Elderly in rural areas have more to fear in virus war

Mama Mariana sits pensively alone in her tiny sitting room. She is preparing to retire for the night.

It is only 6.30pm though, a bit too early to go to bed. She decides to give it another 30 minutes. Shortly, there is a loud knock on the door.

Her heart skips a beat as she struggles towards the door, her knees almost give way to the biting pain of arthritis.

Before she can fully open the door, a visibly drunken man forces himself in, almost throwing her to the floor.

Shaken, the 78-year-old grandmother, a mother of five, manages to steady herself and slowly walk back to her seat, pain written on her face, as the intruder stares menacingly at her.

He sinks into a chair and demands food. This is Gerald, her 39-year-old last-born. With shaky hands, she serves him a plate of fried potatoes, carrots, cabbage, maize and beans.

About 10 minutes later, he rudely pushes the empty plate away, swears at her and staggers out towards his shack, a few metres away.

She clears the small wooden table and heads to bed. This has been Mama Mariana’s life for six years now, since her son abandoned his wife and two children, gave up his “difficult” carpenter’s job, and returned to his mother’s home in Nyandarua County.

EVIL GRANDSON
Tonight, she will have an early night, thanks to the dawn-to-dusk curfew imposed last month by the government as part of restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the deadly Covid-19 disease.

Before the 7pm-5am curfew, her wayward son would wake up the widow as late as midnight when he would stagger home from a bar, demanding food amid threats.

He spends his time idling away and drinking with friends and peers at a local trading centre. She suffers the torture silently.

However, Mama Mariana counts herself lucky. She knows of a neighbour, an elderly widow who goes through “worse’’ in the hands of her sons and grandsons.

She endures sexual and physical violence and related violations from her kin. Like her, they have been too afraid and ashamed to tell on their abusers.

One of these is an 81-year-old widow rescued by villagers from her abuser grandson. He not only subjected her to physical assault, but also raped her several times under the cover of darkness.

The 28-year-old would threaten to kill her if she dared whisper a word of what was going on to anyone.

The granny was eventually rescued by a daughter, who, on visiting home from Nairobi on a weekend, noticed that her mother walked with difficulty and wore a miserable look.

“We broke down in shock and guilt. That our mother had been undergoing this kind of violence right before our faces is difficult to live with,” Elena says.

STERN ACTION
Such cases are not isolated. Violence by immediate family members and guardians against the elderly, especially women, is widespread, but underreported, with a couple of cases having been highlighted in the media, including some from Murang’a and Kericho counties.

However, such cases are more common in the Mount Kenya region. This, however, was before the horrendous Covid-19 disease came calling.

It now sadly means that with the containment measures, such elderly victims are trapped with their abusers.

The government has acknowledged that the Covid-19 containment measures have seen a surge in domestic and sexual violence and other gender-based violence perpetrated by close relatives.

The Ministry of Health has pledged to work with other departments to fight this crime.

In addition, disaggregated data to capture the full impact of the violence would be released soon, the ministry promised last week, on Tuesday 14.

Women’s rights advocates have welcomed this commitment, further asking for consistent and regular messaging as part of the coronavirus strategy response.

Despite the anticipated stern action against abusers and tightening of measures to curb the pandemic’s spread, there are concerns on the need for specific interventions to protect elderly women, most of who live in rural counties, where they face all manner of violations.

NYUMBA KUMI

In addition to their vulnerability, they are known to be victims of sexual and physical violence as well as mental torture.

Quarrels over land ownership and inheritance are some of the excuses unscrupulous relatives, including the elderly women’s own children and grandchildren, use to assault and subject the elderly to violence, including sexual abuse.

The cash stipend provided by the government under the social protection programme for the 70-year-olds and above is another cause of the violence, intimidation and mental torture meted out to the elderly to compel them to hand over the money.

“During the Covid-19 response, we need to take care of our elderly citizens, especially women prone to abuse and exploitation,” says Wairimu-Munyinyi Wahome, Coalition on Violence Against Women (Covaw) executive director.

“Let us establish a continuum of care for the elderly that mitigates violence of any kind, and this, like any other efficient and effective GBV response programme, requires deliberate planning and delivery by government at county and national level,” she adds.

Covaw suggests that at the community level, chiefs and leaders of Nyumba Kumi be required to do regular check-ups on the welfare of the elderly, “including teaching them how to report abuse”.

BREAK STIGMA
Besides honouring and taking good care of their elderly parents, grandparents and others, Munyinyi-Wahome advises relatives and guardians to ensure their elderly parents’ safety by talking to them regularly for the sake of their mental well-being.

Furthermore, they should conduct due diligence on their caretakers to reduce the possibilities of having an abuser as a caretaker.

“Violence thrives in silence and isolation, and it is likely that during these difficult times of social distancing, there are elderly women suffering out there,” she points out, adding that violence against elderly women, mostly aged 60 years and above, and mainly living in rural Kenya, is often overlooked and even ignored.

HelpAge International, an NGO that champions the rights of the elderly, says social stigma goes hand in hand with violence against older women, and lack of attention leaves the victims marginalised and unable to access psychological or legal support.

As a result, the structural and systemic status quo continues unchecked with perpetrators getting away unpunished.

“The shame older women feel when they are the victims of violence, combined with a lack of support services, discourages them from speaking out about what has happened,” HelpAge adds.

INTERVENTIONS

Community Advocacy and Awareness Trust (Crawn) Executive Director Daisy Amdany calls for studies to help understand factors that drive abuse against the elderly, even as she singles out inheritance, substance abuse by caregivers and/or criminal elements within the family and delinquents as some of them.

“Violence against the elderly, which ranges from physical abuse to neglect, rape and even murder, is often unspoken because generally, especially these days, very little value is attached to the elderly in a country like ours where we manage stress poorly and tend to use violence and aggression to resolve disputes. The weaker and vulnerable among us then become targets for violence,” she notes.

With a broken social service network, she adds, “the neglect and abuse of the elderly, which is often unseen and unspoken, goes easily unnoticed and unaddressed”.

While some counties have put in place interventions to take care of special categories such as the elderly in an effort to fight the coronavirus, few have specific measures to help deal with sexual and gender-based violence among elderly women.

In Nyandarua, Governor Francis Kimemia says County Response Committees at the sub-county levels have been profiling those in need and assessing their needs to support them.

“The whole intervention framework is anchored on the Nyumba Kumi and the Community Health Volunteers in every village,” he says.

“They are the first-line responders and actors … as such, any unique challenges are very easily detected and acted upon,” the governor, the response team’s co-chair, adds.

RECOVERY CENTRES

To cushion special interest groups in Nakuru County, a multisectoral team is also focusing on SGBV, which includes putting together rescue measures and establishing recovery centres in major health institutions in its sub-counties.

“We have structured reporting channels, which include a reporting tool at the trials, and data can be obtained through sub-county clusters, department of health and the police,” says Lucy Kariuki, the County’s Executive Officer for Youth and Gender.

Ms Mary Shimwenyi, a community leader with GROOTS Kenya in Malava of Kakamega County, can easily list at least 20 cases of neglect, abuse and violence against elderly women in the county by people close to them and others county in just about a month since the government’s containment measures to curb spread of the deadly coronavirus kicked off.

The latest in the case of violence that the Women Land Rights Program coordinator cites the case of a woman whose age she puts at between 78-80 years who was physically assaulted by a son, apparently over an inheritance issue.

INHERIT LAND

“Clearly, the son who physically attacked her, in collusion with a brother want their mother out of the way so that they can inherit her land,’’ she says adding that case is under investigation.

The other cases involving women between the ages of 70 and 81 years revolved around abuse and violation against the elderly women.

Ms Shimwenyi attributes this criminality to the fact that “all focus appears to be on Covid-19 and the perception that access to justice is at a standstill.’’

At another ward, Ms Alice Isoyi, a Champion for Transformative Leadership and Kakamega County coordinator also for GROOTS Kenya, says abuse and violence against the elderly cases have spiked since movement restrictions and curfew was imposed about four weeks ago.

“This is surely a big problem now within the community,’’ says Ms Isoyi. “It is rampant, disturbing and women including the elderly ones, and even children appear to be a key target of abusers during this time,’’ she says.

One of the cases she cites is of an 89-year old single woman who has been living alone. She was attacked and gang-raped last month by a group of men who on apparently realizing that she had recognised them, murdered her, Ms Isoyi says, adding that issues of land ownership especially in polygamous families are a major cause of conflicts and thus violence against grannies and other elderly women.

DOCUMENTATION

While data on sexual and gender based violence in Kenya especially against women and girls is easily available, that against abuse of older women mostly from the age of 60 years and above is hardly available. 

HelpAge International, a global network which advocates for the rights of older people that faults what it says is a lack of proper documentation and data on violence, abuse and neglect against older women. “Most of the statistics on this kind of violence and abuse against the elderly (women) rotates around a 49-years (age) cap. That is our worry and that is what we have been fighting for,’’ says Ms Roselyne Kihumba, the organisation’s Regional Advocacy Coordinator.

This is what HelpAge International says:

1. All stakeholders must recognise that older women experience violence, abuse and neglect, and include them in a meaningful way in any new and existing research, policy and programmes on violence against women and girls.

2. Data to monitor the achievement of gender equality across the SDGs must be disaggregated by sex, age (in five-year cohorts), disability, location and other grounds for discrimination prohibited under international human rights law.

900 MILLION

Monitoring must include the 900 million women (24 per cent of the world’s women) who are over 49 years old.

3. In order to be inclusive of older women, data, policy and programmes addressing violence against women and girls must widen their focus from sexual and physical intimate partner violence to include different forms of violence, abuse and neglect, and a wider range of perpetrators and settings.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) acknowledges that older people globally are currently facing the most threats in the wake of the coronavirus disease.

It is asking governments and communities to ensure that the elderly are treated with dignity and respect during this global crisis.

“Supporting and protecting older people living alone in the community is everyone’s business,” said Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO’s Regional Director for Europe.

“I am reminding governments and authorities that all communities must be supported to deliver interventions to ensure older people have what they need,” he said on April 2.

SIGNIFICANT RISK

While the WHO boss spoke in the context of significant risks that the elderly face in contracting Covid-19 due to their advanced age and underlying health conditions, the need to take care of our elderly, including their safety and mental health as part of the response to the horrendous pandemic cannot be understated.