The Association Against Child Sexual and Genderg-Based Violence says drug abuse, ignorance and poverty, remain the major causes of sexual and gender-based violence.
Mrs. Eris Jewo-Ibi, the chairperson of the association, said this at the second general meeting of the association in Abuja.
The event which had both physical and virtual participants, has as theme: “Sustaining Socio Economic Development through Gender Equity in Nigeria”.
Jewo-Ibi, who is also the Country Representative of She-Coops Nigeria, added that the event was focused on creating a sustainable means of empowering women, youths and persons with disabilities against hunger and poverty.
“In our earlier intervention in mitigating sexual and gender based violence, we noticed that the causes of domestic violence, rape and other forms of domestic violence are drug abuse, poverty and ignorance.
“In addressing these, we have decided to create a platform which we call “She-Coops” and we are partnering with International federation of cooperatives to mobilize people in the communities to form cooperative societies.
“We are building their capacities on savings, we want their focus to be savings and as they save, they will be able to access loans at reduced interest rate.
“We decided that we should mobilize for cooperative societies project, which is focused on reducing hunger and poverty,” she said.
She added that the association had a challenge of funding which had hampered them from ensuring that molested women gets justice.
“The association is presently in all states and Abuja and we are doing great work and we keep on recognizing the effort of the organizations that work through domestic resource mobilization.
“The greatest challenge we have is funding to fund our programmes and also in prosecuting cases.
“For instance, within the last three days, we have had four cases of rape, so how do we prosecute these perpetrators, we need funds.
“We are also into counseling, we need to build the capacity of our counsellors to provide psyscho-socio support to these cases that we receive.
“Presently, we appreciate UNESCO with support from Japan for training counsellors in three states,” she said.
She added that the association had also worked on its standard of operation to ensure proper and easy reportage of sexual and gender-based violence cases.
“We just worked on that document at our leadership level and now every member knows our standard of operation.
“Once we get a case we work with the Nigeria Police, we work with the Ministry of Women Affairs, so we expect you as a community-based organization to refer to the appropriate organization that will continue with the case.
“But at your own level, you are to continue with counselling,” she said.(NAN).
