NEWA has delivered series of trainings to representatives of women-led organizations and CSOs working on women’s rights in Amhara region’s Desse and Afar’s Semera towns from July 26 to August 12,2022.
The workshop’s focus was on prevention, protection of women & girls from all forms of violence through the promotion of non-violent, non–discriminatory and gender equitable norms during humanitarian response.
identifying GBV risks, GBV mitigation strategies, referral pathways and community-level protection mechanisms were the main topics of the training among others. Developing locally relevant tools to monitor SGBV prevention and mitigation strategies and engaging in participatory safety audits at the community level were highlighted as important approaches in the implementation of prevention of GBV activities.
A total of 44 participants from the two towns attended the training sessions.
During the training sessions, GBV cases were presented by participants.
One of the stories was from Desse town about 12 years old six grader who has been sexually abused by her stepfather and got a urinary tract problem. When her pain got severe, the girl told her mother that she has been sexually abused by her father. Her mother’s reaction was unexpected for the child who believed her mom would do anything to end her suffering. However, the mother warned the child not to say anything to anyone about the matter. This was heart breaking for the child and she finally left the house. The teachers who were wondering why their student was absent for almost a month, decided to go to her parent’s house and speak with them. The mother told the teachers that her child developed bad behaviour and became out of control and that is why she left the house. As they didn’t find the mother’s explanation convincing, the teachers decided to look for the child and they found her somewhere in the adjust kebele, lower tier local administration. Finally, they knew the truth and got the child back to school with necessary arrangements to ensure her well-being and safety.
The other story is about a child who was about to be given to a husband through forced marriage in the town of Semera, Afar region. They were on preparation for the wedding as both her parents agreed with the arrangement. The child decided to do something and save herself. She went to the town’s women’s and social affairs office and explained the whole issue to the experts. Not to let the child take risk until the office addresses the issue in a proper manner, one of the experts took the child with her to her house to spend the night there. The expert was shocked to see armed men from the child’s father and mother’s clan at her office the next morning with the intention to intimidate and stop her from what she was doing. This shows that the process of intervention against child marriage is complicated as parents and close family members are part of the problem.
The trainings were delivered as part of the global multi-year programme being implemented by UN Women in collaboration with the Network of Ethiopian Women Association (NEWA) with the support of the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). A two days refresher training for leaders of WROs and CSOs on global and national humanitarian architectures, inter-cluster system, PSEA, and Grand Bargain was one of the trainings that was delivered under this same program in September 2021. A total number of 34 /27F ,7M/ participants attended the training. Out of the total, 23 were director and program managers of 23 local women rights organizations/WRO/ and civil society organizations/CSO/.
