and live in a gender equal society free from SGBV,’’

The program will focus on interventions for management of Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) using a transformative empowerment approach and providing accurate and age appropriate SRHR information to young people.

The programme will be achieved through ensuring access to better information and greater freedom of choice about their sexuality, life-saving sexual and reproductive health services, and creation of an enabling environment for girls and women through preventing and responding to gender-based violence.

Through a join press statement the partnerships is committing to provide accurate information on Sexual Reproductive Health to promote health seeking behavior among youth, young people and women in reproductive age, work with communities to eliminate norms that impact negatively on SRHR of young people and women, and to promote respect for existing policies that promote gender equality, support further training of front-line workers in gender transformative SRHR-SGBV integration and serve as champions of gender equality and transformation.

SGBV affects women disproportionately, as it is directly connected with the unequal distribution of power between women and men.

Statistics

According to National Gender Based Violence (GBV) indicators 56% of people in Uganda aged 15 – 49 years have experienced intimate partner violence, of which the far majority are women.

The 2016 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey revealed that up to 22% of women aged 15 to 49 in the country had experienced some form of sexual violence. The report also revealed that annually, 13% of women aged 15 to 49 report experiencing sexual violence. This translates to more than 1 million women exposed to sexual violence every year in Uganda.

Experts say gender inequality is a major root cause and a consequence of SRHR violation.

Muyonga said the project comes at the right time to address issues that continue to affect girls and women like the inadequate information, weak policies and support systems that affect empowerment of young girls, boys and women Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights which contribute to poor decision making about their SRH , low uptake of SRHR and SGBV services which are father affected by low or poor provision of these services that continue to be provided in a disintegrated approach.

The COVID19 pandemic has further complicated this situation by creating fear and heightened vulnerabilities among young girls, boys, and women, having disrupted social service and increased cases of SGBV across the country.