Bose Ironsi is the Executive Director of Women’s Rights and Health Project (WRAHP), a non-governmental organisation that works for the promotion of reproductive health, rights and general development of women, young people and communities. In her bid to promote women’s health and the fight against gender based violence (GBV), she strives to enlist the support of community members especially men in her mission. She shares this with JOY NGWOLO in this interview how she hopes to realise this mission. Excerpts!
What motivated you to start up an NGO targeted at women?
Executive Director
Women’s Rights and Health Project
My personal experiences inspired me to do so. My mother had 12 children and it was a struggle to determine who could go to school and who could not and in my community then, once a girl was done with her secondary education, she would be told it was time for her to get married while the male children had absolute right to go to school. Eventually, I was able to attend school but with much struggle and hardship. It inspired me to want to advocate for women’s rights.
More so, I am concerned about the rights and health of women because they are marginalised in the society. Some people don’t see women as people who should have rights, they are expected to receive whatever treatment is meted out to them without complaints. One of the reasons for this is the cultural factor. We live in a patriarchal society where the man is the decision maker and is allowed to do as he pleases whether his wife is comfortable with it or not. This is not good enough, I believe that everyone should have equal rights. So we focus on the rights of women and young people. One of the cases we give special attention to is Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
Based on your experience, what do you think are the reasons for GBV?
Some men claim that their reasons for abusing their wives is because they want to discipline them and make them submissive. Unfortunately, our mode of socialisation builds the capacity of the man to be a bully, to be domineering and to intimidate women. Even in some churches, only male clerics are revered, the females are side-lined. Men are not raised to be respectful to their wives and to assist in house-hold chores. Even nowadays that the woman also work hard to put food on the table, the roles have not changed, and the woman is still expected to do everything to keep the home going.
These are some of the issues we address. We sensitise and empower women to be aware of their social rights and also to modify the socialisation process to engage both males and females in participating in household chores, which is one way to address the issue of inequality. Our vision has always been to have a just society, one that represents both males and females. For instance, we are presently working on a project that centres on GBV. We started by embarking on a research to find out people’s awareness level of gender based violence. We know that there is a law regulating gender based violence, it was enacted in 2004 but not everyone knows about it. Our focus is on attaining equality in the society, equality that is progressive. We believe that men should be engaged in the fight against GBV and that is why we have a programme for men called the men-to-men initiative in which we groom men to become advocates because we believe that it is important to engage everyone in the community.
What is the aim of your men-to-men initiative, what do you hope to achieve?
We have about 3000 men in various communities and what we do is to empower them and build their capacity to understand the GBV law and also let them see the need to be involved in fighting against gender-based violence. Some of them are mandatory reporters in their communities and they respond to cases of GBV.
How effective has this initiative been?
It is interesting to note that men have been the ones reporting cases of GBV and they are willing to help whenever they see a victim, they are involved in counselling and mediation. Our next point of call is building a community where the society will be enlightened to responding to issues of GBV, so that even when they go to report cases at the police stations, they know how to go about it.
How have you been able to get justice for victims of GBV?
It has not been easy, we work in partnership with several agencies, and we refer them to the various agencies within the government structure and work with other NGOs and the police. We also provide psycho-social support for victims, it is not enough that somebody has been abused and the perpetrators put in the police station, so we are involved in counselling and empowerment. We once had some women who suffered from gender based violence and we ensured that they were trained on economic empowerment and given soft loans to start their businesses because we discovered that one of the reasons for the conflict in the home was because the women were not empowered. We partnered with Ejigbo local government and Exxon Mobil who supported us with resources to execute the project. We also try to build the capacity of youths and children to report cases of GBV, so some children report to us when they observe violence in their homes.
What challenges do you face running your organisation?
One of the challenges is delay in getting justice for victims and some government structures do not help matters at all. For instance, if a woman goes to report a case of domestic violence, some police officers would insult her for daring to report her husband. It is only few of them are supportive. Initially, there was the challenge of paying lawyers but recently, some people have come out to volunteer their services and it has been quite relieving. But there are still challenges with acquiring funds, we need to set up our own shelters because some of these women are sent out of their homes and they need a place to stay. We are also trying to create a one-stop crisis centre where people can come and report cases and we render the help we can give, it will be called Ireti centre and it will be based in Alimosho Local Government,
What steps can be taken to overcome these challenges?
There is need to sensitise all the stakeholders – the Police, community people and the media.
