Human rights organizations are leading the fight against abuses and assaults. The only problem has been difficulty in reporting cases of human rights violations, and this has to be corrected to ensure justice is timely delivered.

Many victims of human right violations have survived on the efforts of activist organizations who keep a track of violations and help people secure justice. They work closely with government agencies like the Offices of the Public Defender in states and other ones to prosecute cases of human right violations. However, some of them need to do more to make it easy to submit complaints. The inability of some people to easily submit their complaints via email or phone calls can slow down the defense of human rights.

The country is enmeshed in cases of human right violations between individuals, and between government and the society, like the case of over 150 deaths during the Nigerian Army’s clampdown on supposed Biafran secessionists in 2015. There are other law enforcement agents trampling on people’s rights, and these victims need to be able to simply send a mail or make a call to get help. While organizations like the Amnesty International maintains an international oversight of human rights, we trust the indigenous ones to go deeper and put government instruments to work in defending people’s rights.

We need good communication platforms to ensure these. In an effort to reach CDHR – Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, a Lagos-based human right organization, the communication gap played out. We had a case of human rights violation to report to them, but ten days after sending them a mail, there is neither an acknowledgment nor a formal response. The organization indicated the goal of “rendering legal aid and assistance to indigent victims of human rights violations” among other things on their website, which means we are taking the right step by reaching out to them. This gap might not have been noticed but could deprive victims of timely justice. The organization and any other NGO with a similar unattended communication system need to correct this, thereby making it easier to submit complaints.

Source: http://igotalk.ng/nigerias-human-right-defenders-need-accessible