BY: ABDULLAHI ALHASSAN
The need for the revival of Community Peace Committee (also known as Zauren Sulhu) as a means of resolving Gender Base Violence (GBV) among other Community concerns especially in the North has been stressed by stakeholders present at a one day forum organised by Equal Access international (EAI) in Kano.
Other factors they stressed to reducing GBV include adequate sensitization to dispel some cultural beliefs, the need for capacity building for both religious, traditional leaders and influencers, advocacy visits, right orientation for both the boy and girl child from early childhood as well as premarital counseling for couples.
The meeting was organised as part of activities of EAI to mark the United Nations 16 days of Activism to eliminate violence against women which usually starts on 25th of November to 10th of December, on Wednesday in Kano.
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Speaking to Pressmen after the meeting, EAI State Program Manager, Maryam Mohammed, explained that the presence of Community Peace Committee in a community makes people to have a rethink of any negative intention especially when he/she knows he will be ridicule.
She said, “this is a group of people set up to look into issues that happened in the community to resolve them without necessarily going to the Police. At community level, they can look into issues, intervene or resolves them.
“Having such committee would help because when a person with bad intention look at it and see that if he does that thing and taken to that committee, he will be redicule, maybe he will have a rethink.”
The program officer further noted that, there are so many issues such as rape, domestic violence, economic deprivation to the women and incessant divorce which makeup violence against women, hence the need for public sensitization to reduce it to the barest minimum.
“Sometimes parents push their young daughters to marriage that ends up becoming a horror to her and at the end of the day, what she is experiencing, ordinarily somebody would not like to experience.
“Also if we can have policies and laws that frowns at this kind of violence, it will checkmate this kind of dealings, because one tend to think twice before commiting any atrocity such as rape.
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“On reorientation we need to have a change of mindset on the way we bring up our children. Sometimes the girls are brought up to be better persons than the boys. we should also have a way of training our boys to grow up and be responsible. From the start, tell them what and what to be doing or behave.
“By and large, it is a collective responsibility for all because violence doesn’t pay; it is a violation of someone’s right weather to the woman, girl child or boys or whoever. We shouldn’t be violent to anyone,” she said.