The Federal Government has launched a comprehensive strategy aimed at advancing gender equality, empowering women, and protecting vulnerable groups in Nigeria.
This initiative seeks to bolster national and international efforts towards achieving gender equality, women and children empowerment, and ensuring the protection of their lives with a view to guaranteeing the country’s growth and development.
The Honourable Minister of Women Affairs, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim while unveiling the strategy, Friday, in Abuja, at a High-Level event titled: Collaborative Pathways to Gender Equality and Wimen’s Empowerment Roadmap stated that the Ministry has identified several challenges hindering women’s effective contribution to national development.
These challenges, she informed, include maternal mortality, gender-based violence, leadership gaps, limited access to education, economic disparities, and child protection issues
To address these challenges, the Minister added, the Ministry has outlined several key initiatives, including – launching a campaign to provide menstrual hygiene products and education to 10 million girls and women while also empowering 10 million women to contribute to building a $1 trillion economy; providing psychosocial, legal, and reintegration support to 200,000 survivors of gender-based violence annually, enrolling 2 million out-of-school children, with a focus on girls, into safe learning environments, and training 1 million female smallholder farmers in climate-resilient agriculture.
Other initiatives, she said, are improving Health and Well-being of 1 million households to clean and sustainable cooking energy, reduction of maternal mortality by 20%, as well as the establishment of six specialist hospitals for women and children.
This roadmap, Sulaiman-Ibrahim explained, aligns with ongoing efforts to address malnutrition, increase women’s representation in leadership roles, and promote a Nigeria where women and children can survive, thrive, and prosper.
She therefore called on stakeholders, development partners, and the international community to support the Ministry’s ambitious goals through resource mobilization and collaboration in order to transform the lives of the gender across the country, thus contributing to a more inclusive and prosperous Nigeria.
In a welcome address, Ambassador Gabriel Aduda, the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, described the roadmap as a strategic blueprint that lays out actionable steps to address systemic barriers hindering women and girls in the country.
He called for concerted efforts from all stakeholders to dismantle these barriers and build a future that is fair, just, and inclusive.
The High-Level engagement was graced by members of the National Assembly, former Ministers of Women Affairs, Development Partners, Civil Society Organizations and various women groups.
Signed
Mrs. Grace Njoku
Head, Information and Public Relations
