Equality/Women’s Rights
Ugandan Lawmakers Set to Vote on Marriage, Divorce
By Raymond Baguma
WeNews correspondent
Monday, December 28, 2009
Uganda's parliament recently passed bills on domestic violence and female genital mutilation. Now one female lawmaker hopes colleagues will approve in January long-awaited modernizations of marriage and divorce.
KAMPALA, Uganda (WOMENSENEWS)--After parliament's recent passage of key laws to protect women here, Jane Alisemera Babiha, chair of the Uganda Women Parliamentarians Association, is hoping a bill to modernize laws on marriage and divorce will sail through in January.
"We are anxious to have this law passed by the beginning of next year," Alisemera told Women's eNews recently.
"It is only natural that as women, we should champion for the cause of our fellow women who we represent," added parliamentarian Mary Karooro Okurut, representative of the Bushenyi district. "But in our campaign, we are also enlisting the support of men."
The proposed law grants women the right to divorce spouses for cruelty and impotence. It also gives women the right to consent to marriage, often overlooked in African traditional weddings arranged by family and clan elders.
The bill also prohibits the customary practice of widow inheritance. In some Ugandan communities, widows are inherited by their brothers-in-law even when they do not consent to the marriage. The law gives widows the right to remarry people of their choice.
Sex without consent in marriage is prohibited by the bill, and there are incentives in the law to promote co-ownership of property between spouses. It also establishes a female-friendly protocol in the event of divorce: equal division of property and finances.
Alisemera said she expects the bill to win similar support in the 30-percent female parliament as the domestic violence bill, which passed in November and classifies domestic violence as a distinct crime, separate from other forms of physical assault.
Under that bill, now waiting approval by President Yoweri Museveni, alleged batterers face prosecutions in the formal Family and Children Courts, as well as the lowest-ranked Local Council Courts found in even the remotest of Ugandan villages. Convicted men or women would face punishments that include community service, reconciliation, compensation, fines or a two-year jail term.
60 Percent Suffer Violence
Sixty percent of women suffer physical violence at the hands of their intimate partners. Thirty percent have been victims of sexual violence and 16 percent reported physical violence during their pregnancies, according to the 2006 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey.
On Dec. 10, women's rights activists here won another victory when a bill prohibiting female genital mutilation, or FGM, flew unopposed through parliament.
Female genital mutilation is traditionally practiced by the Sabiny and Karamojong communities living in Eastern Uganda. The bill targets the aggravated form of the mutilation, defining it as causing death, serious disability or an HIV-AIDS infection. Under the legislation, perpetrators of aggravated mutilation are liable for life imprisonment. Those who participate or aid the process of female genital mutilation in any form are liable for five years in jail under the bill. That bill is also on the president's desk.
The anti-FGM law was sponsored by Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, the Kinkizi East member of parliament. Baryomunsi said he is positive that the president will sign it along with the bill on domestic violence.
"The president has been an active player in the national campaign to end female genital mutilation," Baryomunsi said. "According to procedure, the president should sign the bills within 30 days after receiving them. We are hopeful he will sign by the end of January."
The divorce and marriage bills have a long stop-and-start history here.
Elis Rubafunya, a legal analyst, wrote recently in Uganda's leading newspaper, New Vision, that the bill is largely an amendment of family laws inherited from Britain, Uganda's former colonial occupier.
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Submitted by user39267 (11 weeks ago)
Today's story by Raymond Baguma for Women's eNews, "Ugandan Lawmakers Set to Vote on Marriage, Divorce," gives me pause. (See the story at womensenewstoday.com) In terms of heterosexual women's rights, the nation appears to be moving toward equality in marriage and divorce -- after all, who wouldn't laud Ugandan Parliament Women's Chairperson Jane Babiha's bill allowing women to divorce men for cruelty and impotence (really!), consent to marriage (in lieu of arranged unions), refuse to become their brother-in-law's property at the death of a husband, and a number of other important measures. These are indeed progressive and will benefit Uganda's heterosexual women if the bill passes in January. Baguma also notes outdated laws on the books that are not addressed in Babiha's bill, namely the fact that Muslim women would still be subject to Islamic law, and the the "bride price" payments to the wife's family would still be allowed.
In the same realm of sexual equality, what Mr. Baguma does not even mention is that loathsome and still-lurking anti-homosexuality bill that would make same-sex relationships in Uganda illegal and require family members, health care workers, and others to report "suspected" homosexuals. Punishments would be severe and most of us believe it would foster an open-season of hate crimes against GLBT people. Many had thought the bill would come up for a vote before the end of December, but outraged cries around the world seem to have stalled its passage. Just today, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton strongly criticized the legislation in an address at Georgetown University (http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=100443). I was among those who sent a letter to her in mid December asking for the US government to take a stand on the bill, and she has voiced the government's stand. I urge all of us to continue to speak out on this legislation, as well as the mirror legislation in nearby Rwanda, which contains the same measures and sadistic thinking.
Carolyn Byerly