Open letter to the Government of the DRC

Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche en Droits de l’Homme et Démocratie

(Centre for Human Rights & Democracy Studies and Research)

Lubumbashi – Democratic Republic of Congo

28th June 2004

Open letter to the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo
On the Ratification of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa

To:

- HE. The President of the DRC

- Members of Government

- Members of National Assembly

All in Kinshasa / the Democratic Republic of Congo

Your Excellencies,

I am writing on behalf of the CERDH (Centre d`Etudes et de Recherche en Droits de l`Homme et Démocratie) a Congolese organization in charge of promotion and protection of Human Rights and Democracy based in Lubumbashi, DRC, because we are concerned about the treatment of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where conflict has been raging for more than five years. Many women continue to be discriminated and thousands of them have been raped and killed with complete impunity.

To address this situation, we seized this occasion to write to you regarding the ratification of the Protocol on the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa and urge your Excellencies to ensure the fast tracking of its ratification by the Congolese government.

Your Excellencies, recognizing violations of women rights, the DRC has ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), in 1995.[1] However, provisions on women’s human rights in CEDAW have not involved a conceptual shift or effected structural changes needed to implement its resolutions.

Furthermore, the DRC is also a state party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which recognizes the importance of women’s rights through articles 2, 3 and 18(3), since 1987.

Although the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (African Charter) imposes obligations on states parties to eliminate discrimination against women and to ensure the protection of internationally recognized women's human rights, It is not provides more comprehensive and specific guarantees with regard to women's human rights. This is clear for example, while Article 18 prohibits discrimination against women; it does so only in the context of the family. In addition, explicit provisions guaranteeing the right of consent to marriage and equality of spouses during and after marriage are absent. These omissions are compounded by the fact that the Charter places emphasis on traditional African values and traditions without addressing concerns that many customary practices, such as female genital mut ilation, forced marriage, and wife inheritance, can be harmful or life threatening to women. By ignoring critical issues such as custom and marriage, the Charter inadequately defends women’s human rights.

Thus, considering the repeated violations of rights affecting women in Africa, the persistence of harmful traditional practices against women in certain African countries and the increasing feminization of poverty and the stigmatization of female victims of HIV Aids, it was crucial for Africans to look for the Process of Developing the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.

Fortunately, at the African Union meeting in Maputo in July 2003, the AU adopted the "Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa".

This Protocol provides more comprehensive and specific guarantees with regard to women's human rights than the African Charter and therefore, complements the Charter and international human rights conventions by focusing on concrete actions and goals to grant women rights and it domesticates CEDAW in the African context. In other words, it offers significant potential to guarantee the rights of women.

But in order to come into force it needs to be ratified by at least 15 countries and by 2nd June 2004, only one country (the Comoros) had ratified it.[2] The DRC has only signed the protocol on 5th December 2003 without ratifying yet, despite the fact that the first African Union Ministerial Conference in May 2003 in Kigali, Rwanda calls upon member states of the AU to take all necessary measures for early adoption, ratification of the Protocol. Even at the Second Ordinary Summit of the AU in July 11, 2003 in Maputo Mozambique, the Assembly appealed to all member states to sign and ratify the Protocol in order to ensure its speedy entry into force.

Moreover, in the same line recently, the Chairperson of the African Commission, Salamata Sawadogo, made an appeal at the 35th Ordinary Session in Banjul, Republic of The Gambia (from 21st May to 4th June 2004), to those States Parties that had not yet done so, to ratify as their earliest opportunity the Protocol relating to the Rights of Women.

To sum up, it is clear that ratification will send a clear signal that women and men can and should enjoy equal rights and responsibilities. This enjoyment, in turn, will realize benefits to the whole of the country in particular and of the continent, in general.

Your Excellencies, now that the Protocol has been adopted and the DRC have signed as mentioned earlier, you should show your commitment to end discrimination and violence against women by contributing to ensure a speedy and full ratification to pave the way for a prompt entry into force of the instrument, and its effective implementation. Therefore, we recommend that:

- The DRC as an AU Member States ratify the Protocol to the African Charter relating to the rights of Women in Africa to ensure its entry into force and ensure its implementation.

Yours Sincerely

Me JOSEPH YAV KATSHUNG
Executive Director of CERDH

Phone: +27 72 43 42 896

4ème Niveau du Building de l`Université

De Lubumbashi E-mail : [email protected]

Po.Box : 1825 LUBUMBASHI

République Démocratique du Congo web site &nbs p;: www.cerdh.tk

Phones: +243 970 21 758 / + 27 72 43 42 896 Fax : + 1 - 501- 638 - 4935

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[1] Journal officiel No 23 du 1er décembre 1985, page 7

[2] As of May 2004, only Comoros has ratified the Protocol, although twenty-eight countries have signed the document. They are: Algeria; Benin; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Côte d'Ivoire; Congo; Djibouti; Democratic Republic of Congo; Gambia; Ghana; Guinea; Kenya; Libya; Lesotho; Liberia; Madagascar; Mali; Mozambique; Namibia; Nigeria; Rwanda; South Africa; Senegal; Sierra Leone; Tanzania; Togo; Uganda, and Zimbabwe.