Key TERMS and ABBREVIATIONS to know:
UNODC- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
WHO- World Health Organization
VAW- Violence Against Women
CEDAW- Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
RESPECT women – This is a framework for preventing violence against women aimed at policymakers. Set in motion in 2019 by WHO and UN Women with endorsement from 12 other UN and bilateral agencies, RESPECT stands for one of seven strategies: Relationship skills strengthening; Empowerment of women; Services ensured; Poverty reduced; Enabling environments (schools, workplaces, public spaces) created; Child and adolescent abuse prevented; and Transformed attitudes, beliefs and norms.
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Did you know that the world’s youngest mother to have lived was a victim of Gender-Based Violence (GBV)? Masqueraded under norms and culture, the backward and harmful traditions of a small village in Peru, subjected five-year-old Lina Medina to early sex, P.M News (2020)
GBV is an agelong global problem that is a respecter of nobody: males, females, homosexuals, and bisexuals, and other forms of sexual minority in the wide spectrum of gender identity. According to UN data estimate (2021), GBV has the greatest impact on female folks. Specifically, almost one in every three women, approximately 736 million women, have been subjected to intimate partner or non-partner violence, physical, or one form of sexual, emotional, psychological, and economic abuse in their life. These inhumane actions call for the concerted efforts of everyone to eliminate GBV from the face of the earth.
What goes on in the mind of an abuser? Like many before it, this essay seeks to contribute an answer to this question and to the many heroic efforts dedicated to fighting Gender Based Violence (GBV) till its end. It hits this pandemic menace hard by unmasking its astronomical effects and worldwide inflictions with emphasis in the African space: Nigerian society. It utilizes primary and secondary research materials: graphics, statistics, relevant life examples, speech excerpts, stories and anecdotes to walk readers through the originality and causes of GBV, proffering tenable solutions gleaned from the fundamental analysis of the roots of GBV and its eminent threat to the harmony, sanity, and sanctity of humanity.
Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is any violence directed at individuals or groups based on their biological sex or gender identity. Because of the conventional nature of GBV in most low-middle-income African countries, cases of GBV in Africa are significantly distinct by world standards.
There is no country in the world that can own up to securing women's freedom from violence (WHO, 2021). This fact alone speaks volumes of its deep roots in the existence of man, sweeping wide across the social structure of society to become normalized.
GBV is particularly a sore wound on the skin of the African society that refuses to heal. The history of GBV in Nigeria is traceable to the view of women as property for pleasure during precolonial times; and in Africa at large, the late introduction of western civilization, information, and technological era by colonial leadership, and thus, the current underdeveloped/developing state of a significant number of its nations. The cycle of GBV in Nigeria is fueled by corruption, socioeconomic, and political insurrections. Worse still, popular traditions and religious beliefs in many ethnic groups in the country promote the rather horrific crime of GBV as normal, acceptable or even sacred.
Examples include some cultures that make women drink the water used in washing the corpse of their deceased husbands to determine if the wife is guilty of the death of her husband, the Ikwerre culture of Rivers State that requires a woman must remain unmarried to inherit her father’s property, the popular business of female trafficking where families pride on sending their daughter abroad for commercial sex. In the name of hospitability, men of Tiv culture in Benue State offer their wives to august visitors sleeping over at their house. In fact, according to a demographic and health survey, 64.3 per cent of Nigerian women consider wife-beating a normal marriage experience (Oromareghake, 2011).
Indeed, there is no romanticizing the sheer impact of GBV on society. These life scenarios in Nigeria and Africa at large are a glimpse of the many forms of GBV that render the bodies, decisions, and resources of women vulnerable and powerless in an intrinsically male-dominated society. Other forms include deprivation of liberty, education, financial and employment opportunities; stalking/street harassment, forced prostitution coercion, defamation; child exposure to maltreatment and family violence; and threats to the health, dignity, security and autonomy of victims.
GBV can further be explored by identifying its causes and other factors that distinguish it from various forms of social organizational violence experienced by a person either because of their race, (dis)ability, age, social class or religion. Some primary causes of GBV in Nigeria include:
i. The prevalence of GBV in Nigeria is largely because of systemic gender inequality that exaggerates the difference between boys and girls into a self-fulfilling process that disempowers women and other minorities, stifles their voices, and encroaches on their natural human rights.
ii. Inherent Patriarchy and Misogynism: Gender roles and communal conventions in Nigeria subject women to socialization that accepts subjugation by men. They are raised with an instinctive second-place mentality that men are naturally dominant in society.
iii. Religious beliefs in Nigeria shroud the errs of GBV in sheep’s clothing and instil false guilt and misleading faith in the lives of victims who are advised to ‘pray’, as the only solution to the life-threatening domestic violence they suffer (Bernard, 2016).
iv. Illiteracy: Poor knowledge of human rights and the dangers of GBV make the fight against GBV in Nigerian local communities futile.
SUBSTANTIAL EFFECT OF GBV ON THE SOCIOECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA
1. GBV breeds inherent gender discrimination, antagonism, and racism. For example, the popular rule of Roe V Wade in 1973 by the Supreme court of the United States, favouring women’s right to have an abortion, was recently revoked in 2022 on grounds that ‘‘the right to abortion was not deeply rooted in the history of US and unknown in the country’s law until Jane Roe’s case.’’ Accepting the premise of this unfair judgement means questioning the legality of other rights—contraception, interracial marriage, and same-sex marriage— that were not deeply rooted in US history, and like Roe V Wade, were unknown in the law beforehand. This is a profound example of injustice to women’s right to privacy and the ownership of their bodies. Thus, the begging question: Is the 21st-century generation a product of the crude past or one of evolutionary, radical, and rational advancement of the human species?
2. One key issue addressed at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing was the elimination of GBV as a worldwide threat to natural human rights and life (United Nations, 2020).
3. ‘‘The higher you go the fewer women there are.’’ The late Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate, Wangari Maathai, put it meaningfully in her statement on GBV. The increasing restriction or absence of women in Nigerian offices/workspace contributes to the shortage of workforce, intellect, and economic underdevelopment in Nigeria.
4. Medical impacts of GBV range from adverse emotional and mental breakdown, contraction of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, to increasing suicide/death rates in women.
Panacea for GBV in Nigeria (Debunking GBV)
All hands are needed on deck (males and females) for deliberate and active interests, movements and campaigns on feminism and advocacy for gender equality against the common enemy, GBV. Consistent executive and judiciary actions should be taken by the Nigerian government, non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders to critically address the powerful cultural, traditional and religious forces that have hitherto hindered the elimination of domestic and sexual violence.
In line with the WHO/UN RESPECT women framework, large-scale community interventions and enlightenment programmes should be mobilized to create awareness of GBV, change unequal gender norms, promote relationships based on equality and consent, challenge and reorient gender roles, stereotypes, and cultural mentality in society. Gone are the days of patriarchy— the disquieting silence, fear, and dependence of Nigerian women on their abusers.
This essay was written as a response to the 2022 Alfred Agunbiade Memorial Essay Competition and Inspired by the stories of victims :