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Vice Chancellor of the University of Calabar, Prof. Florence Banku Obi, says her administration will always sustain the fight against gender-based violence in the institution.
Prof. Obi stated this when officials of the International Society of Media in Public Health (ISMPH), led by the Executive Director, paid an advocacy visit to her in her office.
She said Unical has been at the forefront of the fight against gender-based violence and will leave nothing to chance in its avowed determination to stamp out the menace.
The varsity administrator said the institution will always embrace any form of partnership geared towards tackling gender-based issues, even as she restated her administration’s commitment towards partnering with ISMPH.
She said the need to tackle gender-based issues in Unical culminated in the establishment of a Center for Gender Development, which she said, has been up and running since inception.
“We are open to any form of partnership on gender-related issues. As an institution, we have been very keen on ending gender-based violence and it is for this reason that I am pledging to sustain the fight against the menace,” she said.
Earlier, the Executive Director of ISMPH, Mrs Moji Makanjoula, described the advocacy visit as a ‘defining moment’, maintaining that, the need to institutionalize violence against women for better prevention, response protocols and programmes have become imperative.
She said ISMPH in conjunction with UNESCO developed a manual on eliminating Sexual and Gender-based Violence and Harmful practices, adding that, it has been deployed, accepted and effectively operational in pilot tertiary institutions as a resource to beef up the existing policies and response framework on sexual and Gender-Based Violence.
Makanjoula said the ISMPH project is also aimed at conducting training for staff and other engagements within the University Community which require in-depth discourse on the development of novella strategies to combat violence against women and girls.
The Executive Director said if violence against women and girls must be eliminated, education, sensitization and development of rules and guidelines at the school level are imperative.
She said the overreaching goal of the project is to work with three Universities, including Unical, to mainstream and promote women and girls’ Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in the school curriculum.
To achieve this goal, she said ISMPH will work closely with the University Management and varsity-based unions to organize campus rallies to create awareness of the institutionalization of violence against women and girls prevention and response protocols.
