By Harmless Anaba
A rights group, WomenAid Collective, WACOL, has launched a two-year challenge geared toward empowering Christian ladies and cultural leaders to forestall and reply to gender-based violence, GBV, throughout Nigeria. The initiative will likely be carried out in partnership with 9 grassroots organisations fastidiously chosen from the six geo-political zones.
Founding Govt Director of WACOL and Tamar Sexual Assault Referral Centre, SARC, Prof. Pleasure Ezeilo, SAN, who addressed newsmen in Lagos, stated the programme would mobilise ladies on the group stage to problem dangerous cultural and non secular practices that perpetuate violence towards ladies and ladies.
“Reworking social and cultural norms to forestall gender-based violence in Nigeria is feasible if we construct the capability of grassroots ladies leaders, mobilise Christian ladies’s teams, and promote attitudinal change inside communities,” she stated.
The challenge, funded by the Ford Basis West Africa Workplace, comes towards the backdrop of alarming circumstances of abuse in church buildings and communities. WACOL/Tamar SARC at present handles lots of of circumstances, together with one the place two sisters, aged 15 and 17, have been raped throughout a so-called deliverance session.
Ezeilo recalled high-profile tragedies, together with the dying of gospel singer, Osinachi Nwachukwu, in 2022, resulting from home violence, and the rape and homicide of Vera Omozuwa and Barakat Bello in 2020.
“These incidents are a reminder that gender-based violence is aware of no boundaries. Church buildings, which ought to be protected areas, have in some circumstances turn into websites of abuse. This challenge seeks to vary that actuality by empowering ladies leaders with instruments to drive optimistic cultural and non secular transformation,” she pressured.
Below the initiative, WACOL will practice 1,000 ladies spiritual leaders and 500 cultural leaders, together with titled ladies such because the Umu Ada in Igboland, whereas an interdenominational community of Christian ladies’s teams may even be created to advance equality and prevention of GBV.
The chosen grassroots companions embrace: Girls Empowerment Initiative (Bauchi), Basis for Neighborhood Empowerment Initiative (Gombe), Gender Consciousness Belief (Kaduna), Succour Basis (Abuja), Hacey’s Well being Initiative (Lagos), Gender Perspective and Social Improvement Centre (Anambra), World Well being Consciousness Analysis Basis (Enugu), Justice Improvement and Peace Centre (Edo), and Agape Improvement Initiative for Youths and the Vulnerables (Delta).
Prof. Ezeilo emphasised that cultural and non secular platforms, typically misused to bolster patriarchy can be highly effective instruments for liberation.
“The Bible itself promotes equality and condemns violence towards ladies. Our purpose is to revive these truths and construct inclusive church buildings and communities the place ladies are protected, revered, and in a position to lead,” she stated.
Anticipated outcomes of the challenge embrace stronger grassroots capability to answer GBV, lowered circumstances of abuse, and better inclusion of ladies in church and group management.
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