The Legal Aid Council of Nigeria (LACoN) and the European Union Support to End Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (ESGBV) Programme in Nigeria, implemented by International IDEA on Tuesday convened a stakeholder validation workshop in Abuja.
A statement by Lynn Agwuncha, Communications Officer, ESGBV Programme, said the workshop was to review and validate newly developed tools for identifying and responding to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) within legal aid service delivery.
The one-day workshop brought together legal aid practitioners, civil society organisations, government officials, and gender justice advocates.
The stakeholders assessed SGBV identification guidelines, revised legal aid intake forms, and structured referral pathways developed under the ESGBV Programme in Nigeria.
Speaking at the workshop, the Director-General of LACoN, Aliyu Abubakar, said existing legal aid intake processes could overlook signs of abuse when survivors approached the Council for assistance with seemingly unrelated legal matters.
“If our case intake and interview processes are not specifically designed to identify the indices of these vulnerabilities, we will be failing the few survivors who come to us,” Abubakar said.
The revised intake forms and identification guidelines are designed to help legal aid practitioners recognise indicators of SGBV, document cases sensitively, and connect survivors to appropriate legal, medical, psychosocial, and other support services.
In a goodwill message, Chief Lateef Fagbemi, Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, emphasised the importance of effective identification at the first point of contact.
“The intake interview is therefore a decisive moment. It is where a survivor’s experience is either recognised, documented and acted upon, or overlooked and lost,” the representative of Fagbemi said.
The ESGBV Programme, implemented by International IDEA and funded by the European Union, supports institutional and system-level measures to improve prevention, protection, and response to SGBV across Nigeria.
LACoN is a statutory body established under the Legal Aid Act 2011 to provide free legal assistance to indigent Nigerians.
The Council operates through state offices across the federation and manages a significant caseload that includes matters involving violence against women and girls.
The validation workshop forms part of a wider technical review process that included expert working group consultations before the final stakeholder session.
On formal adoption, the validated guidelines and intake tools are expected to be rolled out across LACoN’s operational offices.
International IDEA said it would provide a full summary of outcomes and next steps following the conclusion of the workshop.(NAN)
Edited by Ismail Abdulaziz
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