The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), has lamented on the increasing waves of Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in Nigeria and calls for urgent action by the Federal Government as the incidences are getting out hand.
The Executive Secretary of NHRC, Tony Ojukwu, spoke at the ongoing two-day high level workshop for SGBV human rights defenders in Abuja.
He cited that statistics showed that from January to June 2020, the Commission received a total 754 complaints involving over 954 victims from 27 state offices including the headquarters.
According to him, “These statistics do not include human rights cases received by other SGBV responders like NAPTIP, the Police, Social Welfare Departments, CSOs and NGOs. The majority of cases received by the Commission emanated from Lagos state, Adamawa State, Ebonyi State, Sokoto State and Cross River State.”
He advocated support for Human rights defenders, saying that they actually work to improve societies and contribute to peace and democracy.
He said that defenders are agents for positive change and development, adding that human rights defenders equally need protection in order to be able to effectively protect the victims of human rights violations.
According to Ojukwu, “States must recognize that human rights defence is an essential activity during emergency periods and ensure that human rights defenders can carry out their work free from reprisals, intimidation or threats, so that together we can all face up to this monster and defeat it.
“It is against this background that the Commission with support from the UN-EU Spotlight Initiative through UNDP implementation, has decided to organise this workshop, which is intended to achieve the following objectives:
1. To identify and bring together key human rights defenders across all sectors of the society;
2. To discuss and agree on the way forward on how best to assist victims of sexual and gender based violence;
3. To train defenders on how to mainstream human rights into defenders assistance to victims of SGBV;
4. To identify and discuss new and emerging protection and referral pathways for effective accountability for violence against women and girls.”
The NHRC Executive Secretary further explained that the workshop is also aimed at bringing together SGBV stakeholders at the federal and state levels, including the FCT and spotlight states of Lagos, Adamawa, Ebonyi, Sokoto and Cross Rivers and the Commission, to dialogue and agree on a way forward on how to combat SGBV in their respective States.
“The task of combating SGBV is not an easy one; this is why there is a need to bring all SGBV stakeholders/Human Rights defenders together which also include federal and state agencies like the Ministry of Women Affairs, NAPTIP, the Nigeria Police and other stakeholders, whose mandates include responding to cases of SGBV, investigating, prosecuting, sensitization and data management, amongst others, to work together to ensure a coordinated response to SGBV. Also not forgetting the importance of the media, who are tasked with the responsibility of reporting accurately all cases of SGBV.”
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