The Executive Director, Tabitha Cumi Foundation, Tayo Erinle, flanked by stakeholders at the mid-assessment meeting. Photo: Azizatu Sani/Radio Nigeria
70 percent of respondents in a midline assessment in 10 communities in the FCT, Niger and Nasarawa states have identify poverty as the major causes of sexual and gender-based violence (GBV) against women and girls.
This was the resolution, at a Project Midline Dissemination Meeting in Abuja, on the Flashlight Actions on Girls Safety (FLAG), a three-year programme funded by the United Nation Trust Fund to End Violence Against women and implemented by the Tabitha Cumi Foundation.
Executive Director, of the foundation, Tayo Erinle explained that the lack of shelters and safe spaces to keep the survivals of GVB from their abusers was one of the major hindrance in addressing reported cases.
“Some of the shelters available are for survivors below 18 years but these are still young girls with so much vulnerability”, she said.
The monitoring and evaluation Officer of the Foundation, Comfort Bello said the Midline assessment of the FLAGs, programme also revealed that 95 percent of the perpetrators of GBV at the community level were men and boys.
“Even the families of the survivals, the fathers, the uncles, the brothers, are the ones that perpetrate these abuses”, Comfort narrated.
One of the beneficiaries of the programme, a 12-year-old Miracle Akihomne said she was now equiped to identify gender violence and more confident to report it.
The Flashlight Action on girls’ safety programme is training 750 young girls between the ages of 10 and 19 on the understanding, prevention and response to gender-based violence, as well as provide access to key stakeholders meant to provide support for survivals of GBV.
Reporting by Azizatu Sani; Editing by Muzha Kucha and Julian Osamoto