Health
THE Lafiya Programme, a consortium of NGOs that advocate improved family healthcare, on Monday said that sexual intercourse between husbands and wives must be on consent and not on any form of concessional rape.
The programmes’s Technical 3 Lead, Mrs Fatima Mohammed, made the clarification to the News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) on the sidelines of this year’s Nigeria Family Planning Conference in Abuja.
According to her, intimate partners currently engage themselves in concessional rape, which has become one of the highest forms of Gender Based Violence(GBV).
Mohammed advised spouses especially husbands to shun all forms of violence against women, adding that marriage was not a right to perpetrate violence.
She also called for collaboration among stakeholders to avail women of reproductive health services as well as the need to intensify advocacy in advancing family planning services to women.
A lawyer, Chinyere Ufere, also told NAN on the sidelines of the event that capital punishment should be given to the perpetrators of GBV.
Ufere, a member of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), decried sexual violence against women and girls, adding that perpetrators deserved death sentence.
“A 70 old man abusing a 12 year old girl is not a human being, but a beast and he deserves to die as a beast,” she said.
Ufere, who also called for stronger advocacy, appealed for adequate funding of family planning services in the country .
According to her, family planning in the country has a lot of sociocultural barriers militating against its effectiveness.
”The key to breaking the barriers be it cultural, religious, social, is to continue to talking and counselling,” she said.
NAN reports that this year’s Nigeria Family Planning Conference held in Abuja, was organised by the Association for Advancement of Family Planning (AAFP).
The theme of this year’s conference is “Impactful Strategies to Strengthen the Family Planning Agenda Post 2020: Adaptation, Innovation, Resilience”.
NAN
– Dec. 7, 2020 @ 18:58 |GMT |
Tags: Sexual intercourse must be on consent -Coalition
