Center for the Protection of the Girl Child

Center for the Protection of the Girl Child

"Protecting girlhood for effective womanhood"

BACKGROUND

Prelude: statistical facts and figures

According to Women in an Insecure Word, “Sexual abuse of girls, often by family members, is widespread but shrouded in taboo. In a treatment centre in Nigeria, 15percent of female patients requiring treatment for sexually transmitted diseases were under the age of five, with a further six per cent between the ages of six and 15years.”

The Problems of the Girl Child

The problems of the girl child are various stemming out of cultural bias, male preference, poverty and particularly ignorance. All these influence the discrimination against her for her sex, and other responses and treatment she receives in the society.

In Africa, where the family’s finance is not adequate, the girl child would stay at home while the male child is educated. The girl child could be given out as house girl or apprentice. Sometimes she has to hawk and becomes prey of heartless and shameless men. She faces rape, sexual assault and abuse in the hands of men. As she grows she is most probably seen as a sex instrument for jobs or promotion. Even in school, to pass her exams, she may be pressured to sleep with her lecturers. When the girl child is orphaned or fatherless, the reject is worse, the family or relatives take her up but she suffers. She must work hard to be a woman, she faces hunger and at times may be forced into prostitution. At the end she is given off in marriage. Many times it is money that is the consideration for this marriage, on the pretence of the girl’s welfare.

Some culture practice early marriage, the moment a girl reaches puberty or at age of ten (10) or at the sight of her first menstruation, she is married off! To obviously an over aged man who cannot wait for her to grow before he pounces on her and she is pregnant. Many girls in the process of delivery, being babies themselves in body have died, those who didn’t die suffered VVF and RVF (Vesicle-Vaginal and Recto Vaginal fistulae). This is a situation where the girl cannot control her bladder and urinates without warning or preparation because her vagina and bladder hitherto separated is now a thoroughfare due to damage of the demarcation by the forced sex, early delivery or as a result of circumcision.

The issue of peer pressure, corrupt society, illiteracy, lack of enlightenment and poverty is taking a strong toll on the girl child with the results of immoral dressing, early exposure to sex, teenage pregnancy, abortion and exposure to HIV/AIDS. Where a girl child is not enlightened about her body and is not exposed to sex education, why have sex? What age is ripe for it? What is it about? Are there some conditions to doing it or some pre-requisites? What are its effects, the advantages and disadvantages? Obviously without understanding her body make up or frame as a woman, where sex is the in thing, she sees it, knows that her friends are involved, she might possibly be misled into indulging in sex.

Defilement is a common thing now in our society, men raping and having intercourse with under aged girls; yet there is a law against it which has not been enforced.

In the course of her practice as a Lawyer, the facilitator of this vision has been privileged to be involved in cases that have to do with sexual abuse of girls. Her attempt to set the ball rolling for the prosecution of a recent one was met with confrontation by some people in the society, neighbors, and even the victim’s father. She has a passion to stop defilement in our society. Her research revealed that the problem has been on for quite sometime but now on the increase. In fact the larger percentage of the women populace has experienced this abuse one way or the other even as children albeit minute. The problem among several is that this has not been defined, explained, tagged or exposed as abuse or wrong. Sometimes this abuse may not exceed fingering, using the girl to get sexual satisfaction or arousal through her sighs, moans, movements, cries.

The help available to the girls involved as victims is limited or restricted not only by finances but also by lack of enlightenment, counsel and rehabilitation. Now that female genital mutilation is being outlawed, sexual discrimination, early marriage, girl prostitution and trafficking are being fought against; there is the need to take a strong stand against defilement.

The effect of these problems is as wide as it varies and this is glaring in our society. It affects the individual girl, women folk, the family as the first and foundational institution in the society and the society at large. The high rate of poverty, teenage pregnancy, the high level of illiteracy at this age and time are all tell tale signs of these effects.

The high rate of death of girls and women, the increasing number of mad girls and women, even with babies strapped to their backs, some pregnant, on the streets and in psychiatric homes tell us this. Promiscuity is another effect of the problem leading to high level of exposure to sexually transmitted disease and HIV/AIDS. It is clear that sexual activities have become a common thing among our teenagers and youth without them being informed of the ills or repercussions before their indulgence. However, some of the girls involved are not willing partners, many are cajoled, forced, threatened or even raped, while some even though consenting do so out of ignorance.

Now, the larger percentage of the pain, worry, denial, depression, rejection, particularly the labor and deliveries are naturally experienced by the girl and not the man. Depression could set in as a result of early pregnancy. Many abort, some girls die or become maimed for life because of the intensity of the labor pain. Some as a result of the responsibility which they cannot shoulder on their own, throw the babies away or abandon them somewhere, yet they cannot catch up with their lives again. Some who seem to have gotten away with it, live with the guilt, this aspect of their past haunting them. Others have their children and face the complications of single parenting and child care which they cannot perform adequately. The worst is that many more lose focus, stop schooling, training and can never regain hold on life.

The children born to these teenage girls are many times underweight, prone to illnesses and infant mortality, suffer hunger and malnutrition, face violence and have delayed development. The worst is that growing up like this, the boys become touts, of course without a father figure and an under aged mother, what do you expect, while the girls grow like their mothers, becoming teenage mothers and so the story continues – more inexperienced, uneducated mothers, poverty stricken families; then what hope for our society?

The hope of the society is and can only be in protecting and training the girl child, this is because the girl in every woman comes first and shapes the woman. This is what this project seeks to accomplish.

“The girl in every woman precedes and shapes the woman in her. And to the extent that girlhood is denied, liberated and fostered, womanhood perishes or prospers”

Sohoni, 1995.

References

“Women in an Insecure World” Violence against Women, Facts, Figures and Analysis. Edited by Marie Vlachovd and Lea Biason. Geneva, September 2005