Overcoming Institutional and Legal Barriers that Prevent Abused Females From Accessing Justice in Fragile Nigerian Regions

  • Valentina Okaru-Bisant

Summary

This paper recognizes how the fragility of the IDP camps combined with the socioeconomic vulnerability of female victims has undermined access to both legal and socioeconomic justice systems. The fragility of camps and vulnerability of females also creates an urgent need to improve female victims’ access justice systems and to seek punitive measures against perpetrators of GBV. Additionally, Nigeria should go beyond punitive measures to adopt preventive, proactive, multidisciplinary and holistic strategies that help victims deal with the GBV trauma. This Article proposes that Nigeria should create fair and equal access to both legal and socioeconomic justice for female victims of abuse and the author also examines the institutional and legal barriers to such access, including the issue of how to overcome such barriers. Particularly, this Article seeks to answer several questions: how do we overcome pluralistic and conflicting institutional and legal systems, psychological and socioeconomic, legal ambiguities/lacunas and other barriers that undermine such access? Regarding pluralisms and conflicts, can laws (e.g. the federal statutes), per se, overcome deeply entrenched traditions, the most challenging barriers to access?

Citation

Okaru-Bisant, Valentina. Overcoming Institutional and Legal Barriers That Prevent Abused Females From Accessing Justice in Fragile Nigerian Regions. 2018.

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