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Kivulini Strategic Direction, Message from Board of Directors

Our Development Partners

Kivulini Approach to Preventing   Domestic Violence

Violence Against Women Situation      

Kivulini Stakeholders

Brief: International Women's Day

Consequences of  Violence Against Women

Within intimate relationships this inequality is particularly acute as women lack the ability to protect themselves from HIV infection.  The pervasiveness of domestic violence in Tanzania is also a cause and consequence of women contracting HIV infection. Fear of violence prevents women from accessing information on HIV/AIDS; even to raise the possibility that they might be infected results in beatings and berating.  If they do find they are infected and reveal that status, they are often exposed to systematic abuse, and/or expelled from the family.   A study conducted by Mamal et al (2002) argues that in Tanzania HIV positive women are over two and a half times more likely to have experienced violence by their partner than HIV-negative women.  Women’s low status and power imbalances are root causes of gender inequalities and increases their vulnerability to HIV infection.  As a result, of the most two groups affected by HIV infection are the youth and the women.  The government wrote:

 Several reasons can be advanced to explain this observation. Early marriage and early initiation of sex among women, young girls having sex with older men, … biological and anatomical predisposition are some of the most important reasons. In addition, failure of women to protect themselves from HIV infections due to economic hardships, repressive customary laws, beliefs and polygamy could all contribute to this state of affairs[1]

 In Mwanza city current statistics (November 2007) compiled on the ongoing campaign for HIV testing indicates that out of the total population of 741,060, thirteen thousand two hundred and eighty six (13,286) are HIV positive out of which 64.3% are women.  Studies are increasingly highlighting the correlation between women’s low status in family relationships and in the community with their vulnerability to HIV infection.[2]

The consequences of abuse are profound, extending beyond the health and happiness of individuals to affect the well-being of entire communities[3].  Domestic violence drains the strength and development of micro and macro economic systems.  The negative consequences of domestic violence reach into the development agenda as domestic violence impedes the efficiency and effectiveness of all development efforts.  Tanzania is a party to the Declaration on the Rights to Development that stipulates it is a human right of individual to participate in decisions that affect them and to develop economic self-sufficiency.  Domestic violence against women impedes their full participation in exercising their rights, their opportunity to access to resources for economic development and to receive fair distribution of the benefit of development[4].