Violence Against Women
Source: Awareness News
One Family People (OFP), a local non-governmental organisation, has engaged service providers on a one-day dialogue forum on Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV)
on August 24, 2011 at the Grassroots Gender Empowerment Movement (GGEM) at John Street in Freetown.
The Programme Manager OFP Hadiatou Diallo revealed that the main goal of the Girl Power Project (GPP) is to promote equal rights and opportunities for girls and young women including persons with disabilities through building the capacity of local CSOs in ten countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia to support the empowerment of girls and young women for gender equality.
Madam Diallo stated that the objective of the GPP is to strengthen or compliment the capacity of civil society/DPOs actors to give girls, young women and people with disabilities, space and voice to bring about change and influence disabled friendly policies in the country by 2015.
She concluded by appealing to participants to take the session seriously as it will help in the implementation of the GPP, and also revealed that at the end of the forum, participants will form a network that will be charged with the responsibility of implementing the GPP.
In his statement, the Director of One Family People (OFP) Mr. Edward Emmanuel noted that his organisation is working to uphold human rights values and mainstream disability issues into the development agenda of Sierra Leone, adding that OFP is operating in the Western Area Rural/Urban Districts and in the Moyamba District respectively.
He stated that networking with service providers give legal overtures that can lay the foundation to give full legal support to thousands of Sierra Leonean women especially disabled ones who suffer silently from the clutches of SGBV, bearing in mind that not only men as perceived by most human rights commentators, are violators in some societies.
He disclosed that the acts of violence against women and girls take various dimensions and can occur in all settings where men and women exist, formal and informal.
"Such acts include physical assault, incest, wife battering, widowhood rites, rape, child marriage, sexual harassment, female circumcision, denial of the female folk access to economic and social benefits and gender discrimination," he noted.
Mr Emmanuel however called on participants present to contribute effectively towards the forum so as to come up with a formidable network that will fast track the activities of the Girl Power Project.