Chinelo Obogo
The United Nation (UN) and Women Advocates and Research Documentation Centre (WARDC) have urged for an end to all forms of violence against women and girls in Nigeria and other parts of the world.
They also emphasised the need to advance campaign on Sexual Gender Base Violence (SGBV), Harmful Practices (HP) and Sexual Health and Reproduction Right (SRHR) to address the issue of violence against women and girl-child.
Speaking during a two-day capacity building workshop on ‘Coordination Mechanisms to End Violence Against Women and to Generate Shadow Reports’, organised by WARDC in Lagos at the weekend, with support from UN Women, a gender equality advocate, Mojisola Akinsanaya, called for more enlightenment on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls in Nigeria. She said women deserve the rights to their body integrity but that there is little focus on sexual, reproductive health rights in the country
“Gender inequality is a problem all over the world, not only does it affect men and women it stifles economic growth and hinders development. Women and young girls are vulnerable to poverty; many of them lack economic power. The only way to alleviate poverty is to focus on policies that will help women empower themselves. How can we eliminate discrimination against the girl child? By eliminating all forms of inequality in the public place, eliminate child marriage and female genital mutilation.
“Many women do house chores that do not count as a job but ends up as unpaid care work despite the fact that the United Nations says that work should be shared responsibility in the household. Nigeria should ensure universal access to health and reproductive right. A woman should have the choice to do whatever she wants with her body,” she said.
On shadow reporting, Akinsanya said; “Shadow reports are used by Civil Society Orgranisations (CSO) as a strong advocacy tool to provide critical information about issues. It is a unique tool through which Non Governmental Organisations lobby various international bodies. Creating a shadow report is expensive and labour intensive but the data collection process has to be credible. However, before you do a shadow report, there has to be a report from the government on the table and any report done by the government can be shadowed.”