AWLA takes sensitization against sexual violence to poor communities

The African Women Lawyers Association (AWLA) is intensifying sensitization on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in communities within Techiman and Kintampo. Since 25th October 2021 alone, the organization has mobilized and sensitized over 500 stakeholders in Tanoso, Oforikrom, Attabuorso, Nsuta, and Dentekrom, in Techiman and Chiranda, in the Kintampo Municipal.

The sensitization was meant to raise awareness about the dangers SGBV poses to the education and development of children, particularly, schoolgirls in the Bono East Region, and the vital role of parents and community stakeholders in containing the menace. This formed part of AWLA’s strategy to take education on SGBV directly to hard-to-reach communities in the Bono East Region where sexual violence against women and girls has reached alarming levels. In 2020, SGBV was exacerbated by school closures induced by Covid-19 when over 5000 girls, including school girls, got pregnant.

Some of the girls were also married off to older men out of ignorance and poverty. It took the efforts of key stakeholders for some of the pregnant girls to write their 2020 Basic Education Certificate Examinations, and for some of the teenage mothers to return to school after having their babies.

According to the Executive Director of AWLA, Madam Edna Kuma who took participants through various aspects of the Children’s Act, with a focus on ‘the best interest of the child’, “it is important for parents and other community stakeholders to constantly protect children, particularly the girls, so they are not sexually abused by men or classmates. According to her, to protect ‘the best interest of the child’, parents must endeavor to meet the needs of their daughters, so they do not become victims of sexual violence perpetrated by men”.

She also added that “incidence of abuses against children, particularly, girls must be reported, so that perpetrators are punished in accordance with the law to serve as deterrence to other potential abusers, and children must not be put in hazardous or any work that affects their education.”

About the Project

The sensitization on sexual and gender-based violence for stakeholders forms part of the implementation of AWLA’s project titled Strengthening Communities against SGBV project that seeks to reduce SGBV against girls in Techiman and Kintampo towards achieving the objective of the Oxfam, WiLDAF and EU’s Enough! project to create an enabling environment for girls and women to know, claim and exercise their rights to end sexual and gender-based violence in Ghana.