Women's Empowerment through Virtual Exchange (WEAVE)

According to MIND, over the past years, successful policy and legal lobbies have been initiated across Nigeria by gender professionals. Yet, many groups involved in promoting women's rights, especially at the grassroots, lack access to legal and policy tools to be able to effectively engage in advocacy. The WEAVE web platform seeks to give organisations and individuals free and easy access to crucial information including:

• international treaties and conventions ratified/domesticated by Nigeria;
• Nigerian legislation (including federal, state, and sharia laws);
• Nigerian government policies (federal/ state);
• available data, reports, and statistics on women’s current situation in Nigeria; and
• contact details of women empowerment experts in different professions.

WEAVE seeks to promote shared ownership of the web portal by involving organisations and individuals from different sectors and geopolitical zones in building, testing, and hosting the platform. Social media applications will be used to facilitate exchange of information across the country. The technical structure and online applications will be devised in partnership with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT).

Rather than directly interacting with the grassroots, the web platform primarily focuses on intermediate civil society agents at federal, state, and local level who have the computer and analytical skills required for sharing the information disclosed through the web platform with women at the grassroots. The information shared through the web platform is arranged in such a way that it can directly fed into human rights monitoring mechanisms like the upcoming periodic session of CEDAW in Nigeria in 2014.

Women and Governance, Technology