Post Girl Child Summit rejuvenates passion for Girl Child Advocacy in Uganda

By Sam Agona

January 22^nd, 2015 saw UNFPA Uganda, UNICEF Uganda and DFID UK come together for a common cause; advocating for the ending of female genital mutilation, child and forced marriages in Uganda. While this phenomenon sounds more of a rural problem, several testimonies were recorded from urban areas too. Numerous indications of challenges faced by the girl child were made by teenagers who attended the summit however the girls were only a handful fraction of girls who face several challenges in Uganda.

Young girls like the pictured are at highly at risk (Photo Credit: UNICEF Uganda)

As Rachael Ninsiima notes, in Uganda, less than 1% of girls who give birth below 18, do attain a university degree by age 30; a trend that also affects their children’s education cycle. About 60% of children born to teen mothers earn elementary education compared to 80% of children of later child bearers.

Teenagers Judith mentioned that child and forced marriages are as a result mistreatment from step-mothers making young girls go out to look for comfort; Jolly echoed that bad peer groups cause girls to think they are in love yet they (girls) are still young; Sheila on the other hand, resonated that poverty has a great deal in promoting child marriage, because men contribute financially to the girl's family. On a conservative note, one girl disparaged that culture was giving parents a leeway to marry off girls at young age, further contextualizing it by citing that girls of Indian heritage were married off to ensure they commit to one man while young. 

The Author however, thinks young girls are pushed out of school to marry early as an alternate means to the tedious schooling/ education process in Uganda. According to ANPPCAN 2010, enrollment rates in primary schools stood at 97.1%, dropout rates stood at 67.6% of the enrolled percentage; with girl child secondary enrolment at a paltry 21%. Further disparaging is the prevalence of corporal punishment in several schools regardless of government ban in 2011, thus some form of institutionalized violence meted against school going teenagers by both teachers and parents, making school undesirable.

                  Miss Uganda, Leah Kalanguka speaking words of inspiration to young girls (Photo Credit: UNICEF Uganda)

According to Uwezo 2010, only 4% of P.3 pupils could read a P.2 level story fluently, showing how challenging education is to some pupils. This forces girls to look for easy options in marriage; partly accounting for 7,564 defilement cases reported in Uganda Annual Crime and Crime Report, 2010. The rise in child abuse rates has been aggravated by an inverse in prosecution rates. Markedly, out of the defilement cases reported to police in 2010, only 3,401 (45%) were taken to court, leaving a total of 4,163 (55%) cases either dropped or not followed up.

Worth recalling is that, the MDGs 2015 planned for girl children and women generally. As a signatory to Beijing Platform of Action following the 54th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women of March 2nd, 2010, Uganda is committed to not only promoting but also achieving MDG.3, promotion of gender equality and women empowerment. Women cannot be strong figures in society when girl children are being violated by parties supposed to protect them. The National Development Plan of Uganda spells out a set of cultural practices and perceptions that are negative towards girls’ elevation.

        Girls telling their story using music dance and drama joined by Minister Karoro Okurut (Photo Credit: UNFPA Uganda)

Despite the NDP, gender based violence continues to be a major concern in rural Uganda. According to Sexual and Reproductive Health Report, 2013 at least 59% of women who have ever been married experience some form of physical or sexual violence. Women comprise about 70% agricultural population, they experience unequal access to, and control over, productive resources, notably land, limiting their ability to raise productivity and move out of subsistence agriculture. Such a situation is exacerbated in circumstances where young women are forcefully married to men; they are void of bargaining power to own any resources, creating a vicious circle of an uncouth situation.

Such perpetuations are what UNFPA Uganda, UNICEF Uganda and DFID UK are out to fight. To that end, Sustainable Development Goals need to prioritize the girl child to create end to this uncouth cycle. 

Snoopers’ Charter: Up and downsides of IP - matching in helping fight terrorism

By Sam Agona

Currently, the UK government is working on passing a legislation to implement the concept of IP matching to help fight terrorist activities in the country. Such moves tend to spread over and may not end up in the UK alone.

In essence, each device uses an IP address to access the internet. It is assumed that an IP can be used to identify a person using a device. Currently, most ISPs are not required to store information about which individuals have used a particular IP address, many of which are shared between multiple users like it is in the UK. In Uganda, most internet users do not even have an idea what IP they are using. The author’s attention was drawn to this subject because of policy and technical implications such a development comes with.

An IP address is a unique numeric identifier that is needed by every device that connects to the Internet. The two versions include IPv4 and IPv6. IPs can be assigned manually or dynamically. However, in this era of wireless devices, nearly all addresses are assigned dynamically from a pool of IPs hosted by a delegated server. There are two versions of IP, including IPV4 and IPv6. IPv4 is not transparent due to NATing, public- private IP relationships, making it a challenge to associate with a single individual. IPv6 is transparent and can be less of a challenge to associate with an individual.

ISPs and mobile operators will be forced to retain information linking IP addresses to individuals for 12 months under U.K. government counter-terrorism plans. Users sit on various networks therefore the IPs they use keep changing, the only strength is that a MAC address (the hard coded 48-bit (6 byte) address of the network interface card or hardware address) is also sent. When a data packet is sent out to a station and the packet goes beyond its originating LAN segment, the packet goes through different networks and routers with the MAC and IP address of the sender. This pair of addresses is stored in the ARP (address resolution protocol) cache and according to the legislation; these two should help in identifying human being on a network. However, it can identify a device, its geo-location but not a human being.

Unlike in Uganda, in the UK people do not formally register phones or phone lines but as they use a mobile device, almost all services they access will need a subscriber’s details thus a mechanism for collecting data about a phone user. This however does not mean such devices cannot be stolen, spoofed and or masqueraded upon. In such cases, what happens on the device is out of control of the legal user?

The question of legacy system installs; when a network device is connected, it will send the MAC address however when an installation is on a hypervisor and the details given on the virtual machine are inaccurate, this can lead to wrong incrimination and blackmail. This aspect needs critical thinking.

There is a huge question in relation to storage and analysis of collected data; telecommunication companies across the world already have loads of data, they are challenged with making sense out of the data in warehouses. With this, data warehouses will grow bigger, better analysis methods are needed; deployment of mechanisms for deduplication of data, warehouse cleansing and offsite storage; putting in place tools with near - perfect intelligence to detect flags in messages sent out by suspicious IPs and MAC addresses. Deduplication products from such solutions by Quantum, HP, EMC, Asigra, Symantec, Atempo, Commvault or others out of this range.

In terms of privacy and framework, there needs to be a clear definition of what guidelines should be followed to monitor a given IP or a range of IP addresses. This can be based on some connotations based on military intelligence on what is used by terrorists; a set of keywords could be captured among others. Without such, this move can lead to massive abuse of privacy rights of individuals. 

In telecommunications, phones are tracked using their IMEI, and an IMEI does not have much to do with an owner. It only has to do with a Geo-location of the area where a call was placed, or BTS serving area and or the BTS that connected a call. This therefore does not definitely define the owner or the person using a device for a given purpose. Networks will probably have to become more intelligent to understand human characteristics.

Conclusively, very important and achievable developments with all the systems in place but needs a clear framework. There needs to be a clear way of relating a phone to what a user has/ is using it for. 

Please feel free to tweet me: @samagona

Technology and Health: Impact of phone network radioactivity on local communities

By Sam Agona
Having electronic equipment on your compound can be financially rewarding from the rent fees paid by the telecom companies and or the owner of the equipment however can be very dangerous physically and to your entire health system.

In Nigeria’s south eastern state of Anambra in May, 2013, a mast collapsed on an adjacent house where residents were sleeping in.

This situation is a global problem with telecommunication companies doing every push to make their signals ubiqtous. However, it is incumbent of you to protect yourself.

Please read article on Global Health Corps site: Technology and Health: Impact of phone network radioactivity on neighboring communities.