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Female-perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against men in Uganda is a subject of debate, with arguments casting doubt about its existence, nature and magnitude. Consequently, the majority of male IPV survivors have become hesitant to seek help following victimisation. Thus, the aim of this paper was to explore the barriers that hinder formal and informal help-seeking among male IPV survivors following abuse by their female intimate partners. Since the study’s focus was on victimised men’s subjective experiences, a qualitative design was employed. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 10 men from the central region of Uganda, who were identified through snowball sampling, as having experienced female-perpetrated IPV. This sample included men who had sought help for their IPV victimisation from a range of sources and those who had not sought any help at all. Drawing on evidence from the male survivors’ narratives, the study revealed a range of barriers that prevented them from seeking help. These are presented in three themes: stereotypical help-seeking anticipations; lack of awareness about victim support services and interruptions during actual help-seeking attempts. The findings make a case for societal recognition of male IPV, development of strategies to enhance men’s help-seeking behaviours, a need for robust male-centred IPV survivor support and resources, as well as training of IPV professionals on gender responsive and inclusive service support approaches.&nbsp

This review essay lays out the conceptual and historical groundwork for the primary research that the WATERSPOUTT social science team will carry out through the project period over four research sites in Ethiopia, Malawi, South Africa and Uganda. We have described it as a report synthesising secondary data on conflict, gender, and class relations in the four case study areas. However, it is emphatically not intended as an exhaustive description of the specificities of the four research sites – the sections that follow will traverse quite unevenly across these regions. The essay will instead offer an overarching reading of how these research sites are situated within wider structures and relationships of power. It will engage the recurrent themes and key debates that have dominated the relevant literatures in the fields of social theory and historical and social studies in order to build a broad foundation of understanding for the empirical research that is to come.

Poverty is rife in Uganda in both urban and rural communities. This chapter outlines the situation for poor women securing water for their households in a rural village. It gives an account of poor women’s ‘fluid lives’ as they engage in efforts to secure water for their households and participate in water governance at community level where there are persistent water-related problems. The authors conducted a socio-economic study of households in a poor rural parish in order to better understand women’s safe water access and participation in the management of a healthy community water supply. The study findings confirm that gender remains an important analytical tool for identifying access issues, since gender relations and inequalities are evident in most of the mechanisms of access to water in this community. The chapter explores how women and children remain vulnerable to lack of access to safe water, even where there are community schemes and improved water sources in place, since for the most part powerful, formal positions such as village chairperson, water user committee member, and handpump mechanic continue to be held by men. This is despite the fact that, in the case of water user committees in particular, the 1999 National Water Policy stipulates that women should make up 50 per cent of such committees. In addition, payment arrangements, particularly maintenance and repair fees, frequently result in denying vulnerable children and women physical access to water resources whenever men, as household heads, do not pay these fees. Strategies which seek to improve women’s access to safe water and power in community organization of water remain essential.

Water has always been a crucial catalyst for human development. In Africa, competition among different sectors for this scarce resource remains a critcial challenge to water managers and decision-makers. Water and Development examines a range of issues, from governance to solar distillation, from gender to water pumps, using a range of research methods, from participant observation to GIS and SPSS data analysis. Throughout, however, there is the unifying thread of developing a participatory and sustainable approach to water which recognises it as an essential public necessity. Edited by Ronaldo Munck, Narathius Asingwire, Honor Fagan and Consolata Kabonesa, the result is essential reading both for students of development and the environment and for NGOs and policy-makers seeking a robust and transformational approach to water and development.

In Uganda, water (or the water sector) is recognized as key in achieving economic growth and development, and maintaining a healthy and economically productive population. Access to water is a prerequisite to improved health, livelihoods and overall well - being of men, women and children, particularly among the poor and agrarianrural populations. Rural commu- nities, comprising an estimated 26 million people or about 85 percent of the entire population of Uganda (UBOS 2010), are faced with higher levels of poverty, dependency, illiteracy and poor health, among other issues. According to the recent Na- tional Household Survey, rural communities account for 94.4 percent of the nation’s poor households (about 7.1 million per- sons) and close to a half (48%) of households in the two lowest income classes (UBOS 2010).

This paper explores the gender differences in water collection in Makondo Parish in Uganda as a case study. Our analysis is based on data collected from a cross-sectional survey, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and participant observation in the study area. This data confirms that children and women are most burdened by water collection. Unless it is for commercial or work-related reasons or when there is a long drought, men rarely fetch water. Our study further reveals that children and women walk distances of less than half a kilometre to more than two kilometres on rugged and hilly roads and paths, carrying water on their heads or by hand. They spend a lot of time queuing at “improved” water sources, and suffer from health complications such as prolonged fatigue, chest pain and headache as a result of carrying water. Children and women are also distressed by the dangers of verbal and physical assault and rape at both “improved” and “unimproved” water points. We contend that whereas time and distance remain important determinants of the burden of water collection, socio-cultural, environmental and health-related conditions are equally critical in understanding the troubles that children and women face while collecting water in rural developing communities.

This report details some of the key findings of a sociological survey that was undertaken in rural Makondo Parish, Lwengo District in Uganda. The cross-sectional survey was carried out between September and November 2011 and covered all the 15 villages in the Parish. The broad aim of the survey was to assess the livelihoods, health, gender and water governance issues in Makondo Parish. Prior to the survey, several preliminary visits were made to the study area, which were then followed by a rigorous literature review on rural water governance, health and livelihoods in Uganda and globally so as to identify the major themes and variables. These themes were then used to develop a quantitative or structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was structured under the following headings: household and interviewer identification; respondents’ characteristics; household livelihoods and well-being, particularly poverty indicators like main source of income, money earned, dwelling type, and number of meals eaten; knowledge of the importance of safe water; access to safe water, such as type of water sources used, access to improved water sources, transportation of water; health issues like water-related diseases suffered, cost to the household of these diseases, steps taken to mitigate against the diseases; knowledge of hand-pump functionality; household water use and management, such as satisfaction with use, conflicts if any and decision-making on use; perceptions of safe water services and systems such as rating of safe water service delivery and why; knowledge of community-based water management systems and capacity building for sustainable utilisation of safe water. The final version was translated into Luganda, the local vernacular so as not to distort the meaning of the questions. This exercise was carried out by the Makerere University Institute of Languages, and the Luganda version was then used to train the Community Health Workers on how to administer and record standardised interviews, such as mastering the intended meaning of each and every question in the questionnaire, the expected data, recording and editing among others. The CHWs were also trained on how to use a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit so as to capture the necessary data for mapping the household locations. After training the CHWs, the questionnaire was piloted in one of the villages in a neighbouring Parish (called Nanywa) and again revised. The actual field work or data collection started with Misaana village in the North-Eastern part of Makondo Parish, then moved on to Luyiiyi-Kate, Luyiiyi-Protazio and ended with Kiguluka, the last village in the Parish on 14th November 2011. It took between three to four days on average to complete the survey in each village, and the first day of work in each village involved meeting the Village Chairpersons, explaining to then about the WIL Project, objectives of the survey and seeking their support in locating selected households for interviews. After every two-three days of data collection, meetings were held with the interviewers/CHWs to share fieldwork experiences as well as edit field questionnaires. A total of six hundred and six (606) households selected proportionately across the 15 villages in Makondo Parish were covered in the survey. Despite several challenges that were met during the survey, such as failure by interviewers/CHWs to complete their assigned households in time; heavy rains that made driving on the village roads quite difficult especially in Kiteredde, Kiyumbakimu and Kiguluka villages, the survey was a success and data collection ended quite successfully, as the originally targeted sample was attained.