A non-governmental organisation, Ambassadors of Dialogue, Climate and Reintegration (DCR Ambassadors) has successfully trained women-led civil society organisations (CSOs) and Peace-building Institutions on international and domestic policy frameworks on Gender Equality and Women Empowerment (GEWE), to reduce sexual and gender-based violence (GBV) which keeps threatening women and girls in Borno State.
The training, which brought together members of the Borno Network of Women-led CSOs and other bodies, noted that empowering women and making them self-reliant will mitigate exposure of vulnerable women and girls who fall within the low-income group.
Speaking during the end of the three-day training on Friday in Maiduguri, the Secretary of the Women-led CSOs in Borno, Aisha Hamza, said statistics have shown that in every three women, one must have faced abuse in her lifetime.
She called on government to provide education and more empowerment programmes for women and girls to mitigate the incidences where the abusers use financial enticement to lure the vulnerable women and girls to their nefarious atrocities.
In his remarks, the Programme Manager of DCR Ambassadors, Mr Richard Inyamkume, noted that sexual and gender-based violence is prevalent especially in the North-East Nigeria context because of humanitarian concerns, saying that a lot of women and girls were facing abuse both at home, in the internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps and communities.
He added that government and humanitarian partners needed more collaboration to tackle the menace of SGBV in Borno and other North-East states that were adversely affected by Boko Haram insurgency.
“The three-day training is aimed at making actors across multi-sectors to become more familiar with international and domestic policy frameworks and treaty instruments around violence against women, women empowerment and gender equality.
“DCR Ambassadors is complementing what the government needs to do. The government is working through its own specialised agencies to provide support such as medical and legal, while our organisation is doing a multi sectoral approach to ensure that people are working within the frameworks of the United Nations and within government policy frameworks that exist to prevent and respond to SGBV,” the programme manager said.
Earlier, addressing participants, the Executive Director, DCR Ambassadors, Ruth Usman, said the training was one of the activities lined-up for implementation on the organisation project titled: ‘Strengthening Institutional and Multisectoral Capacity to Prevent and Response to Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) and Violence Against Women (VAWG) in Borno State.’
Represented by Tarhemba Msendoo Grace, the Communications/Outreach Manager DCR Ambassadors, Usman said the project is a 24-month intervention fully funded by Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF) and the EU supported spotlight initiative, with technical support from UN Women in Nigeria and implemented across five targeted local government areas in Borno State comprising of Maiduguri, Jere , Konduga, Gwoza and Monguno.
