Jakaya Kikwete
(katikati) akiwa na Waziri wa Maendeleo ya Jamii, Jinsia na Watoto,
Sophia Simba (aliyeshika fimbo kushoto), Katibu Mkuu Msaidizi wa Umoja
wa Mataifa, John Hendra (wa tatu kulia) akiungana na wanaume 90 na
wanawake 36 kutoka nchi 36 za Afrika walioanza kupanda Mlima Kilimanjaro
leo kwa lengo la kupiga vita unyanyasaji dhidi ya wanawake na
wasichana.
 |
| Rais Jakaya Kikwete akihutubia wakati wa hafla ya uzinduzi wa kupanda Mlima Kilimanjaro, katika Hifadhi ya Taifa ya Kilimanjaro eneo la Marangu, mkoani humo |
Rais Jakaya Kikwete na
Waziri wa Maendeleo ya Jamii, Jinsia na Watoto, Sophia Simba na Katibu
Mkuu Msaidizi wa Umoja wa Mataifa, John Hendra wakiwa katika uzinduzi
wa uhamasishaji kupanda Mlima Kilimanjaro mkoani Kilimanjaro.
OPENING SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY DK. JAKAYA MRISHO KIKWETE
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA DURING THE FLAGGING
OFF CEREMONY FOR “CLIMB UP –SPEAK OUT” MOUNT KILIMANJARO CLIMB
TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS ON 5TH MARCH, 2012
AT MARANGU, KILIMANJARO REGION,
TANZANIA
Honorable Minister for Community
Development Gender and Children, Sophia M. Simba (MP);
Mr. John Hendra, Assistant Secretary General of the United
Nations;
Leonidas Gama, Regional Commissioner
of Kilimanjaro Region
Members of the Diplomatic Corps
Present;
All Climbers; Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Introduction
I thank you Honourable Minister for your kind invitation
and for affording me this rare privilege to see off 90 gallant men and
women from 36 African countries who are climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro with the
objective of drawing attention to the important issue of fighting
violence against women and girls. I welcome
you all to Marangu and for those who come from outside Tanzania welcome
to your other home away from home. I wish you a successful climb and I
pray that all of you will reach the summit and feel the sense of
conquest and accomplishment when you are on roof of Africa.
On behalf of the people and the Government of the United
Republic of Tanzania, I thank the organisers for availing our country,
this great honour of hosting this memorable event, the Africa UNITE
Climb to End Violence against Women and Girls which will start
shortly. Allow me also to take this opportunity to commend the United
Nations’ Secretary General, H.E. Ban Ki-Moon for conceiving the Africa
UNiTE Campaign. Tanzania strongly supports the Secretary General’s
Campaign on “Say No - UNiTE to End Violence against Women and Girls”.
The fact that 36 African countries are represented at this
event today signifies Africa’s commitment to ending violence against
women and girls in our continent. I was personally pleased to launch
the Tanzanian chapter of this Campaign on the 24th May 2008.
I am even comforted to see that the campaign has taken a life of its
own in Africa and is indeed highlighting in unprecedented ways the
problem of gender based violence.
Impact of
Violence against Women
Your Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen;
Violence against women is
pervasive scourge which has been with us for ages. It knows no color,
creed, age, status or nation. It’s in every country. What brought us
here is the fact that we should not allow this cruel and worthless
scourge to continue. Now is the time to intensify efforts to fight it.
It does no good to women other than pain and suffering both physically
and emotionally. It is a violation of women’s rights of a very high
degree. It demeans their personality and humanity. It prevents women
from enjoying life and above all their fundamental rights and freedoms.
It further prevents them from realizing their fullest potentials
and possible contributions and benefiting equitably from development of
their families and societies. In many ways violence against women
retards their efforts for personal advancement and impedes efforts
towards poverty reduction because women’s potential is not utilized
optimally.
According to WHO -up to 70 per
cent of women experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.
Among women aged between 15 and 44, acts of violence cause more death
and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and wars
combined. In Sub-Saharan Africa, between 13 per cent and 45 per cent of
women suffer assault by their intimate partners during their lifetime
and as we speak over 3 million girls are at risk of female genital
mutilation.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Violence against women is undermining our efforts to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. We know for a
fact that some African countries will not achieve the MDGs that have
key indicators on gender matters and others partly because of gender
based violence. The objective of reducing poverty, ending hunger,
deprivation and promoting socio-economic development for all peoples on
all continents will not be realized if violence against women and
girls continues. The gender related MDG include MDG 2, on access to
universal primary education; MDG 3 on promoting gender equality and
empowering women and MDG 5 on reducing maternal mortality.
We cannot achieve our objectives if young girls are being
abducted on their way to or from school. If in many of our countries,
girls are forcefully married off at a very tender age, putting them at
risk of getting pregnancy at too young an age and at risk of
contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Shamefully there are over 14.1 million girls in Sub-Saharan Africa who
are child brides, married before the age of 18.
Ladies and
Gentlemen;
Violence against women and girls
is a daily occurrence, it takes place during times of peace in the
confines of homes, in the streets, in the bushes and everywhere. It is
exacerbated during conflict where rape becomes a weapon of war. It
affects women of all ages: children, teenagers, adults and elders.
Nobody is spared. It is not uncommon these days to hear reports of
elderly men have defiled girls under 10 years old, or young men being
incarcerated for having abused elderly women who are their mothers or
even grandmothers. This is not only an expression of moral decadence of
the highest order happening in our societies, it is, also, cruel,
inhumane and above all criminal. It therefore, deserves our
unequivocal condemnation and calls for concerted efforts to end this
diabolic behaviours and actions. We cannot swallow our pride.
Measures to Address Violence against Women
Ladies and
Gentlemen;
I am pleased to note that while
the situation may look challenging, but it’s not hopeless. African
Heads of State and Government have taken a positive stand. Firstly, we
enshrined in Article 4 (L) of the Constitutive Act of the African
Union the inclusion of the gender parity principle. This provides for a
moral obligation for all Member States to enshrine this principle in
their national constitutions, legislations and socio-economic
development policies and programmes.
I want to assure you that
Tanzania remains committed to the pursuit of gender parity and fighting
violence against women. We will not falter in this
endeavour. I am ready to work with my colleagues in other countries to
promote this noble cause in the African continent.
Secondly, we have the ground breaking Protocol on African
Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.
The Protocol was adopted by the African Union on 11 July 2003 at its
second summit in Maputo, Mozambique. On 25 November 2005, having been
ratified by the required 15 Member States of the African Union, the
Protocol entered into force. As of July 2010, a total of 28 Member
States had ratified and deposited the instruments of ratification with
the AU Commission. Today the Protocol is used as an important tool for
holding Governments accountable on the commitments we have made.
Thirdly, we also have the Solemn Declaration on Gender
Equality in Africa. As you know there are many other such instruments.
In addition to these instruments, we also have various mechanisms that
have been instituted to ensure that these frameworks are implemented.
These are important frameworks that were adopted to facilitate actions
to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls and to
provide for effective and adequate services to survivors.
Actions to address Gender based
Violence
Ladies and Gentlemen;
We know that policies and legal instruments mean very
little without commensurate implementation measures and actions.
Governments have to walk the talk. We must ensure that our actions
speak louder than words. It is required of us to adequately reflect on
our national plans, programmes and budget measures to promote gender
parity and fight against gender based violence.
The Africa UNiTE Campaign to End Violence against Women and
Girls provides an important opportunity to galvanize us all into
action to implement the frameworks and instruments I have referred to
above. It provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to engage in
innovative sustained actions to prevent, prosecute, punish and provide
effective responses to violence against women and girls. It
invigorates us to renew our commitments, to mobilize more strongly not
only the Government entities but also the private sector, civil society,
community based organizations, men and our traditional leadership
structures and decision makers.
Indeed, the Campaign has placed the
United Nations system at the center of such efforts. We look forward to
engaging further with the United Nations in the country on how we can
strengthen our national response. We want to ensure that we have a
comprehensive response package to fighting gender based violence in the
country. We want to report, in 2015, that indeed we have met the
targets set out in the SADC Gender and Development Protocol. We look
forward to both the technical and financial support to achieve this.
Conclusion
Ladies and
Gentlemen;
I know most of you are now ready to
start the climbing of Mt Kilimanjaro, therefore let me not delay you any
further with a long speech. We wish you well and we hope that you
will all reach the Uhuru Peak, the highest point of Mount Kilimanjaro
and in Africa. With these remarks, I formally declare the Africa
UNITE Climb to End Violence against Women and Girls officially
launched.
Thank
you for your attention and best of luck!
No comments:
Post a Comment