The National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffcking in Persons (NAPTIP) has launched the gender policy document to tackle human trafficking in the Nigeria and estimations countries.
Launching the dissemination of NAPTIP Gender Policy Document and the Implementation Strategy, Monday in Abuja, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Faruk said, the NAPTIP Gender Policy is aimed to institutionalise an internal gender mainstreaming strategy in NAPTIP and to ensure its operationalisation in all entirety, to address gender gaps and contribute to the realisation of the central goals of the National Gender Policy (2008).
“I believe that the launch of NAPTIP’s Gender Policy will complement the Agency’s operational strategies to curb gender based violence and address gender gaps where they exist within the Agency’s internal operations. It will also chart a new course in the management of the Agency’s relationships with its vanous partners and clients,” she said.
The Minister said, gender equality has always been wrongly perceved as a ferminist struggle or an attempt to highlight the superiority of one sex over another adding that for this reason, women have mostly been in the frontlines on gender matters.
“However, with recent efforts to enlighten the public, a broader understanding of gender equality through gender equity is being mainstreamed.
“The recent emphasis in addressing gender concerns is to ensure the integration of all in programming at all levels. In doing this, policy makers are encouraged to analyze the society critically and recognize discriminatory practices against women, as well as men, in its generality.”
Hajia Faruk also said, the Nigerian Government in 2008 approved the National Gender Policy in a quest to attain a balanced Society, devoid of gender discrimination and to guarantee equal access to political, social and economic wealth creation opportunities by both genders.
“Also, a National Sexual Offenders Register was created in 2019 to broaden the impetus of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015, implemented and enforced by NAPTIP to name and shame the offenders. I therefore call on all other Ministries, Departments and Agencies to emulate this process by adopting and strengthening measures to mainstream gender
concerns in all their activities and programmes, just as NAPTIP is doing today.”
The Director General, NAPTIP, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim said, the policy document is part of a project declaration between the Government of Italy and UN Women, under the two year programme on prevention of forced migration and trafficking in women and girls in Nigeria, to support the preventive efforts by the Government of Nigeria.
The DG said she believed this document will provide the platform that will ensure that NAPTIP’s work is guided by gender secure response policy framework and it will also promote a gender sensitive environment that addresses forced migration and trafficking, among others.
She also said the policy document for launch and disseminate is set to ensure among other things; inclusion of gender clauses and mainstreaming of gender into the policies, legislations, programmes and operations of NAPTIP, Gender based victim support with proper documentation and disaggregation of data and Prosecution of male and female offenders with attention to their gender needs.
“Others are, strengthening the network of stakeholders, groups, and individuals at all levels in Nigeria, who advocate from a gender perspective, for an end to trafficking and violence against persons, and Mainstreaming of a resource mobilization process for support to the Sexual and Gender Based Violence Trust Fund.”
The UN Women Country Representative to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Ms. Comfort Lamptey at the event said, Trafficking has a disproportionate impact on women and girls, who make up over 70 percent of persons trafficked globally and 80 percent of those trafficking from Nigeria according to the 2020 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons.
She said many policy and programmatic interventions have often been gender blind and not necessarily take into account the differences in the migration and trafficking experiences of men, women, boys and girls, or develop tailored responses targeted at their particular concerns, leaving the demand side of these phenomena relatively unaddressed.
“Trafficking, as phenomenon is both part of the continum of labor exploitation and violence against women, and this past year has highlighted the shadow pandemic of gender violence exacerbated by the COVID pandemic and associated measures.
“As we are all aware that in the 2020 US annual global assessment of human trafficking, Nigeria dropped from its ranking on Tier 2 in 2019 to Tier 2 Watch List in 2020. This shows that Nigeria is among countries with worrisome indicators of trafficking in persons. If the country remains on the Tier 2 Watch List for two or more consecutive years, it will automatically be downgraded to Tier 3, which is the State Department’s lowest ranking.”
The UN Women and the government of Italy were in collaboration with NAPTIP to develop the gender policy document.
