Nurudeen Ibrahim
The role of WARIF in ensuring that religious institutions are sensitized on gender based violence cannot be over-emphasized.
WARIF which is an a acronym for Women at Risk International Foundation is a non-profit organization founded and incorporated in 2016 by Dr. Kemi DaSilva Ibru.
The foundation was founded in response to the high incidence of rape, sexual violence and human trafficking of young girls and women in communities across Nigeria in order to achieve the aim of building a society free of rape and sexual violence.
As young as this organization is, their impacts in the society are inestimable compared to some organizations that have survived several decades.
WARIF has been able to successfully sensitive a lot of people across different organizations inclusive of religious institutions.
While so many people who have had different experiences relating to rape and other gender based violence were afraid of speaking out and getting support, WARIF took the bold step to break thes shackles and gave voice to the voiceless and support for the survivors.
The religious institutions cannot deny this anomaly of sexual molestation in their institutions but they shy away from talking about it or helping victims to get support.
WARIF has been able to sensitive the religious institutions especially Islam and Christianity, at a time when the institutions were silent, while taking their trainings from one church to the other and one mosque to the other.
Members from different religious organizations in Christianity and Islam have been trained for free by WARIF to become Gatekeepers in their respective communities of which even the government in any part of the nation has not achieved anything close to this.
The sensitization by WARIF has awaken the religious institutions to be more pragmatic about this menace.
Religious leaders have as a result of that been prompted to research more in their scriptures for references to tackle the case of rape and other gender based violence related issues.
WARIF has helped to give ways of how to practically diagnose a case of rape of both minors and adults and also assisted in how these victims better called survivors could get help.
The cascading of the several trainings has been replicated in so many other places within the communities and these are gradually posing threats to evil perpetrators of the illicit and ungodly act.
As religious leaders we must not shy away from the existence of sexual molestation but what is more important now is how to put an end and protect the people. We read the case of a young girl in Hijab that was raped and killed, we heard the case of another girl that was raped and killed in a Church, we read the foreign case of a female madrasa teacher that was raped by her madrasa teacher. It is an illicit act that must not occur in the first place but some unscrupulous elements who have smuggled themselves into the sanctuaries have launched the evil.
Islamically, what WARIF is doing is what the Muslims call Jihad. Jihad implies identifying an evil and eradicating it through various means starting from prevention up to the level of providing support who might have fallen victim.
The Holy Quran which is the scripture in Islam has given zero tolerance to rape and other related actions of gender based violence. In addition to Islam setting preventive measures to save the women, Islam says a rapist must face the law and not to be pardon. Rapists, bandits, kidnappers and highway robbers are all placed on the same category of offence and Islam is not merciful to these unscrupulous individuals no matter the high position they occupy in the society.
Despite all the efforts invested in the sensitization and enlightenment, we will implore WARIF to intensify efforts in getting to more people in the society and talking to them on how to put an end to rape and acts of gender based violence.
The religious institutions should introduce it as a course and incorporate it as regular discuss in their sermons and other programs.
We at IRFAN CENTRE have also been working on this through enlightenment and sensitization and we have been able to come up with an Islam compliant manual to sensitize more people and ensure we have a society that is free of violence that is gender based as well as other related issues.
The professionalism displayed by WARIF has helped to succeed in carrying along the religious leaders and getting necessary attention.
We implore more religious organizations to not relent in promoting the teachings of WARIF as they are teachings recommended in the scriptures and we urge them to continue to collaborate with WARIF in their activities to ensure a better society.
