Town hall meeting in Port Harcourt LGA

The Rivers State Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) [VAPP] Law is a holistic law on violence against persons: physical, psychological, verbal, political and sexual. In the bid to make it known to the public, CEHRD organized a town hall meeting in Port Harcourt Local Government. The main objective was to sensitize the local community, police, legal practitioners, vigilante groups, and civil society organizations on the rudiments of the law and it’s punishable offences. Two major take home from the meeting amongst others to implementing organizations are that 1. Implementing organizations should ask victims or reporters of violence cases what exactly they need; 2. There should be signed agreement between the reporters of violence cases and the implementing organizations. The reason for the proposal is to limit the increasing rate at which crimes are abandoned by reporters of violence cases in the process of investigation or litigation. Furthermore, while appreciating CEHRD for the town hall meeting, there was call for more advocacy engagements especially in local areas like markets, schools, churches, etc. The town hall meeting is part of activities marking CEHRD’s project on Enhancing prevention and response to gender based violence in Rivers State. This project is supported by European Union.