Abuja, Nigeria | 25 November 2025
Lift Africa Foundation commences the 2025 United Nations 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, joining the global movement to eliminate violence against women and girls. The campaign begins on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and runs through 10 December 2025 (Human Rights Day).
This year’s global theme, “UNiTE: To End Digital Violence Against Women and Girls,” draws attention to the growing prevalence of technology-facilitated abuse, including cyberstalking, online harassment, image-based abuse, sextortion, impersonation, and the non-consensual use of deepfake content. These forms of violence disproportionately target women and girls and have far-reaching consequences for safety, mental health, education, democratic participation, and human rights.
Evidence shows that up to 95 per cent of deepfake sexual content targets women, while more than half of women globally experience some form of online violence. Lift Africa Foundation’s work across Northern Nigeria confirms that digital violence does not exist in isolation; it is embedded within broader systems that consistently fail to protect women and girls across physical, social, legal, and digital spaces.
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Why the 2025 16 Days Focus on Kano State
Lift Africa Foundation centres its 2025 16 Days of Activism on Kano State, where longstanding legal and institutional gaps continue to expose survivors to harm.
Kano remains the only state in Nigeria yet to fully domesticate the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act, despite recording one of the highest burdens of reported and underreported sexual and gender-based violence cases nationwide. With a population exceeding 20 million people across 44 local government areas and only one Sexual Assault Referral Centre (Waraka SARC) serving the entire state, survivors face severe barriers to justice, medical care, psychosocial support, and safety.
Stigma, community pressure, and underreporting further conceal the scale of abuse, while the absence of a comprehensive legal framework limits the protections available to survivors.
Over the past six years, Lift Africa Foundation sustains advocacy to address these gaps. Through continuous engagement with communities, traditional institutions, and government actors between 2019 and 2024, the Foundation contributes to the development and harmonisation of VAPP provisions into the Kano State Penal Code Amendment framework, which remains pending legislative passage.
Our intensified focus on Kano in 2025 is deliberate: to close a critical legal gap, strengthen protection systems where the need is most urgent, and advance a justice architecture that safeguards women and girls.
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Flagship Intervention: The Kano Gender Justice Summit
A central pillar of Lift Africa Foundation’s 2025 16 Days of Activism is the convening of the Kano Gender Justice Summit.
Date: 10th December 2025 (Human Rights Day)
Theme: Building Pathways to Protection: Advancing Legal Protections and Strengthening Community Action Against Gender-Based Violence
The Summit will bring together:
• justice sector actors
• policymakers
• traditional and religious leaders
• youth advocates
• survivor champions
• digital safety experts
• development partners
This convening would focus on strengthening legal protections, improving justice pathways, addressing digital violence, and building safer online and offline environments for women and girls.
A key outcome of the Summit is the adoption of the Kano Community Declaration for Protection & Justice, a stakeholder accountability framework designed to guide coordinated implementation across Kano’s five emirate councils and relevant state institutions.
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Campaign Activities Across the 16 Days
Throughout the 16-day campaign period, Lift Africa Foundation would implement coordinated advocacy, awareness, and community engagement activities, including:
• media advocacy and radio programming
• Online and offline community sensitisation on digital violence
• engagement with traditional and religious leaders
• policy dialogue with government institutions
• youth-centred discussions and mobilisation
Engaging Students through the safe schools campaign across Kano State
• disability-inclusive activities
• engagement with men and boys through a Zero-Tolerance Football Match
• community awareness walks
These activities reinforce our commitment to strengthening justice systems, promoting prevention, and advancing community-driven protection frameworks.
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Condemnation of Attacks on Girls’ Safety
As part of our 16 Days of Activism, We strongly condemn the recent abductions of schoolgirls in Kebbi and Niger States. These incidents constitute a direct violation of girls’ rights to safety, education, and dignity.
We calls on the Federal Government and relevant security agencies to intensify rescue efforts, strengthen school safety systems, and expand psychosocial support for affected families. Lift Africa Foundation also acknowledges the Federal Government’s declaration of a state of emergency on national security and urges immediate, concrete implementation—particularly in relation to the Safe Schools Initiative.
The safety of every girl—online, at home, in the community, and in school—must remain non-negotiable.
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A Call to Collective Action
As the 2025 16 Days of Activism begin, We call on:
• government institutions
• technology companies
• justice and security agencies
• civil society organisations
• traditional and religious leaders
• international partners
to strengthen and enforce laws that protect women and girls both online and offline, hold perpetrators accountable, and invest in sustainable prevention and response systems.
We also reaffirms that every woman and girl has the right to live, learn, speak, lead, and thrive without fear. Physical, psychological, and digitally mediated abuse are violations of human dignity and must be confronted through coordinated action and institutional accountability.