WUNRN
Link to the Protocol to the African Charter on
Human & People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa:
AWID
Association for Women's Rights in
Development
AWID Resource Net Friday File
Friday October 27, 2006
The
Protracted Campaign for Women's Human Rights in Africa
An interview
with Faiza Jama Mohamed, Africa Regional Director, Equality
Now, about the
ongoing campaign for full ratification of the Protocol to
the African Charter
on Human and People's Rights, on the Rights of Women in
Africa
(ACHPR).
By Rochelle Jones - AWID
AWID: What is the Protocol to
the African Charter on Human and People's
Rights on the Rights of Women in
Africa (ACHPR)?
Faiza: It is an additional Protocol to the African
Charter which was
adopted on 11 July 2003 at the 2nd Ordinary Summit of the
African Union in
Maputo, Mozambique. The African Charter does not adequately
address issues
pertaining to the human rights of women and that is why an
additional
protocol was felt necessary to be put in place.
AWID: What
does the Protocol mean for women's rights in Africa?
Faiza: The Protocol
offers women in Africa not only a bill of rights that
addresses protection of
their range of rights within an African context,
but also obligates states to
take action and allocate resources to ensure
that African women enjoy these
rights.
The Protocol, for the first time in International law,
explicitly sets
forth reproductive rights of women by recognising their right
to access
medical abortion when pregnancy results from rape or incest or when
the
continuation of the pregnancy endangers the life or health of the
mother.
It further calls for the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation and
an
end to violence against women as well as recognising women's right to
own
property and protects their inheritance rights.
It endorses
affirmative action to promote equal participation of women in
the political
arena as well as in the judiciary and law enforcement
agencies. It sets forth
numerous economic and social rights such as the
right to food security, right
to education and health, right to equal pay
for equal work and calls for
states to protect women from sexual
exploitation such as prostitution and
trafficking of women and girls.
The Protocol is an inclusive document as
it recognises vulnerable groups of
women such as elderly women, disabled
women, women refugees as well as women
in distress, widows, pregnant and
nursing women in detention. The Protocol
goes a step further calling on state
parties to ensure that where higher
standards of rights exist either within
national, regional or international
instruments, they should retain those
standards of rights over the
provisions of the Protocol.
AWID: To
date, how many countries in the African Union have ratified the
Protocol?
What are the barriers to full ratification, and what are
campaigns focusing
on to encourage ratification?
Faiza: The pace of ratification has
amazingly moved forward. Today we have
20 ratifications (Benin, Burkina Faso,
Cape Verde, Comoros, Djibouti,
Gambia, Libya, Lesotho, Mali, Malawi,
Mozambique, Mauritania, Namibia,
Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal,
Seychelles, Togo, and Zambia) and
we know that few more (for example
Kenya, Liberia, Tanzania and Swaziland)
are in the process of
ratifying.
In January 2005, Solidarity for African Women's Rights
Coalition (for which
Equality Now serves as the Secretariat) introduced
rating cards (Red for
countries that have not even signed the Protocol,
Yellow for those who have
signed it but not taken the critical step of
ratification, and Green for
honoring those countries that have ratified the
Protocol) during the Fourth
Ordinary Summit of the African Union (AU) held in
Abuja. At that time we
had only 7 ratifications, 26 countries rated
yellow and 20 red. These
rating cards became an effective advocacy tool and
were widely publicized.
As a result, today we have only 8 countries in the
Red zone, 25 in the
Yellow category and 20 rated green.
Several
factors can be attributed to the slow pace of ratification. In
conflict
countries such as Burundi, The Democratic Republic of Congo,
Somalia and
Sudan, peace-making initiatives were the main priorities of
their
governments. In countries that were preparing for national elections
such as
Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda, political campaigning
was the
priority for governments. Mozambique ratified soon after
elections.
In others like Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Sahraoui Arab
Democratic Republic
and other Muslim populated states it appears that they
have issues with
some of the provisions of the Protocol and that has been the
cause for
their delay in ratifying the Protocol. Recently, Niger's Parliament
refused
to ratify the Protocol on the grounds of religion. However, other
Islamic
states (Djibouti, Libya, Mauritania, The Comoros) have ratified it
and
without reservations. So one wonders why the others are resisting
following
suit.
The Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR)
coalition and the Women,
Gender and Development Directorate of the African
Union Commission are
planning to host a joint meeting in Tunis in November
2006 for these
countries to deliberate on ways to move forward the
ratification process.
Several experts on Islam would make presentations aimed
at removing any
doubts about the Protocol being in contraction with Islam and
those Islamic
states that have ratified would also share their cases with the
rest. So, we
are optimistic that this consultation will lead to more
ratification. And
of course as we did in the past 3 to 4 summits, we
will continue with
advocacy interventions with a view to securing
ratification by all the 53
member states but also to call for its
domestication. Our target is to
ensure that all countries will do so in order
that all African women will
equally have the benefit of the
Protocol.
AWID: Women's rights groups were involved in an intensive and
lengthy
advocacy campaign for the adoption of the Protocol, and then again
for 15
member states to ratify the Protocol in order for it to come into
effect.
This is a striking example of women's mobilisation - could you tell
us
about these campaigns, and how they achieved their outcomes?
Faiza:
The adoption of the Protocol came around after 8 years of
campaigning. First,
it was about pushing for the idea of having this
protocol which was finally
accepted and a resolution adopted in 1995 by the
Heads of State and
Government at their 31st Ordinary Summit of the
Organization of African Unity
(OAU). Second, it took time to draft it and
come to agreement about the
rights provided in it. Third, the campaign was
about strengthening the
document as it was weak and not at par with human
rights provisions in other
international instruments that were already
ratified by the African Union
member states; and also to convince the
governments to come together to
finalize it so that it could be presented
for adoption to the Second Ordinary
AU Summit in Maputo (2003).
Three times the African Union Commission had
no quorum to hold the meetings
of experts and ministers to finalize the
document and so had postponed the
meeting three times. Our intervention, as
women from all over Africa, was
important for this to happen. We succeeded to
get more than the quorum
needed for the meetings to happen and to improve on
the text that was being
proposed for adoption. A year after the Protocol was
adopted a few of us
(Equality Now, FEMNET and Oxfam GB) came together to
review how many
ratifications had been received by the AU and we were alarmed
to learn that
only The Comoros had ratified it and we later learned that it
also did it by
default – by that I mean that the Comoros had many Protocols
pending and was
under pressure by the AU Commission to resolve this situation
so its
Parliament at one go ratified the whole lot including the Women's
Protocol.
We started to get really concerned that it might take
another 8 years or
more for this important Protocol on the rights of women to
enter into force
and be of value to women, especially after learning that the
African Charter
on Human and Peoples' Rights, which is the parent treaty,
took 5 years
before it was in force; while the African Charter on the Rights
and Welfare
of the Child, which was adopted in 1990, came into force 9 years
later.
Therefore, we undertook to do something about this and we were
inspired by
our earlier successes.
So, again we started consulting
with other colleagues who have been with us
in the campaign before (African
Center for Democracy and Human Rights
Studies (ACDHRS), WiLDAF, Akina Mama Wa
Afrika, Women's Rights Awareness
and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) in
Nigeria, Coalition on Violence
Against Women (COVAW) in Kenya, etc.) and
mobilized many more who were
equally committed to African women's rights. We
are now about 23
organizations in a coalition named Solidarity for African
Women's Rights
(SOAWR) and we have been campaigning for ratification and
domestication of
the Protocol by all the AU member States as well as involved
in outreach
work to popularize it. Several strategies have been applied by
SOAWR
members to realize these objectives. To name a few:
1. Producing
advocacy materials through various media such as the Special
issues of
Pambazuka (online newsletter), the publishing of a booklet titled
'Not Yet a
Force for Freedom' and other publications. These were good means
for
popularisation of the Protocol.
2. Making use of mobile phones as way of mobilizing and offering space
for
African public participation in the campaign with a view to urging
African
leaders to live up to their commitment.
3. Holding press conferences via TV/radio interviews and issuing
press
releases as a way of consistently holding governments accountable
while
also popularizing the Protocol.
4. Continuously handing out the rating cards (red, yellow and green)
and
upgrading the status of countries as they moved to deliver on
their
commitments to women.
5. Engaging in direct advocacy whereby SOAWR members dialogue with
member
states about the progress of ratification at national level and during
AU
summits and learning about any obstacles if any are inhibiting
their
progress.
6. Establishing good rapport with the AU Commission through its
legal
Counsel, the Gender Directorate and the Commission for Political
Affairs;
and with the Special Rappourter on the Rights of Women of the
African
Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights thereby enabling us to
conceive
joint actions to sustain pressure on member states as well as
retaining the
Protocol as a standing agenda item in the AU Summits.
7. Communicating directly with Heads of State on a regular basis and
this
served as a good method of constantly reminding them of their
commitments.
We used opportunities such as the deadline for the
implementation of the
Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (a
political commitment by
Heads of state and government made in July 2004), the
Pan African women's
day, the Beijing +10 review process which was looking at
progress made by
countries to realize their commitments to women, and the
treaties week of
the AU Commission which is a period that member states are
urged to ratify
pending protocols.
8. Organizing public events thereby reaching a wider African public –
this
proved to be a useful tool for popularization of the Protocol.
In
conclusion, the objectives of our campaign are focused and clear and
our
collective energies and actions were therefore harmonized at realizing
these
objectives. As a result, the Protocol on the Rights of Women broke
the
OAU/AU record by becoming the first human rights instrument that
entered
into force in the shortest period of time! For this we are very
proud. But
our task is incomplete until such time we see women actually going
to the
courts to demand their rights as provided in the Protocol, and
state
parties making real efforts to implement their obligations under
this
Protocol. As SOAWR, therefore, we are committed to continue our
advocacy
interventions. Recently, we produced jointly with the African
Union
Commission a book titled, "Breathing Life into the African Union
Protocol
on Women's Rights in Africa" and that is our ultimate goal – i.e.
that the
Protocol remains a living instrument that truly caters for the
rights of
women. All of us, regardless where we live have a role to play to
make this
happen.
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