The gender based violence is a type of violence which occurs
in all society of the world, within homes and wider community that involves
girls and women disproportionately.

Some of this gender based violence includes rape, commercial
sexual exploitations, domestic violence and female genital mutilation.

The world we live today is characterized with violence
against women. And this is displayed in many forms like wife battering, sexual
assault and abuse, female genital mutilation and rape. Gender based violence is
now the fate of millions of women in the world and these affect their
productivity both in homes, community and state.

Domestic violence is when a man beats his female partner and
the most common form of gender based violence, and this happens within the
families.

Violence within the general community includes rapes,
battery, rape, and sexual assault, forced treatments and the exploitation and
commercialization of women’s bodies, the social exclusion of women in some
parts of the world in general and the purdah system in the northern part of
Nigeria.

Gender-based violence is a universal reality existing in all
societies regardless of income, class and culture. You can never find a woman
who in one time or the other has not been afraid or gone through the gender
based-violence and those who are particularly vulnerable to this violence are
those who lived in extremely precarious conditions or who are discriminated on
the basis of race, language, ethnic groups, culture, age, opinion, religion or
also women who are displaced, migrants, refugees or those living under foreign
occupation.

The world health organization (WHO) estimates that at least
one of every five female population has been physically or sexually abused at
some time.

Gender based violence affects both physical and
psychological integrity of women. It can affect cognitively and
inter-personally.

The UN General Assembly, in adopting the 1993 declaration on
elimination of violence against women defined gender based violence as any art
of violence that results in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering
to women; including threat of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivation of
liberty, whether occurring in public or private life. (Population Reference
Bureau 2001 pg 3).

Women are vulnerable to this violence at all stages of life.
They are threatened by female infanticide, incest, child prostitution, rape,
partner violence, psychological abuse, sexual harassment and harmful
traditional practices such as forceful marriage.

Gender based violence within the state include physical,
sexual and psychological violence and are most times perpetrated or tolerated
by the states that priorities custom or tradition over the respect of
fundamental freedom. The social exclusion constitutes a new form of apartheid.
Women are considered second class beings or less valued, deprived of their
fundamental rights.

Types of gender based violence include commercial sexual
exploitation, rape, female genital mutilation or female genital cutting.

My emphasis is the female genital mutilation; the female
genital mutilation is a traditional practice which involves cutting or altering
the female genitalia as a rite of passage or for other socio-cultural reasons.

(Mohammed, Ali and Yunger 1999). (According to Population
reference Bureau 2000) the female genital cutting is practice in 28 African
countries and in about 20 Middle Eastern Asia nations.

Mugenzi (1998) added that FGC is an act of controlling women
sexually. The practice is seen as an impediment to a girl’s sexual enjoyment.
It varies from partial or total removal of genitalia to the narrowing of
virginal opening. Some traditional practitioners who do not have medical
training perform majority of the female genital cutting and most times the
victims suffer or experience intense pains, bleeding, painful menstruation, infection
or trauma. The practice according to doctors can also be associated with the
spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS through cuts and abrasions in sear
tissue, during intercourse and child birth. It is also associated with lack of
orgasm and sexual gratification and depression. Most women who go through FGC
have serious health consequences such as shock, pains, infection, injury and
the adjacent tissue and organs.

The effect of gender based violence could be devastating and
long lasting.

It is a heavy burden for women of ages 15, is as that of
HIV, tuberculosis and during child birth, cancer and heart diseases.

The fourth world conference has adopted a platform for
action which declares violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement
of object of equality, development and peace

Bekinbo is a student of RSUST, Port Harcourt.

Favour  Igbikis Bekinbo