A call to women elects of the Ugandan 10th Parliament

By Grace Kobusingye

In the just concluded elections of 2016, district women representatives were directly elected by all voters on a special ballot in each district for women candidates only and about 35% of the whole Parliament is constituted of women. This percentage is big enough to place women's concerns on the agenda in the 10th Parliament.

Keeping in mind that, a wise woman builds a firm foundation with bricks that others have thrown at her, this Government has tried to implement the affirmative action quota system and has been successful in increasing women's representation in parliament to help women achieve political and social equality in a country that is male dominated culturally, traditionally and politically.

Since the implementation of affirmative action in 1989, Uganda still has a long way to go, for example, the Ugandan judicial system still treats domestic abuse as a family matter rather than a criminal offense and its legal code still refuses to recognize a women's equality in most matters of marriage, divorce, and child custody. Further, Uganda is still among those that need more attention on issues of maternal mortality rates in the whole world.

As such, our newly elected Women MPs should put forward issues that have remained obstacles like access to education, health services for women and girls in Uganda. In fact, in most rural areas, girls often start schooling at an advanced age, walking long distances to school, some lack sanitary materials which has led to  higher drop-out rates and leading to early marriage and pregnancy.

Given that you are the women's voice in the 10th parliament, and our women still die every day of preventable death in childbirth,  we urge you to advocate for health systems to be strengthened by comprehensive sexuality education and services for young people, equipment and medicines made accessible to all women, ensuring skilled medical attendance to mothers at birth, quality facilities, personnel, supervised deliveries, improved antenatal services, access to emergency obstetric care, universal access to family planning and antenatal care and training health workers particularly midwives, Government should also purpose that each pregnant mother in the community goes to a health facility to deliver instead of opting for traditional birth attendants  among others.

In addition to health services, other rights of women and girls must also be prioritized like improving roads to facilitate access to health units, provision of standby ambulance for referral, telephone communication to health units and carrying out public sensitization campaigns.

Although laws relating to women's rights have improved, Violence against women still persists, however much a piece of legislation came into force in 2010; The Domestic Violence Act, implementation of this law still remains limited. Some significant pre-existing difficulties preventing access to justice for women victims of violence have not been addressed, such as the costs associated with the complaint process.

As much as discrimination against women, violence and lack of economic empowerment are underlined in the Uganda National Development Plan, there is still insufficient measures that have been taken to address these issues. In particular, women continue to face severe legal and cultural obstacles to ownership of property, including land and inheritance.

As such, this piece aims at addressing some of the gaps that ought to be considered in the 10th parliament of Uganda by our believed Women MPs.

The writer works with Uganda Debt Network