NDI laments electoral violence against women
The NDI said acts of violence such as threats, hate speech, assault, blackmail and assassination directed at women and that seek to undermine an electoral process would be its focus.
According to a report on the NDI’s website, on Thursday, the new initiative will train election observers to recognise and report violence against women so that it can be prevented.
Commenting on the general elections in Nigeria, the NDI said it encouraged its election observation partner, the Transition Monitoring Group, to include questions on gender in its pre-election and post-election observations and track gender-based hate speech throughout Nigeria during the pre-election period.
It noted that the TMG report showed consistent high levels of gender-based hate speech toward women candidates and their supporters in the North-East and South-East geopolitical zones.
He added that the report showed that the level of hate speech in both geopolitical zones were also above the national average based on religion, age, region of origin and disability.
The report read in part, “Informal surveys administered to some of the TMG observers in the North-East and South-East in the post-election period suggested that gender-based hate speech was sometimes accompanied by other acts of gender-based violence, including threats of divorce, sexual violence, blackmail or destruction of property.”
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