Programme Description

Niger is home to 18,528,764 inhabitants, of whom 29 percent are aged between 15 and 34. Niger has the highest early marriage rate in the world. Seventy-six percent of Nigerien girls are married before the age of 18 and 33 percent of teenage girls have at least one child. The fertility rate of the Nigerien woman is very high, reaching an average of 7.6 children per woman. This high population growth is creating vast challenges in terms of increased demand for infrastructure and social services. Niger ranks 187^th out of 188 countries on the Human Development Index.

The Spotlight Initiative will be implemented through an evidence-based intervention strategy, capacity building, and a continuous change process.

Number of beneficiaries: 103,200 (direct) | 68,700,000 (indirect)

Recipient UN Organizations: UNDP, UNFPA, UN Women and UNICEF.

Spotlight Country Programme Focal Point at the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office: Adjau Lahissi Sadiku; Email: sadiku@unfpa.org. Daniel Ladouceur; Email: ladouceur2@un.org

Investments

The total investment from the EU for Phase I (2019 – 2020) amounts to USD 17,000,000, and is distributed according to the following;

• Policies and legislation (outcome 1): Spotlight will evaluate the gender-based legislative and customary frameworks to identify the current barriers. It will provide decision makers with technical assistance to support their advocacy actions.  
• Institutions (outcome 2): Spotlight will monitor national and local public policies on violence against women and advocate to increase ministries’ budget allocations dedicated to the elimination of violence against women.
• Prevention and Social Norms (outcome 3): Spotlight will create and train a network of 80 religious leaders and 80 political leaders to promote and protect the rights of women and girls. Spotlight will use "mobile caravans" to engage religious and community leaders to reach rural women.
• Services (outcome 4): Spotlight will develop, rehabilitate and equip existing health centers to turn them into “one stop centers” that offer integrated services. Spotlight will strengthen the local social services and support socio-economic rehabilitation of survivors.
• Data (outcome 5): Spotlight will establish a harmonized national system for collecting, analyzing and using quality data on violence against women and harmful practices to inform evidence-based decision-making. The programme will strengthen the capacities of stakeholders (e.g. ministries, civil society, research institutions) to collect, analyze and disseminate disaggregated data. 
• Women’s Movement and Civil Society (outcome 6): Spotlight will build the capacities of women’s organization and support their self-protection mechanisms. Spotlight will encourage intergenerational dialogue and support the involvement of organizations representing young people and other marginalized groups confronted with various forms of cross-discrimination.
• Peer trips for influential community/religious leaders: The program will organize trips for influential community leaders in Niger to other Muslim countries that have a legislative framework that is more favorable to the elimination of gender-based violence. These trips will allow the participating leaders to interrogate their opinions and values with their peers in more progressive Muslim countries with the aim of changing negative social norms.

Innovation

1.  Restorative surgery for survivors of female genital mutilation: A coherent strategy will make it possible to repair the physical effects of female genital mutilation. The strategy will also support the implementation of awareness-raising campaigns on reconstructive surgery to symbolically communicate that female genital mutilation can be defeated.
2.  Private sector engagement: Spotlight will engage companies to support campaigns against rape, harassment and discriminations against women in the workplace. The programme will work with telephone operators to develop interactive debate animation, text messages, etc. for such campaigns.
3.  Operational innovation: To ensure effective implementation of the programme, Spotlight will establish the RASCI-matrix, which is a multi-stakeholder management system. The system specifies for each activity: who performs the task (R), who approves the task (A), who provides technical or logistical support (S), who controls the task (C) and who informs on the achievements (I).