SGBV: WRAHP educates 40 CSOs on Women’s Rights, urges survivors to break culture of silence
By Chibuzo Ihegboro
A non-governmental organisation, the Women’s Rights and Health Project (WRAHP), has organised a 3-day workshop to sensitize civil society organisations within Oshodi-Isolo and Ojo local governments on sexual and gender based violence laws.
According to the Executive Director, Bose Ironsi, the workshop was aimed at developing the capacity of the NGOs to respond to and handle cases of gender based violence within their communities.
She explained, “It is a workshop for NGOs sponsored by the European Union Act for reporting pathways for SGBV.
“We need to build the capacity of NGOs to be able to report issues of sexual and gender based violence effectively because it is not enough for us to go into the communities and amplify their voices and at the end of the day, they are not able to respond effectively and it is also aimed at getting effective data that will help policymakers to be able to plan well.
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“And these NGOs, 40 of them are coming from Oshodi-Isolo and Ojo local governments.
“They will get to understand the laws on human rights, we are also enlightening them on gender inclusion and sustainable community engagement. We will also monitor their impact and support them with handling cases.”
Speaking at the event, Chibogu Obinwa, a Gender & Development Consultant and Civil Society Specialist, noted that breaking the culture of silence and ensuring prosecution of perpetrators of SGBV would help deter offenders
“The culture of silence is very significant because some of these survivors come from communities that are highly prejudiced against women especially when it comes to violations against sexual acts.
“There is a culture of silence because some of these survivors are being victimized when they go back to their communities after reporting to the police or after reporting to intervening agencies.
“Some of them are even threatened at home for even daring to report their abusers. And because there is a lot of ignorance, they think that someone who suffered assault may be the cause of the assault.
“I think when you have more people reporting, if we have more prosecutions and convictions, it will prevent others from taking the same route.
“We call it a system that will deter others from doing the same thing but if people feel that they can do something and get away with it, then it continues to promote a system of impunity.
“But if they know that the justice system works and that when they are reported something will be done, it will deter them from getting into the same act.
“In some states there are registers that capture data around suspects or those who have been convicted so in that way, their names are already captured in the system and that helps to prevent repeat offence because when you know that your name is in the register, it will deter from being a repeat offender and the system will know how to handle that if they keep seeing the same offender.”
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One of the participants, Mary Ebueze of YettyMay Foundation, said the workshop had exposed her to a lot of women’s rights. “There were practices that I used to think that we could put up with and just manage. But today I got to know that we don’t have to manage them, for instance some cultural practices that infringe on the rights of women, traditions that don’t really matter but because someone started it and the people that came in afterwards did not ask questions.
“So, we should learn to ask questions and volunteer suggestions to make changes to those existing practices.”
Kehinde Thompson of the Renaissance Foundation for Peace Builders said he had gained more indepth knowledge of the laws prohibiting gender-based violence in Lagos State.
“For instance, there is 10 years imprisonment for those that practise incest by consent and 5 years imprisonment for incest without consent.
“We need to find the root cause of this menace and deal with it. On our own part, we are willing to create awareness about these laws and the implications of violating them.
“When people are aware that of the consequences of their actions, they will be more careful.”
Some of the laws highlighted were the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Bill (VAPP),The Nigerian Constitution and Domestic Violence Law of Lagos State.
