The United Nations says it is investing in all sectors and communities in Nigeria to eradicate gender Based Violence, GBV.
The UN has urged Stakeholders, law enforcement and the justice system to do more to address the menace of gender based violence in the Nigeria, protect people’s rights and ability to function well in the family, community and society.
The Head Technical Unit of the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative, Ms Erin Kenny, made the call at the Spotlight Initiative’s Global Civil Society Reference Group visit to the Ministry of Women Affairs to tour the Gender Based Violence GBV Data Situation Room.
As part of the advocacy efforts to garner support to end #GBV the @GlobalSpotlight team yesterday paid a courtesy visit to the Hon. Minister of Women Affairs @PaulineKTallen and toured the Data Situation Room supported by @UNDP in 🇳🇬#SpotlightEndViolence pic.twitter.com/d7cxCOkirj
— UNDP Nigeria (@UNDPNigeria) February 11, 2023
Ms. Kenny also said that the visit is an avenue to understand better the innovative initiatives Spotlight is currently implementing and ensure everybody is mobilize towards ending GBV.
“The Spotlight Initiative a partnership between UN and multilateral donors including the EU they gave us 500 million Euros to invest around the world to eradicate violence against women and girls a large investment is in Nigeria.
“In Nigeria we are investing in every sector and community to ensure that everybody is mobilize in service to eradicating violence against women and girls. This includes the laws and policies are gender equitable, institutions are taking responsibility for stepping up that prevention includes changing social norms and behavior is in place, that services can reach those most vulnerable to abuse, data system are tracking and reporting what is happening.
“It is very important that we have a strong women rights movement and civil society to engage in the fight at the forefront of leading the effort. That’s part of what we are doing in Nigeria its really working with civil society that understands how best we can support them, to make sure their voices are driving change in Nigeria.’’
Responding the Minister of Women Affairs, Pauline Tallen, said with availability of data, perpetrators of gender based violence will be tracked easily and prosecuted.
“Data is key in every effort we are making to address data based violence, and so I call on all organization particularly the civil society organizations to keep working with us to use this data that we have in situation room. It’s not just for the ministry of women affairs it’s for the whole nation, and that will help us track most of the perpetrator’s and it will help us make a case to the ministry of justice to ensure that justice is given to victims,” she said.
The Minister, maintained that empowerment of women and girls would reduce GBV, and called on the justice system to fast track the prosecution of perpetrators of GBV in the country.
“Livelihood support, economic empowerment is key to women, if women are empowered we will have less cases of gender based violence. We are emphasizing and calling on the justice system to deal with perpetrators, it will serve as a deterrent and it will stem the cases of gender based violence and victims will now have the confidence to report.”
The situation room is the first of its kind in the country which houses the data infrastructure for the online reporting with real time data visualization which provide analytics for a timely response, with technical support from the Foundation for Resilient Empowerment and Development FRED, the reporting platform has been scaled up to cover the 36 states in Nigeria.
