Journalists for Christ International Outreach (JFC) Nigeria and the World Association for Christian Communication, Africa Region (WACC-AR) have launched a tech-driven, advocacy project on ‘Countering misogyny and Tech-facilitated gender-based violence’.
The initiative, which is supported by WACC Global and Brot fur die Welt (Bread for the World – German Protestant Agency for Diaconia Development, aims to change public perception and stereotypes about girls and women by fostering actions to curb Tech- facilitated gender-based violence, TFGBV, and related oppressive actions against girls and women within the digital sphere.
According to the Project Lead and Vice President JFC, Mrs Ugonma Cokey, GBV has translated from the traditional forms to online, and it is essential that the rights of women are upheld at all times. Over the years, GBV has manifested in diverse forms as a tool to silence the voice and rights of women. Related to these, are the subtle overt forms of violence that limit women’s communication rights on digital platforms.
“As society developed and became technology-driven, GBV also translated from the traditional forms to other forms of violence online across the digital spaces. The digitally driven violence against women, which is also referred to as ‘Tech- facilitated Gender-Based Violence’ (TFGBV) include such acts as cyberbullying, secret recordings of sexual scenes, the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, name calling, surveillances, amongst others.
“The project shall undertake a baseline/think-tank discourse on the context and prevalence of TFGBV in Nigeria, drawing expert and situational contexts from other African countries like Liberia, Kenya, Togo and Cameroon and conduct online monitoring exercise to document/incident the trends of TFGBV in Nigeria”, she added.
“In driving the actions, perspectives from a cluster of women/girls groups will be harnessed to give deepened and realtime perspective on existing contexts of misogyny and TFGBV, which will provide inferences for the production and dissemination of digital narratives to mitigate GBV (offline/online) in Nigeria.
“The project will be implemented through a series of strategic actions entailing monitoring of online content, producing counter-narratives, undertaking virtual interfaces with journalists, and gender advocates, as well as facilitating alliances and advocacy actions to mitigate GBV in the digital spaces”, Mrs. Cokey revealed.
For further information, please contact:
Blessing Oladunjoye
Project Officer
dorcasblessing77@gmail.com
