By Chinelo Okeke

The international federation of Female lawyers (FIDA), Anambra State Branch, has organized a one day training for community paralegals on children and women rights, family and access to Justice.

The training held on October 30 at the FIDA Anambra Family Law Center building behind Judiciary Headquarters Awka, Anambra State.

Speaking at the event, the facilitator, prof Angela Obidimma, introduced FIDA as International Federation of Female lawyers, a non political, non profit oriented organization and a voluntary organization that promotes and preserves the rights of women and children.

She maintained that there have been continuous reports of violence against women and children as they witness on their day to day living in their societies.and also a rapid increase in inhuman treatment and abuse of children as we saw in the case of a woman using a sex toy on her children for content creation.

He emphasized that the objectives of the training was to make paralegals know their roles in fighting against this violence in their various communities and to familiarize with the structure of court and police.

“To help the paralegal understand the Law concerning women and to develop better skills of counseling in cases of violence against women and children” , Prof Obidimma added.

Obidimma buttressed further that paralegals are not lawyers and that , the notion behind this paralegals is to train and equip Non Lawyers with the basic knowledge of the law and it’s legal proceedings so as to equip them on how it works so as to help the concerns people in their various communities.

She noted that if the work was left alone for them it might be difficult for them to reach out to all communities within the State and that was the reason women from various communities were summoned for the training in order to help out educate others.

Paralegals are bridge between the Community and Lawyers. They are connections between people and law, and help to pass information our.

The representatives from all Communities were trained on many areas like Law, and it’s importance, who may arrested, when to arrest, human rights, features of human rights, Gender and sexual violence, Gender Equality, Obstacles that prevent Gender Equality.

Other trainings included strategies to achieve Gender Equality, Violence against women among others.

The training embraced question and answer sessions during which the representatives raised up confusing and concerned questions on law and they were well clarified with undiluted explanations.

The vice Chairperson FIDA Anambra State, Barr Lauretta Ikwuka, praised the Facilitator, Obidimma, for such a wonderful session with them, and also thanked the representatives for attending.

The Chairperson of FIDA Anambra State, Barr Amara Muojekwe, also commended the Prof Obidimma, for her efforts in this training for giving them her time, despite her tight schedule,prayed for more strength all through her life endeavors.

She also appreciated the people in attendance for coming as they would help to make their work lesser by lending their voices in their various communities to help curb this menace of violence and abuse of women and children that was taking the order of the day.

Earlier, Muojeke noted that it was not only women who were being abused.
“Men are also abused. I encourage men who are abused by their wives to always come to FIDA for redress”, she said.

The training came to a close with a prayer session by one of the representatives who is a man as the training was also opened with prayer by a woman representative.