Project Alert launches SGBV referral booklets

• Sets Up Surveillance Team To Sensitise, Mediate, Handle Cases

To end all forms of gender-based violence, Project Alert, has launched a sexual and gender- based violence (SGBV) providers’ referral list booklets. The booklets, made for Lagos and Sokoto states, include all basic information needed for victims to get access to justice.

The group also unveiled a surveillance team in nine local councils in Lagos. The team has been working, in the past five months, to sensitise, mediate and handle cases of violence in their localities. The councils include Lagos Island, Yaba, Ikeja, Surulere, Oshodi-Isolo, Alimosho, Kosofe, Agege and Ikorodu.

Speaking at the event, which is a joint initiative by Project Alert, as an implementing partner of the EU- UN spotlight initiative, Executive Director of Project Alert, Mrs. Josephine Effah-Chukwuma said the booklet would ensure easy referrals of survivors for prompt treatment and access to justice.

She said: “We must unite to fight this pandemic. We must make funds available to fight it. We must respond in a positive manner, not blaming and shaming victims. We must help prevent abuse of women and girls. Our daughters, sisters, cousins, mothers, and aunts must be safe.

“ Both women and men were in crisis during the COVID-19 lockdown. Those who faced abuses were locked together in same space for months under tensed circumstances and financial crisis and uncertainties.”

She, however, noted that funding prevention was better than funding cure, saying “even if a child is raped today, and you take the child to the hospital, it doesn’t take away the fact that the child has been raped. So, avoiding the circumstance is best. The issue of sexual and domestic violence is not for government alone, it is for everyone to make our society safe.”

For Commissioner for Women Affairs, Mrs. Cecilia Bolaji Dada, represented by Senior Special Assistant to Lagos State Governor on Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Funmi Adegoke, noted that some works were done in the ministry to estimate the prevalence rate of gender-based violence in the state, using the World Health Organisation (WHO) reports.

According to the report: “About 2.7 million women are estimated to be potential victims of intimate partners violence, 1.1 million girls, 622,000 boys are estimated potential victims for sexual abuse in Lagos State. We have about three million adults who were victims of physical abuse as children. About 4.3 million adults were victims of emotional abuse as children. These are huge statistics.”

She said: “A lot more needs to be done by all of us. The Lagos State government led by Babajide Sanwo-Olu has zero tolerance for all forms of violence especially against women, hence we are working to strengthen capacity to fund, respond, and prevent occurrences using technology that will be scalable and adaptable. We are also improving our data collection.”

She added the government was planning to establish more shelters across state.

Head, Research and Programme Development, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Person (NAPTIP), Oloyede Sunday Afolabi revealed that during the lock down there were many reported cases of violence, especially on women, adding that as an agency, it was doing all within its capacity to address domestic violence in the state.