COVID-19 and unsafe homes for women and girls
The restrictions on travels, partial and full lockdowns enforced to curtail the spread of the COVID-19 virus have made homes unsafe for many women and girls. Incidents of rape, sexual assault, spousal abuse spiked and with nowhere to go, many of the victims have been abandoned to their fate. GRACE OBIKE examines what is being done to address the ‘silent epidemic’ which has been ignored as the government focuses its attention on COVID-19.
The World Health Organisation has described Gender-based violence as the ‘silent pandemic’ that is threatening the lives of women and girls as countries enforce measures to deal with the COVID-!9 pandemic.
Its 2013 data on domestic violence revealed that “36.1 per cent in the Americas, 45.6 in Africa, 40.2 per cent in South East Asia, 36.4 per cent in the Eastern Mediterranean, 27.2 per cent in Europe, 27.9 per cent in Western Pacific, and 32.7 per cent in High-Income the region, women have experienced domestic violence.
With the government diverting its resources and priorities on minimising the spread of the virus, there has been a surge in the number of gender-based violence incidents.
The pandemic has caused the government to divert its priorities and resources which have resulted in a surge of gender-based violence because of Federal Government- imposed lockdowns in Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and Ogun State.
As at September 8 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) dashboard reported 27,236,916 confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide with 891,031 deaths, these include 55,160 confirmed cases in Nigeria with 1,061 deaths.
However, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as the Dorothy Njemanze Foundation (DNF), believe that domestic violence claimed more victims during the lockdown in the country than the virus itself.
The United Nations (UN) Nigeria, in its report entitled “Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in Nigeria during the COVID-19 crisis: The Shadow Pandemic” stated that data on reported incidents of GBV cases in Nigeria based on preliminary information from 24 states shows that in March, the total number of GBV incidents reported were 346, while the first part of April, incident reported spiked to 794 depicting a 56 per cent increase in just two weeks of the lockdown.
A resident of Mararaba in Nasarawa State, Victoria Okoro is, unfortunately, part of these statistics.
According to her, as the lockdown was taking full effect in Abuja, her estranged husband of six years who had left her with two children and pregnancy in December 2019 returned suddenly and pleaded for her forgiveness and she took him back, only for him to turn his full frustration on his seven-month-old pregnant wife because he claimed that she kept asking for money to feed the children.
Victoria said: “One day the beating got so bad that I fainted, my neighbours rushed me to Nyanya General Hospital and I believe that one of them must have reported him to the police because he was arrested.”
She said she could not press charges and had to ask the police to release him because his family pressured her into it and he promised to stop beating her.
Globally, 243 million women and girls aged 15-49 have been subjected to sexual or physical violence perpetrated by an intimate partner in the previous 12 months, even as 87,000 women were intentionally killed in 2017. Many of the killings were committed by an intimate partner or family member of the victim.
Less than 40 per cent of women who experience violence report these crimes or seek help of any sort.
The global economic cost of violence against women had previously been estimated at approximately US$ 1.5 trillion.
On May 29, Vice-President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo announced that the FCT Sexual and Gender-based Violence Response Team recorded 105 incidents; an average of 13 incidents per week which is double the usual five to six incidents per week incidents recorded in pre-COVID-19.
During a virtual meeting on June 19, 2020 organised by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Osinbajo said: “A few days ago, the Inspector-General of Police revealed that the police had recorded about 717 rape incidents across the country between January and May 2020.”
He said 799 suspects had been arrested, 631 cases conclusively investigated and charged to court while 52 cases were still under investigation.
Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development Dame Paulina Tallen during a visit to the Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege on July 13 said each state reported at least 100 rape cases during the COVID-19-induced lockdown.
In Enugu State, for instance, the Manager of Tamar Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARCs), Evelyn Onah, said it received 55 reports of domestic violence during the lockdown between April and June in comparison to 18 at the beginning of the year and 14, after.
Nollywood actress and founder of the DFN, Dorothy Njemanze, said her Foundation received more than 150 cases from different states like Ebonyi, Rivers, Kano and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), among others.
According to Njemanze, the Foundation handled between six and seven cases a week before the lockdown. But during the lockdown, especially at the onset, they had an average of four to seven cases reported daily.
Cece Yara Foundation, another NGO that handles cases of child abuse in the country, said there was an increase of calls to the Foundation’s toll-free child helpline number which is toll-free and accessible nationwide compared to what it used to receive before the lockdown.
Its data analyst and centre manager in Abuja, Oludayo Ogunbiyi said: “We received 999 calls from 554 individuals, with 50 cases reported last year. But from March 30 to June 2020, we received 1,530 calls, with 124 cases of violence reported by victims, which were all followed up and reported to the required authorities.”
He added that of the calls, 35 per cent of the cases reported were of sexual assault including rape, 33 per cent of the cases was physical abuse, with 50 per cent reports of defilement and attempted defilement.
The International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Nigeria chairperson, Rekia Adejo-Andrew, said her organisation was receiving an average of 10 GBV cases every day compared to the three to four cases they had been handling in the pre-COVID-19 period. The incidents ranged from battery, sexual offences and incest as well as inheritance disputes.
Why the spike?
The Director-General of National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Dame Julie Okah-Donli attributed the rise in rape, sodomy and domestic abuse to ‘cabin fever.’
“The abusers, mainly men, were suffering from cabin fever, as they are not used to staying at home with their wives. The more they see their wives, the more they get angry and beat them up,” she said.
Loretta Ahuokpeme, the Executive Director of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, agrees with Donli.
She said her Foundation realised that the common denominator for the majority of the cases they received stemmed from built-up irritation and tensions that arose out of people being stuck inside their homes.
Several shelters shut their doors to victims during the period, she said, adding that the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) response team had closed down because of the pandemic.
The FCT response team reportedly sent people who were in the shelters back home forcing many of the victims to continue sharing the same house with their abusers.
Shelters are under the social development department of the Ministry of Women Affairs, which has branches in all states of the federation.
The Desk Officer, Sexual Offences Unit of the FCT Social Welfare Board, Jacinta Ike, denied that any shelter had been closed or GBV victims had been turned away. She, however, confirmed that for a fortnight, the shelters were not admitting new GBV victims as they put in place measures to screen the new admissions for COVID-19 to prevent them from infecting those already in the shelters.
“We tried to counsel them through WhatsApp and phone conversations. We referred some cases to the police or made them stay with relatives particularly those at high risk.”
Majority of the victims referred to the shelters were able to get admission the third week into the pandemic when the restrictions eased.
Way out
Njemanze suggested that mobile courts should be set up to reduce congestion in the courtrooms and to deal with offences related to the COVID-19 travel restrictions and curfew should be expended to deal with issues of domestic violence.
“Many of the victims would have used these courts to get restraining orders against their abusers,” Njemanze said.
But Adejo-Andrew explained that it could not have been possible because mobile courts are not created to handle all forms of cases because they are not regular courts. She said they are usually created for a specific purpose and in this circumstance; the mobile courts were solely to deal with offenders who violated the stay-at-home orders.
Although GBV desks and departments have been set up in most police stations and commands across the country, continued increase in cases of violence indicates that a lot more needs to be done.
Some African countries such as Kenya and others have adopted new techniques to train police officers in handling such cases.
Through such opportunities, the Nigerian police can acquire more tools in dealing with cases of GBV instead of overlooking most cases, terming them as family matters or victimising victims who have already gone through a lot.
- This report was supported by the Africa Women Journalism Project (AWJP) in partnership with the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ).