With support from the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) through UNESCO Nairobi (UNESCO-IPDC), UMWA has been able to implement a one-year project (October 2022-August 2023) to document violations against women journalists, train them on offline/online safety and security mechanisms but also raise public awareness on relevance of safety of female journalists.
Similarly, key stakeholder dialogues were held to generate commitment from media managers, editors and Media Civil Society Organizations towards improving the safety of female journalists both in newsrooms and externally.
Titled: A One Year Project to Document Violations Against, and Provide Survival Tips for Female Journalists in Uganda, the project has contributed to SDG 16: focusing on monitoring access to information and/or safety of journalists.
The Project observed that female journalists are increasingly facing a double burden of attacks based on the profession and gender as a result of being journalists and women. These attacks present both in the physical and online spaces within which they execute their duties and are perpetrated by both media colleagues, duty bearers/powerful figures, sources and general public.
Under Mission 2025, an advocacy intervention by UMWA to eliminate violations against women journalists, it is seen that female practitioners are increasingly being faced with sexual harassment, a silent monster that needs all key stakeholders to bother. Majority of survivors are exiting the media profession as alternative solution.
Findings from the study activity under this winding project reveal that, mental health abuse, sexual harassment through sex for adverts/interviews and cyberbullying are challenges increasingly faced by female journalists.
Amidst these abuses, majority of the respondents (41%) revealed that they don’t receive any form of support during or post violation incidence. Consequently, many female journalists are quitting the newsroom as a coping safety strategy, censorship from reporting on hard news assessed as more and at worst, breeding of a silent culture and society normalization of these gender based abuses. This research further revealed that media managements and sources are the highest abusers of women journalists through physical, emotional and verbal forms of abuses.
At the training level with 160 female journalists, UMWA was able to strengthen the knowledge and skills of the targeted groups on safety and security tips and coping mechanisms incase confronted with a threat/abuse.
According to the United Nations, violence against women and girls is one of the prevalent human rights violations in the world where one in every three women have experienced sexual or physical violence in a life time. The situation is significantly worse for women journalists who have a double tragedy of attacks as women and journalists.
Therefore, the 2012 UN Plan of Action on Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity calls for ending violations against media through holistic actions and efforts of awareness creation, safety policy standards, monitoring and reporting of issue, capacity strengthening of journalists on safety and security and increased research. It also gives prominence to a gender approach to the issue because the safety of female journalists impacts on women’s well-being, their work, freedom of expression and information to citizens.
Beneficiaries of the project re-echo the need for the holistic approaches to relevant stakeholders on eliminating violence against female journalists and how their safety and security can be strengthened as: enhancing capacity building programs on safety and security tips among female practitioners especially among upcountry journalists, increasing rapid response services and easing their accessibility, persistent advocacy among the duty bearers especially media managements, government agencies like security to respect the rights of female journalists.
UMWA adds that interventions as this project are commendable and should be sustained and enhanced in terms of reach and impact amongst female journalists in eliminating all forms of violence directed towards female journalists.
