NHRC Receives 754 SGBV Complaints from Lagos, Others in Six Months

By Ahmed Rahma

With about 754 complaints received by the National Human Rights Commission in the first six months of 2020, the agency has come up with measures that can be used to combat Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Nigeria.

Speaking at a workshop on Tuesday in Abuja, the Executive Secretary of NHRC, Mr Tony Ojukwu, said these complaints involved 954 victims from 27 state offices of the commission.

During the event targeted at human rights defenders in support for victims, Mr Ojukwu announced that most of the cases were from Lagos, Adamawa, Ebonyi, Sokoto and Cross River.

He stated further that these innovative measures had been taken to address the challenges of human right violations, especially SGBV.

“Faced by the challenge of restricted movement, the commission in partnership with other stakeholders adopted the use of technology to scale up response and protection for victims/survivors.

“In this regard, we upscaled the usage of our social media channels, developed cutting edge applications such as reportNHRC.org and UNSUB, amongst others,” the NHRC chief said.

According to him, other schemes included, “The Special Investigation Panel on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, upgrading the commission’s call centre with specific SGBV toll-free lines, inter-ministerial committee on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, state of human rights on AIT (television enlightenment programme) as well as the ongoing 16 Days of Activism on SGBV amongst others.”

Mr Ojukwu further added that, “There would be a more coordinated approach regarding issues of SGBV amongst stakeholders. Some of these approaches include; harmonising policies of stakeholders on SGBV; carrying out advocacy to bring about changes in behaviours and attitudes of the society on SGBV; identifying resources and developing an action plan for issues of SGBV, among others.”

Speaking on the idea behind the workshop, the Director of Women Children & Vulnerable Groups Department of the NHRC, Mr Harry Obe, explained that it was to identify and bring together key human rights defenders across all sectors of the society to discuss and agree on the way forward on how best to assist victims of sexual and gender-based violence as well as to train defenders on how to mainstream human rights into defenders assistance to victims of SGBV.

Participants, including the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Abuja chapter led by Mr Emmanuel Ogbeche, pledged to support the agency tackle the menace and hold violators of human rights, especially SGBV accountable.