Categories: Headlines

UNFPA Volunteer Trains Women, School Children On Gender Violence; Urges Victims To Speak Out

A civil society group volunteering for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the Beulah Future Leaders Foundation, has trained over one hundred women and female school children on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Kaduna State, Nigeria.

The training sessions, which were in collaboration with the Kaduna State Government through its community engagement, was necessitated by the need to tackle the rising cases of the SGBV menace in the state. Some of the recent incidents which involved rape, domestic abuses like physical, economic, sexual and verbal intimidation of partners and the female gender have resulted in physical and psychological injury to victims.

Ms Koni Wendy Bakka, Co-Founder, Beulah Future Leaders Foundation, during one of the capacity building sessions on SGBV for thirty women in Narayi, Kaduna State, said the event was part of the effort to enlighten the women on the menace as well as equip them to deal with such whenever they are faced with the challenges in their communities.

Ms Koni explained that SGBV is any violence directed against a person based on gender or sex which might result in sexual, emotional, physical, mental, verbal and economic injury or harassment of the victims. She attributed these to poverty, ignorance or lack of education, alcoholism and gender inequality in society.

She decried the numerous incidents of gender-related violence in the society which she said mostly go unreported, while perpetrators go unpunished. She called on victims of the abuses to always speak out and report to the relevant stakeholders for swift intervention to ensure justice.

Koni, a United Nations’ volunteer on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, pointed out that victims silence and sometimes community interference always serve as an impediment to the concerted struggle to end the menace in the society.

Koni stated that there were Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) in the state located at Yusuf Dan-Tsoho Memorial Hospital, Tudun Wada; Gwamna Awan Hospital, Kakuri; General Hospital, Kafanchan and Gambo Sawaba Hospital, Zaria. These, she said, could help provide justice with immediacy to victims of rape and other related abuses.

The women rights advocate and Girl-Child champion who expressed commitment to carry out the awareness campaign and sensitization on SGBV to all communities in the state stated that Government Secondary School Television and Narayi alongside older and younger women in the above communities have benefitted from the UNFPA Volunteers training on SGBV in Kaduna State.