Power in Her Hands: Breaking the Culture of Silence Surrounding Sexual and Gender Based Violence Through Technology

Gender-based violence happens to our acquaintances, colleagues, friends and, yes, family members.” Anita Hill.

The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) puts the number of girls who experience sexual violence in Nigeria at one in every four. Data makes it possible to measure the true scale of the problem. However, for Omowumi Ogunrotimi, the founder and Executive Directive of Gender Mobile Initiative (GMI), ‘one in every four’ is more than just a statistic, it represents any man, woman or child whose life has been forever changed by sexual violence.

At age 14, Ogunrotimi was sexually abused by a trusted neighbor. Despite seeking professional help with the support of her family, she was still made to keep silent about the incident; the same culture of silence that is perhaps one of the biggest challenges to addressing Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV). Two years later, her best friend lost her life while trying to terminate a pregnancy that resulted from rape. Ogunrontimi said the inability of her friend’s family to afford quality medical care after she was raped opened her eyes to how social stigma and the culture of “domestic silence” can impede access to life-saving healthcare interventions.

 Motivated by her experience, engagements with younger girls in her community, as well as the current disturbing SGBV trend, after completing law school Ogunrotimi and her team set up a platform with a simple vision — to build a just and equitable society devoid of all forms of gender-based violence. With teams now operating out of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and Ekiti State, GMI has since its inception in October 2017, supported SGBV survivors and their families to access emergency response services.

Listening to data

GMI started as a 24/7 call centre and a web-based platform where people could call in to report SGBV cases and are followed up with psychosocial, medical, and legal support. Within one year of running the call centre, the organisation found that over 80% of reports they received came from campus communities. The BBC investigative documentary “Sex for Grades” exposed the prevalence of sexual abuse in higher education institutions and laid bare the power dynamics between lecturers and students that enabled the sexual exploitation of female students.

GMI then channeled their interventions towards universities because, “we adopt a data-driven approach to ensure that whatever interventions we are pushing out as a product responds to actual problems,” Ogunrotimi said. Their initial idea was a simple platform where people can receive information and are connected to resources, but they quickly realised that an effective response to SGBV cases required them to employ varying approaches.

In April 2021, they launched the ‘Campus Pal’ mobile app as part of their Campus safety initiative. The app leverages technology for confidential reporting of SGBV incidents in schools. The initiative also involved policy engagements with senior management of universities to strengthen their internal mechanisms for addressing sexual harassment cases. Dr Helena Tsaninomi Emikp-Agbajor, the Director of Linkages and Gender Studies at the College of Education, Warri, Delta State said the awareness created by GMI has helped to significantly reduce cases of sexual harassment in the institution. “GMI initiated the idea of the sexual harassment prohibition policy which was non-existent in the school before. With the policy, students know there’s a system in place to protect them. We hardly hear of these cases again,” she said. The management has approved for copies of the policy to be printed for distribution to students and staff, she proudly added.

The campus safety initiative also involves engaging and training Campus Ambassadors to support the process of reporting sexual abuse in their respective schools. Modupe Adetiba, president of the National Association of Female Students is one of the ambassadors. She joins GMI on advocacy visits to university leadership and recommends universities without sexual harassment policies to GMI. This way, GMI can support the drafting of the policy and provide technical support for implementation.