Joyce Namugambe
However much there are strict laws that regulate gender based violence in the country, the rate of practices that indicate unfair treatment of people based on their gender is increasing day by day and the victims remain helpless, while the perpetrators continue with the act.
Different forms of Gender based violence have continuously manifested in the country, but according to the stories that come out, women are mostly affected by these forms compared to the men.
On this matter therefore, media challenge initiative came out to train journalists on how to bring out gender based violence stories as a way of helping the public get aware of the matter and enable journalists to bring out such stories to highlight the voices of the victims and survivors, thereby attracting responses of the authority to the perpetrators.
During the training on reporting on Gender based violence, which took place at the media challenge initiative offices in Kabalagala, one of the facilitators Patricia Kisesi highlighted the different principles of gender based violence such as trauma violence, Solutions violence, survivor centered approach among others, to help journalists know the different angles which they can use to bring out information in a way that benefits the public, especially the victims and survivors.
Kisesi noted that it is important to know how to approach a survivor of gender based violence especially with trauma, if a journalist is to get the right information he/she is looking for, it should be through understanding their actions to enable the interviewee confide in them, thereby getting enough information.
Another facilitator Safinah Virani trained journalists on the importance of packaging their messages especially when reporting about sexual violence, as it can help them protect the survivors to avoid negative consequences that may happen after the story.
Safina advised journalists to be mindful of the languages they use during such sensitive interviews to avoid bringing out biased stories that may create a gap between the journalist and the survivor, when she/he thinks a journalist intended to expose them.
She went on and expressed that some societies make Gender based violence issues to be normal thereby leaving the victims continue living in such kind of life helplessly. She noted that some policies in the country criminalizes GBV victims for example the computer misuse act which blames the victim whose nude photos are posted on social media, and instead of punishing the one who posted, it turns against the victim. This scares away victims from coming out to complain when their such cases happen to them.
The training was organized by Media Challenge Initiative, in partnership with FAWOU, FIDA, and the French Embassy.
