The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in Plateau says that domestic, sexual and gender-based violence are the major prevalent human rights violations in the state.
The State Coordinator in Plateau, Mrs Jennifer Abe disclosed this during an interview on Tuesday in Jos.
“Mostly what we get here has to do with issues of domestic violence, sexual and gender-based violence, issue of neglect and abandonment, exploitation abuse of children, so this constitutes about 80 per cent of the violations,“ she said.
The commission in 2022 recorded 288 domestic violence cases within January and May 2022 and in 2020 recorded 664 cases of gender-based violence.
She said other prevalent issues are unlawful detention by the military including harassment and torture and urged affected persons to report such incidents to get redress especially for their mental health.
She further explained that the commission engages community leaders in its outreaches particularly where there are high reported complaints of human rights violation saying “ what we do is sometimes, we pick specific issues that are relevant to a particular environment.”
She restated NHRC’s commitment in discharging its constitutional duties of public enlightenment on human rights and its infringement.
According to her, the organisation in Plateau is working in synergy with relevant government organizations and Non-Government Organisations to break the culture of silence through encouraging victims on human rights violation to report for appropriate action.
“What we do is to do a lot of aggressive sensitisations on human rights issues because the commission has since discovered that most people do not know that they have rights, and that when these rights are being trampled upon, they do not know where to go to seek for remedy and redress, “ she said.
She described the public enlightenment campaign as crucial because the commission noted that some people take the laws into their hands when they perceive that their rights were being violated while others take it as their fate.
“So realising these facts the commission engages in a lot of enlightenment programs, awareness, creations, through seminars, workshops, face to face interaction with people coming at community levels.
“Sometimes when we have the opportunity to go to the rural communities, we try to have what we call village square meeting where we tell them about the commission`s functions and its mandate and let them know about their rights and when these rights are violated where to remedy and redress,“ she said
NHRC in Plateau has also received 14 complaints by widows on discrimination involving landed properties inheritance from 2022 to June 2023.
