06 March 2009

Kampala, Uganda: Empowering women and sensitizing communities and institutions to the threat of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence is a long process. Ugandan national UNV volunteer Sarah Stella Suffer-Okuni worked on this topic from 2005 to 2008, making an undoubted impact.

Since beginning her assignments as a UNV volunteer – both in her native Uganda and for a period in Sudan too – Ms. Suffer-Okuni has had multiple responsibilities: empowering communities to respect women's rights; reducing the prevalence of both Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV) and HIV/AIDS; and making sure that women's issues are at the heart of development programmes.

In Uganda, explains Ms. Suffer-Okuni, women are responsible for the majority of food crop production and are thus the mainstay of the economy. Yet frequently they do not benefit from the income, which usually ends up in the hands of men.

They are discriminated against in land and property inheritance too, and frequently suffer from SGBV. Though it is impossible to accurately quantify the prevalence of SGBV, "suffice it to say that women's rights and safety are under threat," comments Ms. Suffer-Okuni.

There are few areas that her work has not touched upon. Ms. Suffer-Okuni has empowered women through income generation schemes and skills training in agriculture and handicrafts. She has guided the initiation of community task forces to increase school enrolment among refugee girls, and initiated SGBV clubs in refugee settlement schools.

But SGBV work is about more than just programmes – it is about individual people too. As an example, she cites a 10-year-old Sudanese refugee she met who was "given in compensation" to the family of her sister-in-law after the latter's death.  

"At the age of 16, her new family prepared to marry her off to one of their close relatives," expands Ms. Suffer-Okuni. "After our SGBV sensitization campaign in the camp, and giving a 'hotline' telephone number, her only surviving brother tipped off the information to me."

This was not the end of the problem, however, since the District Police Commander was reluctant to act.  So, together with her protection unit colleagues, Ms. Suffer-Okuni arranged temporary shelter and eventually resettled the girl and her brother. "This was a difficult case," she says, "…but I later recommended the District Police Commander for SGBV training and his attitude to SGBV cases against women improved and he became more responsive."

For problems like these to be solved in the long-term, local people have to get involved too. "In my three assignments with the three different UN agencies," says Sarah Stella Suffer-Okuni, "I got involved in local volunteer initiatives in the area… these included contributing resources and feeding the poor, elderly, orphaned children and people living with HIV/AIDS on big festivals like Christmas… I always advocated about volunteerism and even sensitized communities about the work of UNV."

Though she recently left UNV for family reasons, Sarah Stella Suffer-Okuni says she keeps busy with voluntary initiatives and professional activities like attending national SGBV sub-cluster meetings. She concedes that there is still work to be done; though Uganda has a gender policy, work on developing a national SGBV strategy and policy is ongoing. However, the experience and commitment which the UNV volunteer has given to Uganda must surely have changed the lives of many women and girls.