Executive Director of the Savannah Women Integrated Development Agency (SWIDA) has admonished the citizenry and especially victims of violence and abuse to endeavor to report such cases to the appropriate quarters for proper redress.
According to her, the consequences of violence are dire and cannot be overemphasized.
“We know that violence is not an easy thing. The consequences are so depressing, it’s so damaging. Someone can easily lose focus in life because of violence.”
On the back of this, Hajia Sagito said the general public must not remain silent and overlook such cases in the society out of fear of victimization.
She emphasized when issues of violence are reported, it enables both state and non-state human right actors to intensify the awareness creation and advocacy against violence.
“Sometimes it is important that when you open up, half of your problem is already solved. We want to encourage reporting, as much as possible, so that when we say there’s abuse, it’s because within this period, these number of cases have reported being abused and these are the areas of abuse; so that there would be focused planning, targeting and delivering. If we know that abuse is more at the household level, it means that, we just don’t make plans that we are talking gender-based violence, we have to target the homes, what are the issues at home that is making abuse increasing” she stressed.
Hajia Alima Sagito Sa-eed made the admonishment in an interview with Journalists last Friday, July 28, after a sensitization workshop for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) organized by the CSOs platform on SDGs in partnership with SEND Ghana and facilitated by SWIDA in the Northern Region.
Two Apps Launched
The workshop centered on the implementation of Citizens Generated Data (CGD) and the stakeholders had the opportunity to interrogate the data that have been generated through the CGD in order to strategize and deal with any emerging issues in that regard.
The SWIDA Executive Director said the reason for the workshop was to apprised the CSOs working within the Sustainable Development Goals areas about the two applications – the Let’s Talk App and the Clean Ghana App developed by the statistical service with funding support from the GIZ which is aimed at offering a direct platform for people to report cases of sexual and gender-based violence and solid waste respectively in their communities.
According to Hajia Alima Sagito, the applications will provide complementary data force to the data of Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), adding this is timely and relevant to the critical issues on the ground.
“So, we brought the stakeholders together to educate them on how the Apps work, what kind of data the App will generate, how you do you respond to the questions that the App will ask you and at the end of the day, how the data is used to for policy making” she explained.
She added the key highlights of the training was how to generate citizens data, what are the importance of citizens data and the gap that it can fill.
Meanwhile, the applications have been piloted in 30 districts including the Tamale Metropolis as one of the beneficiary areas.
About 35 participants were selected from various organizations including Youth led Organizations, Student leadership groups, NGOs, Social Welfare Department, the media, among other key relevant institutions in the region.
