by Petronella Mugoni – SANF 04 no 67
The high profile accorded to gender and women’s rights at the African Union (AU) Summit in Addis Ababa in early July, is a culmination of the lobbying and advocacy by relevant stakeholders, mainly women and human rights groups.
Some 48 heads of state attended the summit, which focused on peace processes on the continent, development, and for the first time, gender issues. The gender debate culminated in an 11-point action plan to improve women’s rights.
However, the failure by most AU member states to ratify the Protocol on Women’s Rights shows the amount of work still to be done. The reluctance to ratify has been attributed by women’s groups to the fact that the protocol challenges “some of the most rigid traditional and cultural practices that lie behind the sometimes violent repression of women.”
The protocol, formally adopted by the AU Summit in Mozambique’s capital Maputo in July 2003, embodies key policies, which promote gender equality in education, marriage, divorce, inheritance, property rights and protection from female circumcision among others meant to protect women.
Despite commitments by African leaders to place women at the heart of development, and poverty reduction, member states have been lethargic in ratifying the protocol. Of the 53 AU member states, only three countries, the Comoros, Libya and Rwanda have ratified the protocol. Twelve more countries must ratify it in order for the Protocol to become binding.
Twenty-seven member states, among them the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe have signed but are yet to ratify the document.
In the SADC region, only Namibia has indicated readiness to ratify. South Africa says it will not ratify the protocol because, as officials maintain, domestic law already provides more protection for women than that accorded by the protocol.
The AU Summit placed gender and women among continental priorities through the adoption of the Addis Ababa Declaration on Gender in Africa, the African Trust Fund for Women and the agreement to push for ratification of the Protocol by the end of 2004.
The Protocol has been hailed for complementing the African Charter by imposing obligations on state parties to eliminate discrimination against women and to ensure the protection of international human rights conventions by focusing on concrete actions and goals.
The Protocol is aimed at providing more comprehensive and specific guarantees with regard to women’s human rights than the Charter. It further domesticates the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in the African context.
Women and human rights groups however claim that the document has controversial sections such as the one authorising abortion in cases of rape and situations where pregnancy would endanger a mother’s life, mental or physical health.
The use of contraception and the right of a woman to decide on child bearing are other contested sections. The protocol grants women the vote in all cases, sets the minimum age for marriage at 18 and guarantees women the right to inherit and own property. It further spells out that state parties must “encourage monogamy as the preferred form of marriage.”
The head of the AU’s Directorate of Women, Gender, and Development, Mary Maboreke, says the protocol is part of a growing awareness in Africa that women can no longer be excluded from mainstream society, and that they are essential for a country’s development.
She commended the fact that for the first time in the history of the continental organisation, gender would be discussed as a special item.
(SARDC)
