The Women Rights Advancement and Protection Initiative, WRAPA, Nigeria have trained about 60 gender-desk officers on adequate response to Gender-Based Violence, GBV, cases.
The trainees were selected from the 10 Pillar Partners of the Spotlight Initiative Project of the NGO.
Coordinator/Technical and Logistics Support Officer, Spotlight Initiative Project, Hajia Umma Rimi said;
“The training is to build the capacity of participants to be more efficient in their approach to gender-based violence.
“We visited these organisations some couple of weeks back and we identified some gaps and most of the gaps had to with service delivery model, documentation and others. So, we came back, band brainstormed on ways to mitigate some of the gaps we discovered.
“That is why we are having this training for the Ten Pillar Partners under the Spotlight Initiative Project and their gender desk officers.”
The training covered gender response budgeting, case management for GBV front liners preventing sexual exploitation and abuse, among others.
The State Project Officer, Spotlight Initiative Project of WRAPA, Mr Precious Anslem urged the participants to be proactive with cases of gender-based violence cases reported to them.
He urged organisations to endeavour to establish gender desk officers in their various offices in other to have rapid and effective responses to such cases.
Also, the Programme Officer of the National Federation of Women Lawyers, FIDA, Mr Ifeanyi Eze called on the participants to ensure that a gender-responsive budget was implemented in their various organisations.
He said; “We want them to understand that a gender-responsive budget is not a different type of budget but it is the same that ministries and their line ministries roll out.
“But in this case, they have items that are inclusive and cover issues that relate with everybody, men, women, aged persons, persons with disabilities.
“This is a form of prevention to the prevalence of gender-based violence in the society.”
One of the participants, Ms Fatima Abubakar, said commended the organisation for the training.
She said the knowledge gained would help her respond and report gender-based violence cases effectively.
