The new European Union has reiterated the Union’s commitment to cooperate with the Ministry of Women Affairs and the Federal Government of Nigeria on all gender-based issues.
Gender-based violence (GBV) violence against women and girls, result to human rights violations, with damaging impacts on victims, survivors, families, communities and societies.
These types of violence encompassed by GBV include sexual violence, physical violence, emotional and psychological violence, child marriage, trafficking, female genital mutilation (FGM), domestic violence and rape, in Nigeria.
The European Union Ambassador to Nigeria, Ms. Samuela Isopi, made the pledge during a tour of the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative of Gender Based Violence Data Situation Room in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
She also assured the Minister of women Affairs, and social development, Dame Pauline Tallen, that the EU would continue to support the strengthening of all actions against sexual and Gender-Based Violence.
Ms. Isopi, explained that the EU will work with Nigeria to achieve its mandate on this issue.
“For us this ministry is very strategic and visible, we will make it more visible .in the list of the priority this ministry works very much on top , not only because of our engagement on gender issues, Gender equality, human right are the top priority for the EU worldwide and in Nigeria in particular. We are very much please for the fact gender issues also constitute our priority in the government and this priority is reflected in the national development plan.
We need to strengthen our action in sex and gender based violence, women economic empowerment, and political empowerment, this because where you don’t have women at decision are made, it is very difficult to make progress on issues, so count on us we are very much together and I hope we will be able to work together to make progress on and to advance women agenda in Nigeria.
Ambassador Isopi, disclosed that the EU has developed the action plan do address gender based violence. “The EU has prepared a new the action plan on gender plan on gender equality and women empowerment. This action plan is actually aimed at accelerating progress on gender equality in all the activities s and programme that are funded and promoted by the EU globally and in Nigeria. According to this plan, all the activities that carried out must contribute to achieve the global target of 85 percent of programmes that must have gender dimension. the reason for the visit is to work together towards the 16days activism campaign against gender based violence”
According to UN report, one in three women experience either physical or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
Responding, Nigeria’s Minister of women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen, noted that the Ministry has made issues of gender discrimination and gender-based violence against women and children as a top priority and called on the government called on the Attorney General of the Federation to ensure that perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence were swiftly punished in accordance with the law.
“For us at the ministry of women affairs, every day is a day of struggle to address the issues of gender based violence. We have a data situation room here that supported by UNDP, as of today we have reported case of 5197, fatal cases 160 , closed cases 3231 and open case 192, i and out of this huge number only sixteen that are convicted this un acceptable, that’s why I am pressing on the justice system to change the narrative”.
The Minister added that “The ministry is out to ensure that the participation of women in politics is promoted by ensuring that community and society is being carried out.”
While women and girls are disproportionately affected by GBV, sexual violence against men and boys also occurs, particularly in conflict-affected contexts.
In response to the identified gaps in the availability of real-time data on Gender Based Violence (GBV) in Nigeria, the European Union-United Nations Spotlight Initiative, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with support from the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs recently launched the first ever National GBV Situation Room in the country.
The National GBV Situation Room is an innovative data management and visualization platform which uses technology to enable Government, decision-makers, and program managers to view and analyze GBV data with ease and aims to fulfill the mandate of Spotlight Initiative Pillar 5 which requires the “availability of quality data and use in gender-based violence response.
