Source: Daily Times
A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) has urged the government and stakeholders to work together on gender issues to prevent discrimination and stigmatisation.

This was the thrust of a 3-day training organised by JAAIDS in partnership with the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) which held from Wednesday, November 19 to Friday, November 21.

The training was entitled: Mainstreaming Gender into HIV and Sexual Health and Rights (SHR).

According to the Executive Director of JAAIDS, Olayide Akanni, mainstreaming gender will promote planning and implementation of programmes to address gender concerns.

"We've realised increasingly that people are asking how a particular project is impacting on gender, how the project will address the need of the peculiarities of gender and that's why we say it is important we have this training so that people can understand the context of gender and are able to plan their project and implement it in such a way that it addresses the gender concern and then, a lot of donors have also increasingly demanding that the project to be gender sensitive and we feel beyond the stakeholders, the media also needs to be aware about it."

According to her, there are issues that need to be addressed on women, health and rights in making decision on planning family options.

Akanni also implored the government and the society to invest in maternal health care to prevent maternal and infant mortality.

"The government need to ensure that those services are relatively affordable for people. In some case, they will say delivery for pregnant women is free but when they get to the hospital, delivery is not really free, so they will rather go to a Traditional Birth Attendant (TBA) who is cheaper because they are considering the longer waiting hours in the government facility and a lot of that.

"But also, our community and our people need to understand that a woman's health and the decision regarding her health have to be understood in the context and a man should be able to support his wife for ante-natal care," she added.

In her contribution, the Executive Director, Center For Rights and Development (CERAD), Barrister Josephine Odikpo called on the legislators to look at the provisions of the law "and change the ones that are not gender sensitive or the ones that promote gender sensitivity."

The human rights activist said, Nigerian women are experiencing all forms of discrimination at home, places of work, they go through a lot of domestic violence and when this happens, actions are not really taken when these cases get reported.

"It's basically by legislative amendment, some of these laws were probably during the military era, some of the laws are outdated, they are examples of the brutal government we have in those days," she said.

• Nigeria