Africa-WILDAF-Women in Law & Development in Africa

our programmes

June 27, 2006

• Facilitating the empowerment of women (capacity building) through education and training

The main thrust of the programme is to train trainers on how to use human rights instruments as a tool for law reform and policy development, monitoring the implementation of these instruments, as well as documenting and reporting on violations of women's rights at country level. Such monitoring will lead to effective advocacy at country level and to feed into advocacy at the international level and to assist speedy response to human rights violations. Mainstreaming gender and human rights into HIV/AIDS programmes is part of the training programme

• The promotion of the human rights of women through advocacy and lobbying .

WiLDAF will promote, facilitate and shape advocacy strategies for the human rights of women at both the national and international levels. At the international level, WiLDAF maintains an institutional presence at sessions of major regional and international organisations dealing with the human rights of women. At national level, members are trained on how to lobby for law reform and good policy development.

• The facilitation of communication amongst network members

The survival and strength of a network depends on regular and efficient communication among members and the secretariat. The current communication policy includes the packaging, translation and dissemination of information to the focal points for distribution in country and access on the internet in communication. WiLDAF introduced the use of ICTs in the WiLDAF network. WiLDAF has carried out training for some of its focal points on the effective use of the Internet in their work.

A major part of WiLDAF's communication work includes disseminating action alerts calling for a response to threatened women's rights violation on the continent. .

Material development

From the experience of developing the Training Manual on Legal Rights Organizing and utilizing it for capacity building, of its members, WiLDAF has learnt the value of producing focused training materials that present uniform approaches and encourage the formulation of effective lobbying strategies.

Activities under this include:

• Developing and publishing newsletters, and thematic position papers

• Production of training material

• Simplifying CEDAW ,CRC, the Women's Protocol

• compilation of information following training on monitoring, reporting and documenting violations of women's rights

• production of posters, brochures and T-shirts for advocacy, production and publishing reports on research findings.