by Deborah Hassan
The United Nations deputy secretary-general, Ms Amina Mohammed, has called for more positions of authority for women in Nigeria in order to have a more peaceful Nigeria.
She also demanded for an end to all forms of violence against women and girls, and for deliberate action to be taken to promote their economic prosperity.
Mohammed gave the charge on Tuesday during the global Generation Equality Campaign in Abuja which is aimed at creating awareness an the agenda of the Beijing Platform for Action and foster inter-generational exchange and dialogue to empower a new generation of women’s rights activists.
“Toward a more peaceful Nigeria, women must have a seat, and a voice at the table,” she stated, adding “it is commendable that 12 states across Nigeria have already signed the national action plans on the UN Security Council resolution 1325.”
She charged women, especially young ones, to be actively involved in building strategies for peace and mediation.
The global Generation Equality campaign demands equal pay, equal sharing of unpaid care and domestic work, an end to sexual harassment and all forms of violence against women and girls.
“Generation equality is also about ending all forms of violence against women and girls and ensuring their economic prosperity,” she said, and added that Nigeria had made important strides in areas addressing critical areas of concern identified at the 1995 Beijing congress.
Commending the UN and its entity for Gender Equality and Women empowerment for boldly pushing the agenda on Social Development Goal(SDG) V which “is a prerequisite and enabler for a better world, Mohammed explained that the quality and level of our education is critical to the generational equality agenda.
She further stated that closing the gender parity gap in education, or at least 70 percent of girls in Nigeria in attendance is an important achievement, and noted that, less than 10 percent are attending tertiary education.
“It is after all, to this generation that we entrust the future of our commitments and future generations,” Mohammed said.
Stressing that the importance for safe, inclusive and resilient communities had been made abundantly clear by the COVID-19 pandemic, she advocated for women’s equal participation in all spheres of life, especially as women have been on the medical frontlines, leading businesses, creating and providing critical palliatives and emergency support for vulnerable communities.
“As we focus on recovering from this global crisis, women’s equal participation in all spheres of life must be a priority.
“The response to the COVID-19 health crisis and the socio-economic crisis must pave the way for better recovery to ensure generational equality as a reality for all women and girls,” she said.
Also speaking, the UN resident coordinator in Nigeria, Edward Kallon, said the UN in Nigeria reiterated that the campaign was launched by UN Women, to bring together the next generation of women’s rights activists, with gender equality advocates and visionaries.
“The campaign shines a focus on the need to harness the transformative potential of young women leaders, particularly in a country such as Nigeria.
“There remains significant work to be done to achieve progress in areas such as women’s political participation and ending violence against women.”
According to him, today’s world is home to the largest generation of young people in history, estimated at 1.8 billion, with 90 percent of them living in developing countries.
“Many of these youths are in Nigeria, which has a median age of 17.9 years.
“Young people, both men and wome continue to demonstrate that they are ready to lead and contribute their quota to build a more prosperous and equal world.
“Whether to their innovation, their leadership in transforming politics, business, science and technology, they are breaking new grounds.
He, however, said that young people were frustrated, being confronted by pressing challenges from high levels of unemployment from mainstream governance processes and human rights violations, with women and girls disproportionately affected.
He said that the only way forward to accelerate progress in achieving the sustainable development agenda was to leverage the shifting demographics, work with and empower young people to play an active role in shaping the future we all needed.
In her remarks, UN representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Comfort Lamptey said that in spite of the tremendous work that had been done by the government of Nigeria and women’s rights activists on issues of gender, much still needed to be done .
“It’s no exaggeration to say that we have a state of emergency on gender in Nigeria today.”
Using three examples to illustrate the state of emergency, she said the first was around gender based violence and harmful traditional practices.
“Sadly, Nigeria today in absolute numbers has the highest number of child brides in Africa, gender based violence is a huge problem in Nigeria.
“We have seen in recent months through the pandemic how this particular problem has escalated to the extent that in June 2020 the governor’s forum declared a state of emergency on gender based violence in Nigeria.
“The state of emergency also extends when we look at the issues of women’s political representation, because from the 2019 elections, Nigeria elected less than 5 percent women to the National Assembly.”
According to her, Nigeria, today stands as the country with the lowest representation of women in parliament in Africa.
She said the third area of a state of emergency was in the economic arena where most women in Nigeria were found in the informal sector.
Lamptey said that inspite of the setbacks, there were pockets of hope for Nigerian women.
“Women of all ages, especially young women as well are exhibiting leadership , supporting their communities and demonstrating a different kind of leadership in terms of how they run their organizations.
“It is this hope that the generation equality campaign seeks to build on going forward,” she said.
Officially launching the campaign, Dame Pauline Tallen, minister of Women Affairs said that the year 2020 was significant and special for all who believed in women empowerment, gender equality, as well as better days for the girl child.
This, she said, informed her tagging 2020 as the year of “a call to action for Nigerian women and children.”
(NAN)