How To Get Women To Trust The Police? 'Gender' Desks
How do you get a woman to report to the police that she's been assaulted or abused if she doesn't trust the police to take action?
That, says activist Jamila Juna, is a serious problem in Zanzibar.
Juma is the executive director of the Zanzibar Female Lawyers Association (ZAFELA), which she helped found in 2003 to provide free legal aid to women and children. When a woman is assaulted in Zanzibar and wants to make a police report, there's a good chance Juma will be involved, in some capacity, as an advocate in her case.
And what she's seen over the years has discouraged her.
"[Some police officers] don't understand about rape or they think it's a women's issue, so they don't care," Juma says. "There are so many obstacles for women and it takes a special one to go make a claim, but the system is not a friend for them."
The police agree with her. "Gender-based violence is persistent in Zanzibar but women are not confident in reporting these issues," says deputy sergeant Mauwa Saleh, a police officer for 25 years. "In the past, there were very few cases because victims were afraid and there was no special handling or privacy."
But Saleh and Juma are both optimistic that things have changed in Tanzania and in Zanzibar, the semi-autonomous archipelago off the coast of the mainland where they live.
Today, over 400 police stations, including seven of Zanzibar's 20 police stations. As on , these units deploy dedicated, specially trained detectives to handle "sexually-based offenses" like rape, sexual assault and domestic violence.
