Nigeria: Curbing Armed Violence Against Women
By: Abimbola Akosile

August 8, 2006 – (This Day) Reports have revealed that there are an estimated 650 million small arms in the world today. Nearly 60 percent of them are in the hands of private individuals, most of them men. The vast majority of those who make, sell, buy, own, use or misuse small arms are men, which does not portray good for the world's teeming female population. In Africa, small arms, which include rifles, pistols and light machine guns, are filling African graves in ever-increasing numbers, from the killing fields of Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the streets of Lagos and Johannesburg.

While the international community searches, so far unsuccessfully, for agreement on the regulation of the global trade in small arms, a growing number of African countries, UN agencies and non-governmental organisations are grappling with the human and development consequences of gun violence. According to the Women in Peace-building (WIPNET), a program of the West Africa Network for Peace-building (WANEP), the widespread availability of small arms to abusive actors, in West Africa as elsewhere, greatly contributes to further atrocities and makes peace and human security harder to achieve. The circulation of arms within the borders presents major human right problems in the sub region.

In countries where tensions are high, weapons availability risks re-igniting or spreading conflict and associated human rights abuses. These weapons are finding their way into the wrong hands, not only leading to the upsurge of armed violence but also to the formation of new armed groups, untrained civilian militias, ill-disciplined fighters and unaccountable mercenaries. These militias, private thugs and fighters, as has been witnessed in full-blown conflict areas like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote d' Ivoire, and high volatile areas like Nigeria, routinely commit abuses against and terrorise civilians and hire out their services in conflict and after conflict from one country to the other, drawing their power from the 'barrel of the gun' (arms).

In the last 6 years, reports say more than 30 communal clashes, bordering on religious and ethnic conflicts have been recorded throughout Nigeria with each claiming hundreds of lives and properties, running into several millions of naira. Examples of these include the Ijaws and Itsekiris crisis in the Niger Delta, Ilajes and Ijaws in the Southwest, Yoruba and Ijaws in the Southwest, Yorubas and Hausas in the Southwest and North, Tivs, Jukuns, Fulani and Kutebs in Central Nigeria, Fulani and Berom in the Riyomo district, South-west of Jos, etc. Despite efforts being made by the government and civil society groups, the problem of arms proliferation in Nigeria has soared alarmingly lately, having adverse impact on many people, including women and children and resulting in untold hardship and suffering for them.

Although available data supports the widespread assumption that most direct casualties of gun violence are men, particularly young men, women suffer disproportionately from firearms violence, given that they are almost never the buyers, owners or users of such weapons. Large numbers of women and girls suffer directly and indirectly from armed violence. Women and children, particularly female children, are most susceptible to assault by armed elements. Women become the main breadwinners and primary carers when male relatives are killed, injured or disabled by gun violence. Women are displaced and forced to flee their homes for an uncertain future. Displaced women often face starvation and disease as they struggle to fend for their families. Women, like men, are caught in the crossfire, both in times of war and of peace.

Women are particularly at risk because of their sex. They are consistently victims of molestation and sexual violence under gun or weapon point; and this has both psychological and physical impacts on their lives. For the WIPNET program, gun violence is just another form of violence against women; and violence against women, whether committed with boots or fists or weapons, is rooted in pervasive discrimination, which denies women equality with men. It occurs in a variety of contexts and cuts across borders, religions and class. This is not because violence against women is natural or inevitable, but because it has been condoned and tolerated as part of historical or cultural practices for so long.

Violence against women in the family and community, and violence against women as a result of state repression or armed conflict, are part of the same continuum: much of the violence that is targeted against women in militarised societies and during armed conflict is an extreme manifestation of the discrimination and abuse that women face in peacetime. Whatever the context or immediate cause of the violence, the presence of guns invariably has the same effect: more guns mean more danger for women.

WIPNET's rationale for joining the campaign is found in UNIFEM's talking points on gender and small arms. In these points UNIFEM states that small arms and light weapons impact women by increasing the level of violence women face in the public and private spheres. Small arms violate women's human rights by excluding women from peace building initiatives, violates their right to be involved in peace-building institutions and mechanisms that will directly affect their lives and communities. These points argue that women's peace will always be threatened if dedicated measures are not employed to curb the proliferation of small arms and light weapons.

WIPNET formally launched her participation in November 2004 with the slogan 'Arms Know No Gender', and hopes to contribute in achieving the community level goal of the campaign by taking it to the micro level of West African societies through grassroots women's networks. The role of these networks in their respective countries cannot be over-emphasised. This is because the proliferation of arms, though a global problem, cannot be solved without internal/national action. If each country evolves its own action and internal monitoring, it would go a long way to at least, reduce the problem. WIPNET is a program of the West Africa Network for Peace-building (WANEP), with networks in 10 West African countries: Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Benin, Gambia, Senegal, Cote d' Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea Bissau and Togo.

From: http://allafrica.com/stories/200608090155.html