 Good afternoon. My name is Damlola. I'm representing Conwest Africa. I'm a lecturer in Obafemiaholoa University. This is an ongoing research and I'm doing a primary research on how conflict affect women and how women shape conflict in Nigeria. That's the highlights. Starting by the understanding that fragility and conflict affect women, men and boys and girls differently. And we are all aware that most of the time, conflict affect the poorest and the most vulnerable group in society. And we are aware that women have majored the most vulnerable groups in most society. We are not civil conflicts in Nigeria and in most parts of Africa. And over the last two decades, this have doubled. And this conflict, as we know, they are consecrated in poor countries that are characterized by toxic combination of fragile institutions, inequality, social conflicts. And the intensity of these conflicts more because of some natural disaster, food crisis, and of course, increasing threats posed by climate change, terrorism, and of course, we have recorded increase of displaced persons. And about 2.7 million Africans are the largest of course of displaced persons in the world. All these are some of the factors that are shaping international landscape conflict. And that's why it's important for us to understand the dynamics, the gender dynamics of conflict. In Nigeria, women and girls make up about at least 79 percent of approximately 2.5 million people who are displaced about the country. And we have more of these people in the north east because of Boko Haram. What's this about? As I said, women and girls in conflict situations suffer great vulnerabilities and inequality. And this is becoming a threat to their identity and their security. And we have continued to witness high level of ethnic, ethnic and religious conflict, especially in north eastern Nigeria and some other parts of Nigeria too. And as a result of this, we have extensive destruction of life and properties. We found out there are gross human right violations. And as a result of this, it's important to understand how this conflict impacts on women and what are the roles women play in such situations. An example of case I saw in literature is violence in Joss. Joss violence started around 2001. And we have had eruptions of cases from 2004, 2008 and 2010. And the major cause of this conflict is because of political, ethnic, religious and indigenous settlers disputes in Joss. And this has actually impacted so much on everybody's life who lives in Joss. And of course on women also. We also have an example. Another case is the Anoma case study. This is actually, this actually happened during the Nigerian civil war. And this actually posed a multifaceted challenge to Anoma women because these women were, these people were actually attacked in their homes. Many unarmed civilians were killed in Anoma land during the Nigerian civil war. That was fought between July 6th to 1967 and January 12th, 1970. What then, how has this conflict affected women from literature? First and foremost, we identify that this conflict has affected the health of women. And why did I say that? It takes an elderly person to be able to face the multifaceted challenge that conflict poses. When there is conflict, women tend to lose all the opportunities they have to seek for help. And good health is critical to women's ability to cope well with the many responsibilities that they need to face when there is conflict. There is psychological and reproductive health challenges that women face during conflict situations. And most of the time, the well-being of women allows the standard of living drops. And this actually creates a problem. In our community, the ability of resources reduces the standard of living. And it makes it difficult for them to assess the health facilities they need. There is also this disability. Most of the time in conflict situations, even though you could, one would assume that women don't participate at the forefront, at the warfront, they are subjected to so many forms of disability that impedes on their livelihood and their well-being. There is a lot of displacement that comes to play when there is conflict situation. And most of the time, when the men go out to the forefront, the women are left behind when there is what they are, the ones who are responsible to carrying the children and those who are back at home, the aged people, and then finding their displays, they are the ones who are in refugee camps. And so this creates a problem. And of course, we have cases of early pregnancy. Most of the time, young girls are subjected to rape by opposing parties. Women, we have some who have to go into early marriage, even with opposing parties, is that because they want to survive. And of course, instead of thinking of going to school education, they rather think of how to survive and take care of their family and some of them have to drop out of school. And of course, we have changing roles. Conflict tends to result in women taking on additional responsibility and therefore for economic necessity and therefore they are forced to seek for income-generating activities rather than attending school. And of course, in most cases, like the example of just, employment situation becomes a problem. Those who are formerly employed could lose their job. Those who are in formal settings, we have cases where markets are displaced and most market people are women. And so because of this displaced market, they tend to seek for alternative means of livelihood. A lot of them have faced domestic abuse, rape and social assault. We all know that some of these are the things that happen during conflict situations. And of course, economic enfranchisement, which makes it difficult for them, makes them face a lot of social vulnerabilities. And in Nigeria, lately, we have had a lot of, even from the time, from the cases, a case stamp that I made, we have adoptions of women and girls. Most of the time, during these conflict situations, girls are adopted, young girls, and which makes it difficult for people who, even who love, who have loved their children to go to school, to stop going to school because of the fear of girls being adopted at school. And they are used as test lists for some of these people who are at conflict, women-shaped conflicts. Over the years, from pre-colonial African wars, women have done a lot of role from literature in shaping the way conflicts are. We have cases of the Aba women's riots in the southeastern Nigeria. And these women actually did a lot to ensure that the situation at that time changed. We also have the Aba women's riots in the southwest. And we also have an example of the Kuyamina of Zareh. This woman led the victory of her people. The Queen Mauremi of Ife was the one who actually rescued her people by negotiating with the opposite side. And these are women, examples of women that actually shaped the way the conflict situation had taken place. And in recent times, we have women's non-violent protests against Chevron in S. Carvers in Nigeria. And we also have cases of some initiative that are set up by women, local women, but they take advantage of the platform available to them through the involvement of some organizations like the Galaxy for Women. This Galaxy for Women is a youth-led organization concerned with the promotion of peace culture in some communities in Nigeria. And we also have Elekta, that is actually co-funded, basically looking at our behavioral change in communities and kind of enforcing capacity development to increase women's participation in politics. And so these are some of the initiatives that as women have put in place to shape the way conflict is done, or to shape the effect of conflict in Nigeria from literature. And so substantially, from the inclusion of women and civil society groups in a peace negotiation kind of make resulting agreements 64% less likely to fail. And according to another study about 5% more likely to last at least 15 years. That is why it is important to include women, not just in women as victims of violence, but also seeing them as being able to participate and shape the way conflict situation is being done. And so in spite of these low socio-cultural status where we have displaced women, but women tend to still use their agency from literature through peace-building and political mobilization and engagement. And this actually helps to compensate for shortfalls in policy and in material responses. Thank you.