By Muhammad Bah The Institute of Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) on Monday 16th March 2015 launched a Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) online database at Paradise suites Hotel. This institute is a Pan African non-Governmental organization working to promote human right treaties of the African Union Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The database is an extension of the online case analyzer focusing on the incident in Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda as pilot target countries. It will complement the efforts of various domestic, foreign and international stakeholders in curbing SGBV in the selected countries and beyond by providing free to access online analytical resources of legal materials specifically dealing with SGBV Mr. Gaye Sowe, the Program Director of IHRDA made the welcoming statement and thanked participants of different countries for attending this launching ceremony. In his statement, he said this is a milestone for his institute in working to promote respect for human rights and dignity in the African continent. He added that IHRDA will continue to play a role in the dissemination of relevant information for the promotion and protection of human rights in Africa. “Today we will be launching another online tool to support the fight against sexual and gender based violence. The problem of SGBV in Africa does not need to be over-emphasized. GBV in Africa often includes rape, sexual terror as well as other forms of abuses and exploitations of women and girls” said Mr. Sowe. He concludes by recognizing the partnership and support from the federation of women lawyers-FIDA(Kenya), Arche d’ Alliance-ARAL(Democratic Republic of Congo), the Public interest law clinic-PILAC and Human information and Document systems, international(HURIDOCS) in Switzerland for their valuable support to the initiative. Johannes Baidoo, Acting Dean of Faculty of Law University of the Gambia made the launching and stated that SGBV has been a critical topic in Africa and a concern in recent times. He noted it would be difficult to find one woman who at one time or the other in her lifetime that had not been afraid merely because she was a woman adding that those vulnerable are the women living in precarious conditions.]]>
