Scourge of intimate partner violence
Intimate partner violence (IPV) among couples continues to a great, silent scourge facing women in Malawi. But when IPV fuses with HIV and Aids, as EPHRAIM NYONDO writes, the scourge becomes complicated.
Thirty-six-year-old Chrissy Kudu from Traditional Authority (T/A) Nsomba in Blantyre was deserted by her beloved husband Amin in 2006 immediately after testing HIV positive.
It was a difficult time, she recalls, seeing someone she considered a confidant walking away when she needed him the most.
“I did not have a job nor any income generating activity. I wholly depended on him for material and moral support. When he left, I felt empty—completely helpless,” she laments.
Another local from the village, Eda Khakome, who tested positive in 2007, faced strenuous challenges of acceptance from her husband. Though they both tested positive, Kakhome’s husband was reluctant to accept the medical advice of using a condom.
“He always forced me to have unprotected sex. This was against what I was told by medical experts. I was powerless. I tried hard but still I could not convince him. Even worse, he could hardly mind going to the hospital with me for counselling. I lived in fear, regret and anger,” says the mother of five.
“My husband used to beat me up when I refused to have unprotected sex; yet I was doing it for our common good. Forcing me to have unprotected sex against my will was an act of domestic violence which led to unhappiness in the home,” she adds.
Kudu and Khakome’s stories are only isolated cases of a larger problem of HIV and Aids-related domestic violence among couples in Malawi. According to Steve Iphani, programme manager for Coalition of Women Living with HIV and Aids (Cowlha), the violence among couples—with women being the most casualties—is what is known as intimate partner violence (IPV).
“Intimate partner abuse can take a variety of forms including physical assault such as hits, slaps, kicks and beatings; psychological abuse, such as constant belittling, intimidation and humiliation; and coercive sex.
“It frequently includes controlling behaviours such as isolating a woman from family and friends, monitoring her movements and restricting her access to resources,” he says.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) even adds that IPV—which encompasses physical, sexual and psychological violence, or any combination of these acts—is, globally, the most common type of violence against women.
Already, IPV is a serious challenge in Malawi.
In a 2013 study titled Patterns of Intimate Partner Violence: A Study of Female victims in Malawi by Reza Mohammadi found that among the 8291 respondents, 13 percent reported emotional violence; 20 percent reported being pushed, shaken, slapped or punched; three percent reported experiencing severe violence, such as being strangled or burned, threatened with a knife, gun or with another weapon; and 13 percent reported sexual violence.
The study also revealed that women of ages between 15 and 19 were significantly less likely to report emotional IPV, women ages 25 to 29 were significantly more likely to report being pushed or shaken, slapped or punched and women ages 30 to 34 were significantly more likely to report sexual IPV, compared to women ages 45 to 49.
The study further details that women who had no ability to read were less likely to report sexual IPV than their counterparts who could read a full sentence.
However, the dawn of HIV and Aids has complicated the face of IPV on women.
For instance, research instituted by Malawi Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (Manet+) in 2010 showed that 48 percent of women living with HIV are physically harassed compared to 15 percent of their male counterparts.
In 2013, Cowlha, too, with a grant from United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, carried a baseline study on IPV among people living with HIV across six districts.
The study was carried amongst people living with HIV in Ntchisi, Salima, Thyolo, Nsanje, Rumphi and Karonga districts and used a semi structured quantitative questionnaire and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) as the major data collection tools.
Overall, 361 people were consulted in the in the 6 districts covering 17 T/As.
The study reveals that 20 percent of People Living with HIV (PLHIV) suffers physical violence. Fifty percent reported to have been subjected to psychological abuse and 41 percent suffered from sexual abuse.
“Psychological abuse,” says Annie Banda, executive director of Cowlha, “is the most dominant form of violence and verbal abuse is the most common form of psychological abuse affecting 17 percent of the respondents. Twenty-two percent of men suffer from verbal abuse against 16 percent of the women in intimate partnerships.”
Sexual abuse was reported in 41 percent of the respondents and the most common sexual violence type is, just like the story of Kudu, forcing a partner to have sex without a condom.
The tragedy of this is that in 2006 adult women comprised 60 percent of the total adult HIV population and this increased marginally to an estimated 61 percent in 2010.
Surely, dealing with HIV and Aids-related IPV is no longer debatable. As Iphani argues, IPV is now recognised globally as a threat to health outcomes, human rights and national development.
“To achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty, it is necessarily to ensure that the realisation of women rights is in line with international human rights conventions
It is difficult to gain national development and eradicate extreme poverty if women do not have opportunities to influence their own lives,” he says.
He adds that IPV is an important issue because it prevents women from living full lives and taking part in society throughout their life cycle.
“It reinforces discrimination of women in education, prevents them from participating in political, cultural and social arenas, and from gaining control over economic resources,” he explains.
Interestingly, the Malawian Government has now identified eradication of violence against women as one of the strategies towards attaining poverty reduction.
But how can Malawi reduce IPV?
TOMORROW: Using Stepping Stones Project, Cowlha has managed to reunite Chrissy Kudu with her husband. They are together, happily remarried. How did it happen?
