By MIKE ODIEGWU, Port Harcourt

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has received 40 petitions from victims of Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in Rivers State warning traditional and religious leaders against frustrating the fight against the menace.

The Executive Secretary, NHRC, Tony Ojukwu, spoke in Port Harcourt at a Special Investigation Panel on SGBV organised by the commission in partnership with the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative.

Ojukwu assured the public of fairness in its activities and commended victims for summoning the courage to submit petitions.

Ojukwu said: “Chiefs and families cannot handle issues of sexual and gender based violence. That is the cultural impediments we are talking about.

“The traditional and religious leaders are part of the problems when it comes to SGBV, because they use cultural and religious ways to settle this things and it encourages more cases.

“There has to be awareness among the traditional rulers and religious leaders on the new ways of thinking, which will not be based on the old harmful traditional practices.

“It must be based on human right and acknowledgement about the qualities of women, the fact that they should not be discriminated against or stigmatized for an offence they suffered for, that is double jeopardy.

“The National Humans Rights Commission, established by the government and working with civil society organisations is in the right position to make sure that we change this narratives and hold perpetrators accountable,” he said.

In his remarks, the Secretary of the Panel, Okey Benedict Agu, disclosed that the panel had eleven objectives to achieve within the period of its sitting.

Agu noted that the panel was commissioned to receive and investigate SGBV cases and listen to testimonies of victims.

He said that part of its objectives was to give perpetrator opportunity to tell their own side of the story and to review extant laws on SGBV.

Also speaking, the leader of Society for Women and Youths Affairs in Rivers State, Stella Amanie, said civil society organisations in the state were handicapped in the fight to end violence against women. (The Nation)

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