As part of its effort to eliminate gender based violence and increase awareness to Sexual Reproductive Health Rights, a Non Governmental Organisation, Civil Resource Development and Development Centre(CIRDDOC) Nigeria in collaboration with Coalition of Eastern NGOs had launched a house to house awareness and enlightenment campaign in Akwa Ibom State.
The campaign, funded by Amplify Change Initiative according to the Akwa Ibom State coordinator of CENGOs, Mr. Israel Ekanem would run concurrently for five months in both the urban and rural areas of the State.
Ekanem, disclosed this on Monday, in a two day workshop, tagged ‘Household discussion training on gender based violence and sexual reproductive health,’ organised for community educators at Uranus hotel Uyo, Akwa Ibom State capital.
He told participants to always make referrals and encourage people whom they meet at the field to make use of help lines to report gender based violence such as rape, immediately, adding that such would enable prompt arrest of the suspected perpetrator(s).
In his remarks, the focal person of CIRDDOC, Mr. Paschal Anozie said the door to door campaign was a strategy to tackle the problem of GBV proactively and to encourage people especially women/girls in the rural areas to access sexual reproductive health services as provided by government as it is their right to do so.
“The purpose of this campaign is to eliminate issues of gender based violence in our communities and to render basic sexual and reproductive health information for people in the community.” Anozie said.
He however hinted that the campaign would be replicated in all the nine States of the old Eastern region.
One of the resource persons, Nancy Onya-Oko told participants to look out for harmful practices in a community that are against women and highlight them noting that men can also be violated.
Onya-Oko who harped on the need to educate families on the dangers of gender based violence and some harmful cultural practices said if families implement some of the safe practices, society would be free of abusive/violent behaviours.
She however encouraged mothers not to shield issues of sexual violence perpetrated either by their husbands or sons for the sake of protecting their marriages saying that doing such would render the advocacy, counter productive.
She also pointed out the spike in GBV issues during the lockdown occasioned by corona virus pandemic in a pre-existing toxic environment and urged participants to always direct such people to referral centres provided for more information and access to sexual and reproductive health services.
”The aim of this program is to build bridges to end gender based violence and increase young people’s access to sexual health information and services. Health care is a basic human right and should be available to everyone.” She said.
