This memo covers the month of January 2015 (data coding and uploading lags by a month) for the eight NSRP States: Borno, Yobe, Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, Rivers, Bayelsa, and Delta.

As we launch into 2015, there are 50 self-identified Agents of Peace focusing on issues of gender in the NSRP states. The highest concentration of Agents of Peace is in Rivers with 17 listed organizations. By contrast, there no self-identified Agents of Peace currently listed in Yobe, although NSRP is assisting with addressing this gap by connecting with grantee CSOs focusing on gender issues. The annual trend of increasing overall violence in 2014 continued into January 2015, with an upsurge in incidents compared with last month. With retrospective incident reports also coming in from partner organizations this month, the systemic issues in key states relating to sexual assault and overall violence perpetrated against women and girls continues to become more prevalent.