A non-governmental organisation (NGO), the Women Safe House Sustenance Initiative, has trained some paralegals on how to respond to and handle domestic and gender-based violence (GBV) cases in Ibadan.
The training, which was tagged ‘Capacity building training on community gender-based violence response booths model’ held on Saturday, in Ibadan, and was sponsored by the Legal Empowerment Network and the COVID-19 Grassroots Justice Fund.
The founder of the NGO, who is also a lawyer, Wuraoluwa Ayodele-George, stated that the community-based response booths were necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, during which her organisation took the initiative to help women and girls facing abuse and violence during that period to cope.
Ayodele-George said her organisation has branches in Oyo, Rivers, and Taraba states, and also in Abuja. She also said the essence of the training was to mentor paralegals, whose work will include receiving reports and complaints from victims of violence, protecting their identities, and ensuring a safe space for them, among others.
She noted that out of the 200 people — including males and females — that applied for the training, only about 60 were selected, who were mostly females.
She added that the participants own shops, salons and fashion stores where they will host the NGO’s booths in their communities and that these booths will be used to provide interventions and legal empowerment for women facing GBV problems.
She said the participants, who now work with them, were given phones with which they can communicate with them and report GBV cases.
“It is critical to note that paralegals are not lawyers and can only assist in local communities to encourage survivors of domestic and gender-based abuse to make reports of cases of violence to law enforcement agencies,” Ayodele-George said. “A lawyer must be contacted and, in many instances, will be provided by Women Safe House to follow up on litigation and other legal issues that arise on such case.”
One of the facilitators of the event and the Programme Manager of the Shade of Women Foundation, Omobolanle Adedeji, handled the ‘Gender-based violence and the cycle of abuse’ session.
“Gender-based violence is rooted in gender inequality, abuse of power, and harmful norms,” Adedeji said. “GBV is a serious violation of human rights, and a life-threatening and protection issue. Both males and females are victims, but most of the victims are women and girls.”
She stated that acts of GBV include domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence, female genital mutilation, child marriage, tracking, physical and sexual violence, and economic violence, among others.
Adedeji spoke on the drivers of GBV which include cultural, legal, economic, and political factors. She also spoke about and explained the cycles of abuse which are: tension building, incident, reconciliation, and calm.
A lawyer and volunteer of the NGO, Adeola Oladimeji, handled the ‘Legal remedies for gender-based violence’ session.
Oladimeji spoke on some of the laws and legal provisions that are against domestic and GBV, aimed at protecting victims of such crimes.
According to her, the laws and provisions include Provisions of the Law in Oyo State on gender-based violence, Violence Against Women Law 2010, Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Law 2020, and translation of relevant sections of the VAPP law into the Yoruba Language.
She stated that domestic and GBV crimes are detrimental to individuals and to society because they violate human rights, are discriminatory and unconstitutional, threatens people’s physical and psychological integrity, hinder gender equality, and affect economic and social welfare.
“In addition to providing for these offences and their befitting punishments, the law further provides some certain rights to protect the victims,” Oladimeji said. “It has long been the practice for victims of crimes against women to stay quiet and suffer in silence due to the shame and the ridicule involved in making these offences public.”
Another facilitator and doctoral student of the Faculty of Public Health of the University of Ibadan, Omowumi Okedare, handled the ‘Introduction to community gender-based violence response booths’ session.
In the course of her presentation, Okedare spoke on the origin, activities, and goals of the GBV response booths. She also spoke on the responsibilities and security of the community paralegals.
She stated that the main principles that guide the conduct of GBV workers are respect, confidentiality, safety, and security. She further stated that the skills needed by the workers include relation-building, interviewing and assessment, communication, counselling, problem-solving, planning, coordination, and advocacy skills.
“Many researchers around the world have worked to help caretakers and community members, and also helped survivors regain a sense of safety,” Okedare said. “When a community experiences trauma, there are some basic principles that caregivers should follow to help survivors recover emotionally.”
In the course of the training, domestic- and GBV-related movies were displayed, and stage dramas on how to handle and counsel GBV victims were acted by some of the participants at the event.
