DEMAND GOVERNMENT OF UGANDA ON END ABUSE OF MR. JOHN TEBYASA MATOV NOW!
- by: Beatrice Babirye Matovu
- recipient: WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; CANADA; IRISH GOVERNMENT - AGEING AND LIFE -COURSE
For over nine years my father, Eng. John Tebyasa Matovu who was diagnosed with severe dementia was abused, neglected, and exploited by family members who conspired with government officials to steal his property and money that could have been used to pay for his basic needs such as housing, food, and medical care.
Unfortunately, my father is not the only victim to abuse, neglect, and exploitation in Uganda. These crimes have been occur inour backyard for the past fifteen years or more in every demographic, and can happen to anyone—a family member, a neighbor, even you. Yet these crimes are hidden away as “ just a family problem that needs to be sorted out by family members…."
I bring this this sad story to you because it is very important to share stories and information about abuse, neglect, and exploitation of our elders, who can no longer voice their pain.
Abusing our elderly is a gross mistreatment and should never be accepted in any civilized society; no one is immune to it.
We all must raise up as a community and bring awareness of this cultural, social, economic and demographic processes affecting elder abuse and neglect in Uganda.
We must force our governments and the International Donors to create relevant legislation, review intervention programs, evaluate research and the status of elder abuse in Uganda.
if this is put in action, these interventions to address socio structural factors that impact elders' settings that diminish their ability to realize human rights will contribute to an improvement in their condition and a reduction in abuse and rights violations in the long-term.
Many African communities consider family harmony to be an important factor governing family relationships. in Uganda, it is embedded in a value system that believes in the primacy of family and stresses the important virtue and primary duty of respect, obedience, and care for one's parents and elderly family members.
These norms are still influential today and attitudes towards mistreatment of older people in our society are unrecognized and certainly not reported.
Yet the elder abuse epidemic has risen in the past fifteen years in Uganda and is now a hidden problem in Uganda. The media has reported about the vice of elder abuses that are happening in Uganda and estimates 1 in 10 older adults have been abused in the past recent years.
Where is the problem coming from?
When family members or friends and colleagues cannot find logical explanations for events such as a strange illness such as Dementia (a disease, which unknown to Ugandans) befalling a loved one; they automatically may blame it on witchcraft and believe that a person has been witched by some strange disease.
As poor and uneducated people try to explain such misfortunes that befall their loved one --- illness and death, crop failures and dried-up wells --- they search for a scapegoat, and witchcraft appears to explain events they cannot otherwise understand or control. Such belief has existed in Uganda for centuries, though the violence surrounding it has increased sharply in recent years.
However, such accusations of strange diseases befalling a loved one have been used to justify displacing older persons as heads of households, and depriving them of their autonomy in the name of discontentment even where the family is the central institution and the sense of filial obligation is strong.
Is the Government of Uganda aware of the pandemic?
On paper, things do not look too bad for older people in Uganda. The government has a dedicated department for the elderly (along with disability), which lives within the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, and it has drafted a national policy for older people.
The country's constitution makes special mention of making "reasonable provision for the welfare and maintenance of the aged", an act of parliament allows for the election of older people into local government and issues affecting older people have been included in the Poverty Eradication Action Plan and strategic plans on agriculture, health and Aids. Uganda is also a signatory to the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, which calls for the poverty of older people to be halved in line with the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to halve world poverty by 2015. The plan was agreed in 2002.
But, of course, the reality is much different. Uganda's efforts to support its older population seem to come down to one struggle - lack of financial resources and the political will to implement change.
Yet today, we are seeing an increase in the abuse, neglect and financial exploitation of the elderly persons in Uganda being confined, denied medical treatment or food and left to die while special interest groups pick and choose on what property and or possession to grab.This may in part be due to increased poverty caused by too many people living off too little land, as well as an overall lack of education.
My father, Eng. John Tebyasa Matovu an 81 year old man suffering from severe dementia and has been subjected to this form of abuse and neglect; he has suffered physical effects, which have left him with injuries and now he is disabled with a non-united fracture of his left femoral neck which makes mobility and toilet painful and difficult. His property has been grabbed (especially land). Otherwise what is happening to my father is tantamount to elder abuse and neglect and this is because Uganda‘s policies, laws and programs that protect the elderly rights in Uganda are not being enforced.
The purpose of this petition is to request the international community to push hard the Government of Ugandato do more about abuse of elderly persons in Uganda and to ensure that older people like my father live in safety without fear of being hurt, exploited, or neglected.
The International community should inject more funding into the world elder abuse awareness campaigns so as to address and prevent further abuse, and exploitation of older persons such as my father, Eng. John Tebyasa Matovu by raising raise awareness of this national shame.
The international Community should call upon the Government of Uganda to introduce new lawsspecifically to protect older people; to guarantee the human rights of older people by extending the existing laws on domestic or intra family violence, which will include older people as a group; create relevant existing criminal and civil laws, which explicitly cover the abuse, neglect and exploitation of older people.
I believe this needed bigger push by international community will put a stop to elderly abuse in Uganda by enforcing Uganda to implement agreements like the World Health Organization program – Global strategy and plan of action on ageing and health.
We will then be able to put pressure on our because, we will have back up.
Beatrice Babirye Matovu
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