International IDEA, ESGBV support Justice Ministry to operationalise VAW reporting platform

The EU Support to End Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (ESGBV) Programme in Nigeria has backed the deployment of Nigeria’s first standardised justice-sector Violence Against Women (VAW) Reporting Platform prepared by the Federal Ministry of Justice, to strengthen accountability, case tracking and access to justice. 

This was disclosed on Monday at the Deployment and Operationalisation of the Violence Against Women (VAW) Reporting Platform and the National Validation and Capacity-Building Workshop on the VAW Reporting System in Abuja.

The training was organised by the ESGBV Programme in Nigeria, implemented by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Justice.

Ms. Melissa Omene, GBV Policy and Strategy Development Specialist, ESGBV Programme, International IDEA, said the initiative addresses a major weakness in Nigeria’s response to violence against women: fragmented data and poor tracking of cases after they are reported.

“Reporting violence is only the beginning of a survivor’s journey. What happens after reporting matters just as much as the reporting itself,” Omene said.

She said an assessment covering 112 respondents across 32 institutions in the FCT, Benue, Kaduna and Oyo states identified gaps in data coordination, investigations, evidence management and justice-sector monitoring.

Omene disclosed that the National GBV Dashboard recorded 4,449 GBV cases in the first half of 2023, bringing the nationwide total to more than 19,000 since the platform launched in 2020.

Also speaking,  Yewande Gbola-Awopetu, Head of the SGBV Unit at the Federal Ministry of Justice, said the success of the new reporting system would depend largely on the quality of information provided by desk officers.

“Every field you complete, every case status you update, and every follow-up you log becomes part of the evidence base,” Gbola-Awopetu said.

She also disclosed that the National Human Rights Commission recorded more than 33,000 SGBV cases between January and May, while NAPTIP documented over 3,000 cases of violence against women in the FCT, highlighting the need for stronger case documentation and tracking.

In the same vein,  Agharinma Ehiedu, National Consultant, VAW Reporting System, International IDEA, said the platform would bring scattered state-level information into a single database, enabling justice institutions to access national data without contacting individual states.

“You can know how many offenders you have, how many cases have been convicted, and those that are pending trial across the country,” Ehiedu said.

He added that the platform would also allow members of the public to report violations, with cases routed to relevant state desk officers, describing the system as providing “full visibility of what is happening” to VAW cases across Nigeria.