Plan International (PI) says it is ready to tackle gender-based violence (GBV) in Nigeria through its Learn, Lead, Decide and Thrive programme.
The four-year project is expected to support ten million Nigerian women and girls as cases of violence against women and girls continue to rise.
Violence against women and girls is one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world.
Globally, an estimated one in three women experience physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
From forced and early marriages to the physical, mental or sexual assault on a woman, nearly three in ten Nigerian women have experienced physical violence by age 15, according to the Nigeria Democratic Health Survey (NDHS).
In its response to this problem, the Nigerian government passed the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAAP) Act into law in 2015.
However, since then, only 13 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have adopted the VAPP Act out of Nigeria’s 36 States.
PI Country Director Jummai Musa Lawan said in Abuja that despite efforts made over two decades, cases of violence against women and girls have continued to rise due to existing culture of silence and stigmatisation.
‘We are guided by the commitment to ensure that by 2024, ten million Nigerian girls would be supported to Learn, Lead, Decide and Thrive through the transformation of power relations in their favour’, she said.
‘Our focus on girls, especially adolescent girls, is determined by the rights of these girls to be seen, to be heard, to have a say in how their own future will be shaped.
‘Within the Nigerian patriarchal society, women and girls are often suppressed and denied the right to participate in decisions affecting their lives.
‘That is inhuman acts have continued to prevent them from achieving their maximum potentials and compromise their physical and psychological integrity’.
For her part, a human rights activist and Co-convener of the #BringBackOurGirls movement, Aisha Yesufu, called for the empowerment of women and girls.
‘Women are abused and violated not because of gender but because of their power as compared to that of the men. It is the power that we have that has made us victims’, she said.
‘We cannot arrange the world when we have not started in our homes.
‘Gender violence is not gender-based but power-based. How do we take away or take care of that power? We will continue to have 16 days of activism against GBV if we do not give quality education to our girls’.
Source: ThisDay
Photo source: Plan International
