A Non Governmental Organization, NGO, Alliances for Africa, AfA, has launched a web App ‘Kpoturum’ to address the lingering cases of violence against women and girls in the South-East region.
The App was launched on Thursday during a One-Day Media Engagement at Residency Hotel Independence layout Enugu for reporting and documenting cases of violence against women and girls in South-East.
Unveiling the App, the Programme Manager of AfA Mission, Mrs Blessing Duru, said that Kpoturum App would be used to gather real-time data to deal with issues of violence against women and girls decisively.
Duru said that ‘Kpoturum’, which literally means “call on me” in Igbo language, was chosen to resonate with the indigenous people of Igbo particularly, women and girls’ survivors, by way of reassuring them that they can get help.
“It is no news that we are facing a pandemic on Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). Sadly, violence against women and girls has become not only endemic, but normalised in the society despite efforts of all stakeholders through massive awareness and frontline response services.
“From trivialising rape, victim-blaming, to gas-lighting survivors, we are all daily witnesses to this rape culture and rising incidences of VAWG which has continued under the guise of culture, tradition, religion and the impunity of perpetrators. The most predominant being the incidences of sexual assault of minors as revealed by global statistics, as well as scholarly research studies carried out to analyse the current situation.
“Sadly, available statistics has not adequately painted the true picture of the situation due to limiting factors including the culture of silence, the lack of systems to document and analyse data, the limited scope of research papers and projects among others.
“It is on this premise that Alliances for Africa, a feminist organization in Imo state, with years of working experience around women issues developed the Kpoturum web-application with support from the African Women Development Fund (AWDF).
“Kpoturum App is technological reporting tool for documenting cases of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) in South East, Nigeria,” she said.
Duru said that web-app, which is an online registry, was designed to collect, collate and disaggregate data on VAWG through the reporting and documentation of cases of sexual and gender-based violence in the South-East States, viz; Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo States.
The programme manager said that it was designed to help survivors’ access justice through effective documentation, referral and case management of VAWG.
“Consequently, it will provide evidence which will be a true representation of the escalation of VAWG as such, inform strategic interventions by both state and non-state actors in addressing the menace,” she said.
Duru said that her organization would be networking with other Non-Governmental Organisation to escalate the web application and its functionalities.
She added that the web app also has a provision for third party reporting in case a violence case was carried out where the victim/incident do not have access to the internet in the first place due to the remoteness of the area.
