Justine Kwachu Ngum Kumche, Executive Director, Women in Alternative Action-WAA Cameroon, talks on violence visited on women.

How often do you receive women victims of violence and what are the recurrent types of violence?

We intermittently receive few cases of women who have suffered from domestic violence. This is because some of the women are ashamed of the outcome from society and sometimes they are afraid that they may lose the marriage. They prefer not to break the silence. This, in fact, accounts for the continuous spread of domestic violence in the society. Violence can be broken down into physical, sexual and psychological. The most frequent kind of violence is psychological and it is often directed towards exerting pressure on the women.

Most of the cases of domestic violence today are no longer the traditional kinds like battery but rather based on putting psychological pressure on the women, silence and not talking to one another.  Physical violence too constitutes a major kind even though most of it remains unreported for obvious reasons. Intimate partner or sexual violence including marital rape is a taboo to report. 

Also sexual harassment, threats of divorce due to suspicion of infidelity and stalking are the few examples that occur in our society today and which we have had to deal with. In addition to these forms, we also have to deal with structural violence, community silence and inadequate support to the victims.

How do you handle cases of repeated violence inflicted on any woman?

We do counselling sessions with these women. We also refer serious cases to the social welfare services in the country or to other NGOs such as the Trauma Centre which has the professionals to be able to conduct therapy and social support. Where there is need for lawyers to intervene, we connect the victims and the lawyers together and at times support the legal assistance processes.

How does the association protect women who run away from home due to conjugal violence?

This is the most difficult part of our work. Difficult because the women themselves do not always want their violent partners to know where they are hiding. Difficult also because our communities are largely patriarchal in nature and the male law enforcement officers often than not support their male counterparts because of the fear that it could just be their own turn tomorrow. We, however, are aware of these challenges and are working with female law enforcement officers.

We collaborate also with other stakeholders such as the social welfare services in our communities, Law firms run basically by women, to be able to give the adequate support that these women require of us.  Cameroon needs that kind of infrastructure where a woman can run to hide if her life is threatened but these for now are not available.  Most especially we need the Family Code to be adopted in order to handle these issues which are generally addressed by the Penal Code and not on women specific issues.