Dar es Salaam. A new report by the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) has called for the enactment of gender-based violence, or domestic violence, act in an attempt to ramp up efforts to protect women from intimate partner violence and domestic violence.
The 2021 Human Rights Report launched on April 11, 2022, in Dar es Salaam notes that a total of 35 incidents of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) killings were reported in 2021, with the overwhelming majority of the victims (89 per cent) being women.
These incidents were reported in Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Singida, Kagera, Mara, Lindi, Mbeya, Iringa, Geita, Kilimanjaro, Tabora, Songwe, Katavi, Njombe, Mtwara, and Shinyanga regions.
Four men were killed by their lovers or wives in the Dar es Salaam, Shinyanga, and Mara Regions.
According to the report, out of all the reported incidents of IPV killings, 25 incidents (72 per cent) were motivated by jealousy. Among these incidents, male victims were three and female victims were 22.
“All stakeholders, both government and non-government need to come together and devise strategies to enhance [the] protection of women from intimate partner violence and domestic violence,” the report’s authors urged.
“Enactment of a GBV or domestic violence law to enhance protection for survivors and potential survivors would be a good point since it has been established most of the violence occurs at home,” they added.
Another strategy, according to the report, would be conducting awareness-raising and education campaigns on intimate partner violence and the impact of such violence at personal/ individual, family, community, and national levels.
LHRC’s report comes a few days since the World Bank published two studies that together reported that the high rates of gender-based violence in Tanzania remain a serious concern despite many promising opportunities to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality in the country.
The two reports, the Tanzania Gender Assessment 2022 and the Tanzania Gender-Based Violence Assessment 2022, called on Tanzania’s authorities to continue to strengthen the policy and legal environment to protect the nation’s women and girls in the country.
LHRC stated in its report that since 2019, cases of women killed by their intimate partners have been increasing in Tanzania and that there are fears that there could be more unreported cases or cases of such crimes which have not been categorized as femicide.
“An increase of such incidents is a worrying sign in terms of protecting women’s right to life, right to health, and right to personal security,” the Dar es Salaam-based human rights organisation says in its report.
LHRC’s findings solidify those by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which concluded that the home is the most dangerous place for women, with the majority of female homicide victims worldwide killed by partners or family.
