COVID-19 has really put us to test! From wearing masks, (and those things are so hard to breath in, I wonder how doctors survive in them during long surgeries). To lockdown of economies, curfews, income loss to stay at home. All these have cumulated into intense stress that have eventually lead to sexual and gender-based violence at home. This form of violence has grave negative ramifications to its victims years to come.
The struggle is immense. Currently there has been a spike in sexual and gender-based violence at homes as reported by the National Council on the Administration of Justice, this has been attributed to adoption of strict measures to curb spread of COVID-19. We all understand that every family or society has got different people with different types of personalities. It’s these kinds of personalities that make it beautiful, and at the same time fuel violence in our homes and/ communities. As a result, you find that when a family gathers, there is a high chance of violence occurring even during happy moments.
But right now we are living under special circumstances. COVID-19 has been accompanied by an economic crisis. Many people have lost jobs abruptly, and companies are choosing not to hire at this time. Even worse, many have been forced to stay at home for fear of contracting the virus or mandatory curfews. Lack of financial muscles to take care of household expenses can put a strain on breadwinners and caregivers in the family, leading to frequent bouts of anger that precipitate violence.
You get to a point where everything and anyone annoys you for the simplest most mistakes and even when they have done nothing wrong. Take a case of a woman who stubbed the boyfriend to death over an argument on food.
Other families are already dysfunctional. In this case, either parents don’t get along, or parents and children don’t get along. But they have been living together, each going about their business maybe with incidences of violence here and there. But now, these people have been forced to stay in confinement with one another for long periods of time. In this scenario, and abuser gets to spend more time with his/her victim for long period of time leading to severe mental, physical, spiritual and emotional damage.
To cope with this depressing time, many others have turned to alcohol and drugs. These substances reduce inhibition and impair judgement hence the perfect agent of violence at home.
What makes these situations worse is that you have nowhere to go to. Many have been socially isolated from family, whether close or distance and even your ordinary neighbor who could have opened their doors to house you when home becomes violent. In addition, this violence occur at night and the curfew presents a barrier for victims to get help or report the crime.
When it comes to sexual and gender-based violence, women and children are particularly vulnerable, and an economic crisis topples the scale further. This form of violence is normally about power and control, and in most households, men are the providers. When men cannot provide for their families, women feel the brunt of violence because their men feel like their roles as breadwinners have been challenged. They therefore resort to violence as a means of holding their power tight in the household.
Women with little education and skill, also tend to turn to transactional sex to provide for their families when fathers are unable to or deceased, hence increasing their likelihood to violence and sexually transmitted diseases. Others are tossed into violent situations because lack of income. Like for a woman who was gang raped in front of her children, at an unfinished building where she was taking shelter. She had been thrown out of her house by the landlord having accrued rent arrears of Ksh. 11,000.
Children on the other hand are vulnerable because they cannot defend themselves from violence. And they are easily intimidated into silence so the violence goes unreported prolonging the period of abuse. Children who are exposed to violence for prolonged period of time end up being social misfits, violent adults or psychologically traumatized for the rest of their lives.
Aside from giving cash hand-outs to families heavily affected by the pandemic economically, the government has also relaxed some of its restrictions, but it’s still not enough. They need to come up with a well-developed structure that provides safe houses to victims of domestic violence. In addition, they need to work harder in scaling up interventions that address power inequalities in Kenya.
Families are the basic unit of society. If we don’t invest in measures that protect them from gender and domestic violence. Then our future society has crumbled!