Women Empowerment Key To Dealing With GBV, Says Minister

The Honourable Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen has said that the empowerment of women by giving them opportunities to become economically independent is key to tackling Gender-based Violence (GBV) in the country

The minister stated this yesterday during the courtesy visit of Spotlight Initiative, European Union and UNDP team to the National GBV Data Situation Room at the ministry’s headquarters, Abuja

Tallen said, “If women are empowered, there will be less cases of gender base violence because mostly is poverty that make men to bully and kick them out of the house when they are making demands.But if a woman is empowered she can defend herself, she can speak for herself she can be on her own.

“So we need to support victims of gender base violence economically because empowerment is key to hesitate the vice of gender base violence.

“The policy statement I want you to take from here is that data is key in every effort we are making to address the intellectual silent. Therefore, I call on all organisations particularly the civil society organisation to keep working with us to use this data.

“The situation room we have is not just for the ministry of women affairs is for the whole nation and that will help us track most of the perpetrators and it will help us make a case to the ministry of justice to ensure that justice is given to the victims.

“I want to thank the UN, EU Spotlight initiative for showing interest in the activities of the federal ministry of women affairs. We are highly appreciate with the support and the role the Spotlight Initiative has given to us since the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to commend the country representative of the UNDP to Nigeria for taken the initiative to establish the electronic data dashboard in the ministry under the project of UN and EU Spotlight Initiative.”

According to her, the establishment of the electronic data dashboard has led the improvement of gender base violence data for the first time in Nigeria and we are proud to say that this happened within the time under review.

On her part, the head, Technical Unit Spotlight Initiative, Erin Kenny (Ms.), Said that violence against women and girls is a model across the world for the programs that we are doing in Asia and Latin America in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the work that we are here to do together is to reflect on the last five years to really think critically about what has worked, and what has not worked.

“The one thing we know works really well is when the government is the owner of this initiative, when we Make sure that the engagement is authentic with our government partners.

“That these are and you are the people, this is for you. This is not my initiative, This is Nigeria’s initiative, but we also understand the power of an autonomous women’s rights civil society, who can mobilize and support those on the ground whose voices are often so unheard,” she stated.