Fellow: Pitan Oyeyemi

Grant Year: 2018

City: Abuja, Nigeria

Organization: Vaccine Network for Disease Control

Project title: Advocacy for Passage of the Gender and Equal Opportunity Rights Bill by the National Assembly

Project summary: In Nigeria, women experience high rates of discrimination both at home and in the workplace. Although women are half of the population, only 19 out of 360 members of the House of Representatives and 7 out of 109 Senators were women in 2015. The Gender and Equal Opportunity (GEO) Right Bill was created to protect Nigerian women from all forms of discrimination with specific language to ensure more gender equity within every sector, in line with the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. However, the GEO Right Bill was blocked at the National Assembly.

Vaccine Network for Disease Control will advocate to ensure the Gender and Equal Opportunity Bill is back on the floor of the National Assembly for review by the end of the 3rd quarter of 2019. The project team will partner with various non-profit organizations and CSOs to reach out to various leaders committed to gender equity that can help put pressure on the National Assembly to pass the GEO bill and reduce the discrimination for over 97 million women across the country.