Women Decry Gender Violence
By Abimbola Akosile

March 06, 2007 – (This Day) Ahead the globally celebrated International Women Day (IWD) which comes up on March 8 every year, Nigerians at all levels of the society have been called upon to stop all forms of gender violence, which is allegedly increasing against women and under-aged children in Nigeria.

The call was made by Alhaja Roli Daniju, Executive Director of Ajegunle Community Project (ACP) at a recent march on violence against women, in commemoration of the annual 16 days activism campaign on gender violence, in Ajeromi Local Government Area of Lagos.

ACP, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), focuses on rural empowerment, reducing social inequality among the grass-roots women, and fight against discrimination concerning the girl-child, and had earlier undertaken an awareness programme on the rights of the girl-child in some schools in the same area. Speaking during the campaign, which was attended by several women in the Ajeromi Area, Daniju claimed the focus is to draw public attention to the issues of gender violence and abuses that women, including the girl-child, suffer and call for redress of these abuses.

"Women in Nigeria face various forms of gender-based discriminatory practices in the private and public spheres of human endeavour. Nigerian women in particular are victims of female genital mutilation some of which are perpetrated against the child at infancy. About 60 percent of women in Nigeria have undergone female genital mutilation at some stage of their lives."

To her, "beginning from childhood, the women suffer from heavy burden of household chores, and many cultures in Nigeria still practice early marriage of young girls below the prescribed age of 18 years." Daniju claimed Nigerian women are also victims of sexual harassment at workplaces and institutions of learning which has led to considerable loss of productivity and truncated the educational pursuits of many women.

"Another form of violence against women is trafficking in women, which involves the transportation of women from one place to another for prostitution or other slave-like practices. Trafficking could be conducted within the frontiers of a country or outside its borders.

In recent times, research findings have shown that many young girls are being transported from Nigeria to Europe, particularly Italy, for prostitution under exploitative condition. Such exploitation includes the unending debt bond under which the trafficker deprive the victim from their earnings".

The Executive Director, who spoke before the assembled women marched around Ajegunle area, claimed women also suffer serious discrimination which does not allow them to participate equally with their male counterparts in decision and policy making processes, or in governance at all levels.

"In view of the national commitment to attain the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on equal participation in political participation by 2015 and the various commitments Nigeria has made to the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the protocol to the African Charter on human and people's rights on the Rights of women in Africa, it is imperative that all these gender-based violence and abuse must be stopped forth-with", she added.

At an occasion which witnessed two lectures on understanding gender and violence and its various forms, Mrs. Yetunde Oladeinde of the Sun claimed women's lack of access to legal information, aid or protection all help to promote the negative trend of violence against women.

To her, lack of laws that effectively prohibit violence against women and failure to reform existing laws all help to give violence against women a stronger push thus allegedly frustrating all the efforts put in place over the years.

"In addition, the absence of adequate gender disaggregated data and statistics on the occurrence of violence makes monitoring very difficult. Inadequate documentation and research actually affects efforts to design specific intervention strategies. Punishment of perpetrators of violent acts against women would also help to curb this menace. There is need to have regular training in humanitarian and human rights laws to empower the women", Oladeinde said.

She broke down various types of violence against women to include battery, sexual assault in form of rape or marital rape; sexual harassment especially in the work place or educational institutions; dowry-related violence; female genital mutilation and other harmful traditional practices; trafficking in women or forced prostitution; gender bias in the judicial system which further victimises survivors of violence; and violations of women's rights in situation of armed conflicts.

On causes of violence against women, Oladeinde highlighted the way women dress, ego problems for men, low self-esteem for some women; men who take too much alcohol; poverty; and violence across all educational boundaries; and urged government to legislate against violence against women and set up mechanisms for its enforcement.

"Violence against women is both a cause and consequence of the rising rates in HIV infection all over the world. This explains why the issue of Violence Against Women (VAW) needs to be tackled urgently if the spread of HIV is to be curbed", she added.At the seminar on gender violence during the ACP programme, participants were taught about the various causes of violence against women, while some cited personal instances when they have suffered one form of violence or the other.

On the way forward out of the situation, husbands were urged to love their wives while women were enjoined to be obedient and caring; health workers were urged to educate themselves about physical, sexual and emotional abuse and explore their own biases, fears and prejudices while supporting non-judgmental care to victims of violence.

Leaders of reproductive health programmes were called upon to establish policies and procedures to ask women clients about abuse, and to integrate discussions on healthy relationship and alternative to violence into religious education programmes.

 

From:http://allafrica.com/stories/200703070026.html