A senior civil society organization has called for urgent action to address sexual gender-based violence (SGBV) and curb online gender-based violence (OGBV) against women and girls in Nigeria. TechHerNG has launched Kuram, an online gender-based violence response website designed to provide a safe and secure platform for women and other vulnerable groups to report cases of digital violence perpetrated against them.
The launch event, held in Abuja, brought together various stakeholders drawn from civil society and digital platform owners to address the challenges faced by women and girls when they come online. Kuram is set to provide critical resources to address OGBV affecting different vulnerable groups across gender, sexual orientation, class, and background.
The platform offers mediation and access to justice when reports of violence are made, and Kuram.ng.org is the website where women can make reports and speak to experts to receive support. TechHerNG will work on the back end to ensure remediation and access to justice when reports are made. The platform is accessible to all vulnerable groups, including people living with disabilities, and other marginalized groups.
The launch event also featured an interactive session to facilitate conversations on legal provisions in tackling OGBV and accessible solutions to protect vulnerable groups. The stakeholders working to respond and prevent cases of OGBV violations will create a prosecutorial manual, which is a compilation of all the laws in Nigeria that online-based violence can be prosecuted from.
TechHerNG plans to engage law enforcement agencies such as the police, the EFCC, and DSS to train them on online gender-based violence and statistics of the impacts of OGBV on victims. They will also create a referral system for women and girls who are going through OGBV, enabling a connection to law enforcement agencies for further investigation and prosecution of perpetrators.
The platform’s functionality is of utmost importance, especially for persons with disabilities, and TechHerNG encouraged stakeholders to share the website’s intervention within their communities as active players in the fight to end violence against women in all forms.
As stakeholders continue to advocate for a safer online space for women and girls, security agencies and policymakers must recognize and act on the nascent threats of OGBV.