Thirty percent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 years experience one form of sexual gender-based violence, a women’s rights advocate, Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, has said.
Akiyode-Afolabi, who is the founding director, Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), also said in order to make the monitoring and evaluation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) successful, “a much sharper focus is needed on enhancing the roles and capacities of Civil Society Organisations particularly women’s rights organizations and movements by building their capacity to fulfill their critical responsibilities.”
Speaking in Abuja, yesterday, at a one-day training for CSOs and women advocates on monitoring and assessing SDGs benchmarks, the gender rights advocate regretted that the sexual and gender based violence (SGBV), Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) were prevalent in Nigeria but that lack of access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), by women was a major development challenge in the country.
According to her, “Research has shown that 30% of women between the ages of 15-49 years experienced one form of sexual gender-based violence.”
She explained that the one-day training was part of the joint UN-EU Spotlight Initiative project.
“The spotlight initiative is a global multi-year partnership between the European Union and the United Nations to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls by 2030,”she said.
She explained that, “The interventions focus on six mutually reinforcing pillars. WARDC is implementing pillar six in Lagos and FCT which focuses on promoting an empowered civil society and autonomous women’s movement.”
She further said, “The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a global Agenda for Sustainable Development that was adopted by world leaders in the 2015.
“Six years later, attention has shifted towards the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of this global agenda. In order for the SDGs to be successful, every level of governance will be counted on to benchmark to assess progress on each goal.
“The activity aims to Train women’s rights advocates and CSOs to enhance their skills to monitor and assess Nigeria’s progress towards Institutional SDGs Benchmarks for SGBV, HP and SRHR.
“Our goal is to strengthen CSOs in tackling all forms of discrimination, build capacity to demand accountability on VAWG/SGBV/HP/SRHR and advocate for policy reforms and actions that would eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and girls.”
WARDC, she explained, “is a non-governmental, not for profit human rights organization that is committed to the protection and promotion of women’s rights through advocacy, research, documentation and litigation.”