I came from a family of six children,
My order is the fifth among them.
I say to you: Six children, not six girls and this is us.
This is because life in our family
I did not give any attention to gender
My father always told me
That you can be what you want in life
As long as I decided that
Trying to reach him.
This was until the age of 13,
When I began to have a social awareness of gender discrimination in society,
As well as violence and discrimination
Faced by women and girls.
It was first with Father (Dili).
Father (Dili) was my neighbor,
He and his wife were Ibo tribes.
But I think that the mother of the father (Dili) was a Yoruba,
Because their five children,
Four girls and a boy,
Their names from both the Ibo and Yoruba tribes.
Interestingly,
That both father and mother (Dili)
They bear the name of their only and youngest son (Dili).
And not the eldest son as it is known.
But Father (Dili) was exposed to an incident
He was taken to the hospital and stayed there for three weeks before he died.
With the death of Father (Dili)
Problems have descended on his family.
The family was surprised by his wife
That she had orchestrated the incident that led to her husband’s death.
They said she was always a really bad wife
They accused her of conspiring to kill the only boy
In order to erase the name of their brother.
So, after the end of the funeral,
They took this little boy by force
They sent him with the four girls out.
Then there is my aunt, my father’s sister, the beautiful woman my father loved so much.
You know the relationship of men with their sisters,
And with their daughters.
Then I got married after that.
But after about six months of marriage,
She was trying to go back home a lot
I remember the last time really,
Which made me see the features of anger on the face of my father,
Which I had never seen before.
It was when she returned home with torn clothes,
And the eyes of blood,
And nose bleeding blood,
And several scratches on her body.
It’s another fight.
And of course every time I try to get back in, after my parents provide her with safety,
They were sent in the request of that man who came with him and the gospel,
Saying that this is the act of Satan.
But in that last time,
My parents refused.
Then I joined the university and I had a partner in the room,
She had a companion and was also a student,
She liked going out with this young man very much.
But most of the time she returned sad and crying.
Years later, when I started working,
There was another case, a Nigerian man married to a Filipina woman
Which had three girls,
The man sexually assaulted the big girl,
Which was then 12 years old.
The girl tried to escape several times.
Unfortunately, he was able to prevent it,
Saying to her: If you manage to escape,
Know that you will be the reason to turn to your younger sister,
Who was then seven years old.
Violence against women and minors
Is one of the most widespread forms of human rights violations
In the whole world.
May be of a physical nature,
Or sexual or psychological.
This includes harmful traditional practices
The preference of men at work,
Female genital mutilation,
And widows’ rights.
One out of every three women around the world,
Accounting for about 30%
Have been abused,
Forced to have sex forcibly,
They were beaten.
In Nigeria,
Gender Report in Nigeria 2012
That one in five women
And that girls between the ages of 15 and 24
Have experienced some form of violence.
We are in Project Alert,
In a report released earlier this year
Entitled “Sexual violence in Nigeria and a silent epidemic”
We analyzed about 1,110 cases
Registered at the center (Mirabell).
Merapel is the first referral center for sexual abuse in the country.
When we analyzed the 1,110 cases,
It turned out that 70% of the victims
They have babies,
Young children,
And children aged between 0 and 17 years.
Children four months old,
And others in the sixth,
Or fifth.
Violence against women and girls has no limits.
We must not deceive ourselves, it includes age,
It includes ethnic affiliations,
parents,
The academic qualification,
Social background.
Surprisingly,
Women and girls are at greater risk from people they know,
Or people they love,
And people who trust them.
And the impunity that accompanies violence against women
Is too big
This is why most victims do not disclose what happened
The question is: If the victim discloses what has happened,
What will happen?
Culture, tradition and religion unite
To help commit different forms of violence
Against women and girls.
Married women claim to obey the abusers.
And continue to obey them.
They are always told that divorce is unacceptable.
The question is, from the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage,
Which comes first?
A deceased woman is not a wife,
Like a man who also died, will not be a husband.
Culture and cultural practices.
Many women died while searching for the perfect boy.
When your doctor told you
“Do not come back here, Madam”
After this second and third attempt, do not come here again.
But fear
Not having a male child is what brings them back there
Many die in this way.
But you talk about widows’ rights
And some practices such as what happened with the father (Dili)
I tell people that …
The death of any married Nigerian man is not a natural death.
Unmarried men are the ones who die naturally.
Even if his plane fell from the sky,
And it is his wife who killed him.
Even if they carry it everywhere
Because he has cancer, everyone knows it,
And she moved with him everywhere,
She is the one who killed him.
And of course, as happened with Father (Dili),
What an accident!
His wife killed him.
So, what should we do?
Are all men violent?
No
My husband is here.
My father was never violent,
That is why I was shocked
When I was 13 years old I began to see these actions happening around me.
But what is missing?
Anti-violence campaigns have been around for a long time
But at this point, we need to build an important bridge,
What is this bridge?
Working with men
And young people
Violence is acquired behavior, so I think it is possible to get rid of it.
When you talk to a man,
And if you want to get all his concentration
On the issue of violence against women,
He talked about his daughters,
Or about his brothers and the girls,
Or about his mother.
She does not talk about his girlfriend or his wife.
Yeah,
These are a game for him
So, he talked about his daughters or about his brothers the girls
Or about his mother.
We go to school and talk to boys,
Then you say to the boy:
“What would you do if you went home one day,
And open the door saying: Hello, Mom, I’m back
Then they were surprised by three men who raped her. “
This is totally unreasonable.
Are you a father,
Father of that little girl,
Who strolls through the mall with his daughter,
Suddenly a young man harasses her
Or say something crazy.
Men, how will you react then?
Would it be fun?
I do not think so.
We need to involve men
As teachers,
And like the top.
This does not mean that all men are abusive,
We need to communicate the voice of men
And young people.
They all need a platform to stand on
And our participation in talking about violence against women.
This is the right thing to do,
This is the right way to go.
I would like to end my speech by saying that
Ending violence against women begins with men,
So we have to involve men,
And involving young people
As our children,
As our brothers,
Or as our parents
And to ensure that there is no complacency with all forms of violence
Against women and girls.
Thank you very much.
(clap)
”
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