Who will Bell the Cat? Restoring Rights to African Women

Macro-economic reform, armed conflict and weak democratic political institutions are some of the limitations to enacting laws that protect women. A strong political will by African governments against these forces is crucial for the enforcement of laws that protect women, writes Eve Odete.

On 6 September 2005, the Gambia ratified the Africa Union Protocol on the Rights of African Women, bringing to 13 the number of countries that have ratified this landmark legislation on the rights of women in Africa. With only two more country ratifications required to bring the protocol into force, the next crucial phase in the first step to the realization of the rights of women in Africa is domestication of the law, and the prerequisite for this is political will within African states, for change.

At the twilight of the coming to force of the protocol, African civil society organisations and women’s movements join the African Union, together with progressive states, to welcome an African legal instrument that dangles to the over 400 million women in Africa the promise of social, cultural, economic, and political emancipation. The protocol, like its forerunner the Africa Charter on Peoples’ Rights, stands to swing African governments into action on creating platforms for addressing the rights of women in relation to food security, equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making, equal access to education and training, reproductive rights and access to health and the all important right to land, property and credit.

Africa is replete with civil society and women’s movements working with governments to create new policies, national action plans and legislation to protect the rights of women. Efforts in Botswana, South Africa, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Kenya have seen governments work very closely with coalitions of civil society organisations in developing national action plans for women. These efforts have largely been the result of intense pressure and lobbying by civil society through mass education on women’s rights, solidarity-building and lobbying governments for policy space within national structures.

The success in these efforts vary largely across Africa, but characteristically, the extent to which these action plans (e.g Beijing Plan of Action) and the domestic and international legislation ( e.g CEDAW) have been translated into real programmes with clear policy outcomes for African women is minimal. Budgets for women’s programmes remain insignificant as the agencies that are created or expanded to implement gender programmes remain under-resourced. Specific policy pronouncements have been made in relation to women’s right to property, participation in decision-making, and safety nets for vulnerable groups against the impact of harsh macro-economic policies. These have remained on government policy papers and on the lips of the agitating groups. They have lacked in time-bound targets and benchmarks for monitoring. The role of NGOs in the consultation and agenda setting has been nebulous as most structures for such engagement have remained unclear and un-funded even when these have been clearly spelled out in legislation.

Limitations in enacting laws that seek to protect women range from the harsh realities of macro-economic programmes, devastation of armed conflict, the emergence of counter social forces opposed to women’s rights, weaknesses of democratic political institutions, the weakness of a vigorous civil society and the lack of political will. A strong political will by African governments against these forces is therefore an imperative for the enforcement of laws that protect women. In the absence of a counter civil force that keeps the agenda of women alive on the policy platform, governments are want to sweep such legislation under the political carpet.

Way back in March 1995 in Lome, Togo, civil society and women’s movements began to scale the typical socio-political and economic hurdles to see the protocol established. They continue to lobby African governments to finally bring it into force. Against the signatures and ratifications is a fragile political will by national governments that this third force, the civil society organisations and women’s movements, must keep afloat.

* Eve Odete is Pan Africa Policy Officer, Oxfam GB.

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