Home was not a safe haven: women’s experiences of intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 20 January 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in BMC Women's Health
- Vol. 21 (1), 1-7
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-021-01177-9
Abstract
Emergency situations, including epidemics, increase incidence of violence against women, especially intimate partner violence (IPV). This paper describes specific scenarios of IPV reported by women during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria to provide insight for policy and programmatic efforts. This paper draws on seven de-identified case reports from organisations serving women experiencing IPV as well as media coverage of IPV cases in Nigeria, between April and May, 2020. In most cases, reports identified IPV that was occurring prior to the lockdown, but increased in severity or involved new types of violence during the lockdown. The case scenarios included descriptions of many forms of IPV commonly reported, including physical, economic, psychological and sexual violence, often concurrently. Several women also reported threats of being thrown out of their homes by perpetrators, which threatens women’s ability to protect themselves from exposure to COVID-19, but could also leave women stranded with no access to transportation, social services, or other resources during the lockdown. Several women also reported IPV that involved custody of children, as well as IPV that disrupted women’s income generation. IPV was also reported in relation to economic stressors associated with the lockdown. Reports highlight how the lockdown disrupted women’s social support, hindering accessibility of formal and informal sources of help. The lockdowns in Nigeria may have inadvertently placed women already experiencing partner violence at risk for experiencing more severe violence, new challenges to cope with violent experiences, and other forms of violence, including violence that used the lockdown as a way to threaten women’s security and ability to protect themselves from the virus. Hence, there is need for innovative approaches to support victims, with emphasis on ways in which perpetrators of IPV may be using the threat of COVID-19 to further gain power and control over partners.Keywords
This publication has 23 references indexed in Scilit:
- Household Debt and Relation to Intimate Partner Violence and Husbands' Attitudes toward Gender Norms: A Study among Young Married Couples in Rural Maharashtra, IndiaPublic Health Reports, 2015
- Latin American and Caribbean countries’ baseline clinical and policy guidelines for responding to intimate partner violence and sexual violence against womenBMC Public Health, 2015
- Burden of intimate partner violence in The Gambia - a cross sectional study of pregnant womenReproductive Health, 2015
- A matched case–control study of preterm birth in one hospital in Beijing, ChinaReproductive Health, 2015
- Prevalence and correlates of intimate partner violence towards female students of the University of Ibadan, NigeriaBMC Women's Health, 2014
- Intimate Partner Violence in Southwestern Nigeria: Are There Rural-Urban Differences?Women & Health, 2012
- Economic Violence To Women and GirlsTrauma, Violence, & Abuse, 2008
- Prevalence of intimate partner violence: findings from the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violenceThe Lancet, 2006
- World Report on Violence and Health — exploring Australian responsesAustralian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 2002
- The world report on violence and healthThe Lancet, 2002