By Mariam Ileyemi
The Students for Peace (S4P) in Lagos State University (LASU) were trained by two Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to become advocates against hate speech and online violence against women at WANEP, Ikeja, Lagos last week.
The training, which was aimed at raising awareness of the students about hate speech and online violence against women, was organised by the Centre for Information (CITAD) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), with the support of the United States Agency for International Development USAID and UKAID.
According to the Lagos Centre Coordinator, Nahima Ajikanle, the training was designed to help students understand and promote an enabling environment free of hate speech and gender-based violence.
Ms. Ajikanle added that it would provide the right knowledge to propagate in communities where the students act as ambassadors.
Prior to the training, a pre-assessment to determine the knowledge of participants on hate speech and violence against women online was conducted by Shazali Sanusi of CITAD.
Annabel Ugwoke, the programme officer at NDI, equipped participants with knowledge of gender-based violence (GBV), which she explained as a human rights violation, a public health challenge, and a barrier to civic, social, political, and economic participation.
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GBV is directed at an individual based on his or her biological sex or gender identity. It includes physical, sexual, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse, threats, coercion, and economic or educational deprivation, whether occurring in public or private life.
Annabel cited the United Nation’s Population Fund and the United Nations Women statistics, one in three and one in four women, have experienced physical or sexualised violence in their lifetime.
To prevent GBV, she recommended that families should promote gender equality from their homes and among their children; civic and social studies should be broadened in school to include GBV, laws to equally protect rights of women and men should be protected, and adequate punishment be given those who engage in GBV.
The session for Hate speech was ably facilitated by Hamza Ibrahim of CITAD, who enlightened participants on ways of identifying it, including, examining the speech item to know if it dehumanises a particular group of people, persuading people to take violent action on persons of certain identity or locations, or advocating discrimination.
Hamza also gave exercise to provide a foundation for the advocacy campaign, targets and strategies to access identified targets.
The training ended with participants brainstorming on ideas to reach out to communities to conduct sensitisation activities.
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