As I reflect back on my 35 years of activism fighting injustices against women and girls, my feelings are conflicted. On the one hand, I have a sense of fulfilment arising from all I have contributed and the gains won along the way. But on the other, I know gender equality is still a dream, not a reality, and all I have done is just a drop in the ocean.

As the world celebrates this year’s International Women’s Day, Faiza Jama Mohamed, who has immensely contributed to the struggles for African women’s rights for many decades. 

Woineshet is now 27 and living in relative safety. This week's ruling means that she can finally complete the horrific chapter in her life and move on in the knowledge that she has helped to make life better for future generations of Ethiopian women and girls.

Five years after the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa came into force, the campaign to ensure that it is implemented and enforced across the continent continues. Faiza Jama Mohamed looks at SOAWR’s strategy for future advocacy, in light of the experience it has gained.

With the in Geneva due to consider calls for re-eliminating laws discriminating against women next week, Faiza Mohamed urges Pambazuka News readers to petition their governments to support the mandate. Please read the full letter for details of how to contact your representatives.

What gains and what challenges do we have two years after the entry into force of the protocol? This is the overall question that the various articles presented in this special issue of Pambazuka aim at addressing. And what is clearly coming out is that the challenges outweigh the gains made so far, says Faiza Mohamed.

What gains and what challenges do we have two years after the entry into force of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa?

This is the overall question that the various articles presented in this special issue of Pambazuka aim at addressing. And what is clearly coming out is that the challenges outweigh the gains made so far. The articles which are mostly written by members of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) coalition, for the occasion of the second anniversary of the Protocol’s entry into force, bring out descriptive country situations with emphasis on the extent to which the Protocol is embraced or not embraced by the governments of Kenya, South Africa, the Sudan and Uganda; but there are also mention of regional/continental level perspectives looking at how far the Protocol has gained momentum as a recognized tools for action to protect the human rights of women.

The authors raise several key issues that beg closer attention if this Protocol is at all to make a meaningful difference in the lives of many African women.

1. Universal ratification of the Protocol – i.e. ratification by all the member states – is critical for all African women to equally have the benefit of its implementation. The majority of the countries (30) have not ratified and clearly this is a problem. If you consider women as representing 50% of the total population [1] (in some countries they are more than 50% but let us stick to 50% for now) of these 30 countries, then this would approximately translate to 260.7 million women and girls being denied the chance to claim their rights as provided in the Protocol. This is more than 50% of Africa’s female population and surely this should be of great concern to all of us!

2. Various stakeholders in any given country need to take ownership of the Protocol, chief among them being the state itself. Obviously, it has been left up to the civil society organizations and in particular women’s organizations to be the flag bearers and its nurturers. Where are the states that have adopted it and pledged to carry it through? Where are the Presidents who made a solemn declaration to deliver it to the women of Africa? What about mainstream human rights organizations? Should they too leave it to the women or should they also take responsibility to advocate for it and live up to it? What will it take to have these important stakeholders embrace the Protocol as their own? Ownership by all, and not just the women, is a critical factor for the success of the African women’s rights Protocol.

3. Reservations entered against any article of the Protocol are obstacles aimed at defeating the objectives for which it was created. Of the 23 countries that ratified the Protocol only two (The Gambia and South Africa) had put up some reservations. Recently Gambia removed its reservations leaving South Africa as the only country with reservations. On a closer look one could argue that South Africa’s reservations are not harmful ones. But the notion of a leading African state, whose standards are looked up to as a model in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region, setting such a negative precedence (as reservations obviously carry that notion) is indeed worrying. Others would also argue that if a country, such as Kenya, Sudan and Uganda, want to ratify with reservations then let them do so because then their women will not be totally denied to benefit from the rest of the rights provided in the Protocol. And who knows, after some further advocacy work, they could come around as Gambia did to lift such reservations. These are important points to reflect on.

4. What is the added value of the African women’s rights Protocol? Clearly there is no doubt that it complements other international human rights instruments, such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against women (CEDAW), and many people would add that it also further provides rights that are well situated within the realities and needs of African women; but as the authors point out in their articles its value has not been exploited yet to reap the benefits it offers African women. As Delphine Serumaga states in her article on the situation in South Africa, “Women and the girl-child remain marginalized with regards to access to basic human rights such as justice, safety and security, housing and health.” If the situation is as such in one of the most developed countries in Africa what can we imagine would the case be in the less advantaged countries? For African women to reap the value of the women’s rights Protocol, countries must domesticate it, must invest resources into mass education, as obligated under article 26 (2) of the Protocol (on implementation and monitoring), must encourage women to seek help at designated places when their rights are violated, and must ensure that the justice system delivers free from its, often alleged, patriarchy’s biases. Many states can learn from countries like Djibouti which has, not long ago, set up a help Center for women whose rights are abused and equipped it with a hotline service for women to immediately report violations; and then it follows through their cases in the courts. In a short while the Center managed several hundred cases which had a good impact on the attitudes of the public in appreciating the rights of women. This is one example of how member states could turn the Protocol into real value for women.

These and more issues are deliberated in the several articles that follow; and the critiques and ideas that are discussed to re-energize the campaign could serve as food for thought. SOAWR members are definitely going to deliberate on them, during their upcoming meeting in January 2008, so that the African women’s rights Protocol is translated into, to borrow Pamela Mhlanga’s words, “substantive rights” and not allowed to remain as “paper rights”!

Keep on reading……….

Note
1 Source of population data: US Census Bureau

* Faiza Jama Mohamed is the Africa Regional Director of Equality Now and convener of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) coalition.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Before African governments can win the confidence of African women that they will deliver on huge projects like a continental government, they must first come up with a plan for the implementation of the articles of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, argues Faiza Mohamed. African leaders should get rid of all the customary practices that continue to limit women’s potentials as a necessary step for continental government.

Barely two weeks from the time of writing, African heads of state and government will be meeting for their 10th ordinary summit in Accra for a grand debate on the prospects of creating a government of African states. In the build up to this historic debate, civil society organisations have been vigorously consulting and busy in awakening public interest in the matter with a view to maximising the African public’s participation in the discussion about the added value of having one government for Africa. Sadly, time has been short, and African leaders are moving ahead with their debate without greater input from the African peoples that they represent. This brief article is an attempt to bring some of the concerns African women would like their African leaders to consider in their striving for a United African States (UAS).

One of the advantages of a UAS that has been highlighted a lot is the free movement of peoples and goods throughout the continent. While the dismantling of artificial boundaries created by colonial powers long ago would be a great welcome to the peoples of Africa, and especially those who were hindered from freely connecting with their relatives living on the other side of the border, women in the Upper Volta region of Ghana who are held bondage under the traditional practice of Trokosi share no joy in this potential euphoria over free movement in the continent.

For those who do not know of this practice, trokosi in the Ewe language means 'slaves of the gods'. What this tradition entails is that families who have commited crimes have to give away their virgin daughters to priests, so that the gods will be pleased and forgive them of their crimes. There are two categories of trokosi – those who can be released after serving a specified number of years (usually three to five years) and those who are committed for life. If a girl dies or if the priest tires of her, her family has to replace her. For serious crimes, families give up generations of girls in perpetual atonement. In accordance with the tradition, a trokosi who is released can never be married because she is married for life to the god.

Many released trokosi hence remain in concubinage to the priest for the rest of their lives and when he dies his trokosi are passed on to his successor. Women and girls who are victims of this practice know of no freedom of their minds and bodies, let alone freedom to travel in their villages. For them, free movement in Africa, as championed in the continental government proposal, will bring no comfort.

Though Ghana has passed a law in 1998 criminalising the trokosi practice, hundreds of girls and women are believed to be still held in several shrines. It is ironic that discussion on African unity is being discussed in Ghana where women and girls are being held as slaves for life. The African leaders should include seriously looking into and abolishing practices such as trokosi that enslave women and girls and infringe on their dignity and well-being.

Another advantageous point highlighted in the continental proposal is how Africa will be in a stronger position in trade agreements with non-Africans; and how this will bring greater benefits to the peoples of Africa. By and large, women remain the majority of those tilling Africa’s productive lands, and thus are responsible for produces that feed Africa and beyond. Alas they remain the poorest with no control over the lands they till and the crops they harvest.

For the African peoples to prosper, it is necessary that African leaders take the logical action to get rid of all the customary practices that continue to limit women’s potentials to inherit and own land. As they deliberate on serious discussion on ways to realise the United African States, they also need to recognise the need to have a roadmap for placing women’s economic empowerment in the front for actualisation of Africa’s growth and development.

In July 2003, our African leaders adopted the protocol on the rights of women which aims to address the many injustices that African women suffer from, including those discussed here, and which reduce their potentials to effectively contribute to the development and wellbeing of the African population. Four years later, only 21 countries (39 per cent) out of the 53 member states of the African Union have ratified it.

The majority of the member states are lagging behind in their commitment to women to enjoy the rights recognised in the protocol, which stands for the minimum standard of rights that African women would accept and so in their Accra deliberations the African leaders need not only to reaffirm their commitment to uphold the rights provided in the protocol but to also declare that it will be the premise from which African women’s rights will be advanced. For them to win the confidence of African women that they can undertake and deliver on huge projects like a continental government, they must first come out with a plan for the implementation of the articles of the protocol throughout the continent within a one year period. A United African States will be possible ifAfrica’s women are with you!

* Faiza Jama Mohamed is the Africa Regional Director of Equality Now and convener of the Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR) coalition.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

In July 2003 African Heads of States adopted the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa at their summit in Maputo (full text of the Protocol is available at A little over a year later only four countries (The Comoros, Libya, Rwanda and Namibia) have ratified it. This is far from the required 15 ratifications for the Protocol to come into force.

One might ask why ratification of the Protocol is so important and what value it brings to African women. The Protocol offers women in Africa not only a bill of rights that addresses issues in the African context, but it also obligates states to take action and allocate resources to ensure that African women enjoy these rights. The Protocol offers a concrete blueprint to go beyond lip service and make states’ undertakings accountable. These rights will however remain fictitious until member states of the African Union ratify and implement the Protocol into their domestic legislation.

Amongst the rights articulated in the Protocol is the right in Article 5 “not to be subjected to harmful traditional practices including female genital mutilation (FGM)”. Female genital mutilation is a harmful traditional practice that afflicts an estimated 130 million girls and women around the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 6,000 girls per day are subjected to FGM around the world but mostly in Africa.

It is a practice that translates into the partial or total removal of the clitoris (clitoridectomy), the removal of the entire clitoris and the cutting of the labia minora (excision), or in its most extreme form the removal of all external genitalia and the stitching together of the two sides of the vulva (infibulation). The cutting is done generally without anesthetic and those who survive it experience lifelong health consequences including chronic infection, severe pain during menstruation, sexual intercourse and childbirth, and psychological trauma.

Communities that practice FGM defend it as a rite of passage and a social prerequisite of marriage. But it is also used as a way to control women’s sexuality by safeguarding virginity and suppressing sexual desire. We, at Equality Now (www.equalitynow.org), an international human rights organization that works to promote and protect the human rights of women around the world, consider FGM a human rights violation and an extreme form of violence and discrimination against women and girls. We welcome the Protocol as a new tool that has potential effectiveness in protecting the human rights of women in Africa.

What the Maputo Protocol offers is a comprehensive set of provisions that create a framework for putting an end to harmful practices. It goes beyond a call to ending harmful traditional practices such as FGM and directs member states to take concrete action by:

- criminalizing the practice and bringing to justice those who perpetrate it,
- providing counseling support and treatment to victims of FGM,
- initiating public awareness-raising campaigns to end the practice, and
- intervening to prevent FGM cases thereby saving girls before it happens to them.

African states must indeed urgently take responsibility to follow through with these obligations. Burkina Faso offers a good case in point, and is leading the way in the fight against FGM. Burkina Faso criminalized FGM in 1996 and followed that with national campaigns to inform its people about the law and why FGM must be ended. It also offered help-lines for potential victims and concerned citizens to reach the authorities in good time to prevent the crime, and has put in place harsh punishment to de-motivate those still persistent to carry on with it. Furthermore, arrests and prosecutions of those responsible for subjecting girls to FGM were and continue to be publicized through the media to discourage potential perpetrators. As a result, Burkina Faso has seen the prevalence rate of FGM fall considerably over the years.

In some other African countries, even though they have adopted legislation to ban FGM, they have not followed through with the full program of rights set out in the Protocol and so have not produced similar results as those in Burkina Faso.

To save the thousands of girls affected each day by this harmful practice (and 6,000 girls is an enormous number with which to contend), African governments have an affirmative duty not to delay any further the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women.

During September 16 to 18, Kenya is hosting an international conference on FGM titled "Developing a Political, Legal and Social Environment to implement the Maputo Protocol”. Hon. Linah Kilimo, Kenyan Minister for Home Affairs, and a long time activist against FGM is leading the meeting and has secured President Kibaki's support for it. At the end of the conference, it is anticipated that the President or his Foreign Minister would officially hand over Kenya's instrument of ratification to the Chair of the African Union Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, who is invited. If this plan succeeds, Kenya would be the fifth country to ratify the Protocol following Namibia, which ratified it last month, and thereby laying out a legal framework to fight the practice and preserve the human rights of Kenyan women and girls.

Kenya appears to be on track and other African states also need to follow the example of the Comoros, Libya, Rwanda and Namibia in formally expressing their commitment to the human rights of women in Africa. As the continent next month gathers at the Seventh Conference on Women’s Rights in Addis Ababa to review progress made in honoring commitments undertaken in Beijing and Dakar 10 years ago, ratifying the Protocol on the Rights of Women could well serve as an achievement to bring to the table.

* Faiza Jama Mohamed is the Africa Regional Director of Equality Now

* Please send comments to [email protected]

It took almost a decade (eight years to be precise) for African leaders to finally agree on a text and adopt the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa at the Second Ordinary Summit of the African Union held in Maputo in July 2003. The Protocol is a legal framework for African women to use in the exercise of their rights. It is comprehensive in that it addresses various concerns of women of different ages and various conditions based on the realities at the ground. For that reason it is welcomed and celebrated by all African women.

Before it finally came onto the agenda of the heads of states meeting last year, several obstacles that inhibited completion of this important document had to be overcome. The first experts meeting convened by the OAU (now the African Union) in November 2001 brought together officials who in the majority regrettably had little legal or gender expertise. As a result, the draft document that came out of that meeting had serious gaps and was of a lower standard compared to other comparable international law instruments such as the Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which most African states, had already ratified.

The experts meeting also failed to reach agreement on some aspects of the draft. A future date was set to finalize the outstanding provisions, but this meeting and others called by the OAU/African Union to achieve this purpose had to be cancelled for lack of a quorum. Activists around Africa saw two problems: the document was weak and did not adequately address the specific issues relating to African women, and it was not moving forward due to the repeated lack of a quorum, which expressed the low priority accorded to women, although they comprise over 50% of Africa's population, by the very governments they have voted into office.

Activists then decided it was time to refocus their efforts. Various consultations were held around Africa among civil society organizations. Equality Now, an international human rights organization, joined the process in July 2002 at a meeting convened by the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in Nairobi. Equality Now also consulted with the African Women's Development and Communications Network (FEMNET), the African Center for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS), Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), and other regional and national groups that were most actively engaged in working toward the passage of a strong Protocol for the protection and promotion of women's rights.

In January 2003, Equality Now convened a strategy meeting of activists in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, proceeding with the meeting although the governmental meeting it was scheduled to coincide with was again cancelled for lack of a quorum. The meeting discussed, reviewed and strengthened the text of the draft Protocol through dialogue among women's rights organizations from across Africa and produced a collective mark-up, which was widely distributed across the continent for promotion with national governments. The coalition of activists also lobbied African governments to send delegates with legal and human rights expertise from their capitals to the scheduled meeting of the African Union.

Equality Now was nominated to take on a coordinating role and to work closely with the Secretariat of the African Union to encourage it to facilitate a successful meeting. In response to the campaign several countries held national consultation meetings, with the participation of civil society organizations, to review the mark-up. Several countries also brought members from civil society as part of their delegation to the experts meeting.

All in all, countries were much better prepared when they came for the experts meeting in March 2003 and many were also open to improving the existing document. Immediately prior to the Meeting of Experts and the African Union Ministerial Meeting that took place in Addis Ababa, Equality Now's Africa Office convened another meeting of women's rights activists and organizations, in order to coordinate a strategic plan for advocacy and to ensure that the substantive provisions of the draft Protocol were strengthened during the course of the experts' and ministerial meetings. These advocacy efforts had a dramatic impact on the draft Protocol, which was significantly improved during the course of the meeting. Subsequently, On July 11, 2003, the African Union adopted the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

The campaign by activists for The Protocol on the Rights of African Women represents a successful model of cooperation among national, regional and international women's NGOs that led to concrete results, namely the strengthening of the final text of The Protocol with regard to a number of significant provisions enumerating fundamental women's rights and its adoption by the African Union. The African Union's Commissioner Djinnit Said also saw the campaign around the Protocol as an excellent model for collaboration between the African Union and civil society organizations and said as much in a meeting the African Union hosted earlier in the year to consult with African civil society organizations.

One year after its adoption, however, only 30 countries have signed the Protocol and only one (the Comoros) has ratified it. It needs 15 ratifications to enter into force. Until then these rights remain hypothetical! All the past efforts by civil society will have been wasted if the Protocol is not ratified. And the majority of women in Africa will continue to be deprived of protection under international law of many of their basic rights. For this reason, activists have once again pooled their resources, energy and focus to urge governments to honour their commitments to uphold women's rights by ratifying the Protocol as soon as possible, ideally by the heads of state summit in July 2004.

Women around Africa are daily monitoring the website of the African Union taking note of which of their leaders are true to their commitments. Women's organizations and human rights organizations in Africa have launched national campaigns to lobby their respective governments engaging in dialogue with the relevant ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs, Gender and in some cases even the heads of states offices to impress upon them the importance of ratifying the Protocol without delay.

With a concerted effort, together we can achieve ratification. That is why activists in Guinea-Conakry are working hard to sensitize parliamentarians and decision-makers through workshops and meetings in an effort to win support for the ratification of the Protocol, groups in Kenya are engaging dialogue with several ministries (Ministry of Gender, Sports and Culture; Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) to sensitize them and discuss the process of ratification and the need to speed up the ratification process. In Mali women are planning to hold information and sensitization forums with Parliamentarians on the Protocol as well as mobilizing women's organizations to make a declaration urging the government to ratify the Protocol. In South Africa plans are underway to inform the Office of the President and the Department of Foreign Affairs and the State Law advisors as well as the Parliamentary Commissions on Justice, quality of life and the Status of Women on the Protocol and discuss the obstacles to the early ratification of the Protocol. And these are just some of the activities planned around the continent to press for ratification. It is imperative that governments heed our urgent call for women to be guaranteed equal status to men and equal protection of their rights.

The Protocol for the Rights of Women in Africa as it stands now is a piece of paper without any force. By ratifying it, governments will be taking the first step towards recognizing the equal worth of women. Implementation will then be critical. The Protocol makes many equality advances for women under international law, including affording special protection for vulnerable groups such as widows, the disabled and those from marginalised groups. It is only by protecting and promoting the rights of all its peoples that Africa will be able to access its full resources and lead the continent to prosperity. The Beijing +10 review process offers African governments an opportunity to demonstrate their determination to lead their peoples' to the path to development. One concrete benchmark on this path to development is the seriousness that they give to the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. If they ratify it now they will have a concrete achievement to bring to the table later this year when the continent comes together for the Beijing +10 conference, as a gesture of recognition for the human rights of women as a priority agenda of the continent.

We call on African leaders to honor their commitments to women and ACT NOW to ratify the Protocol!

* Faiza Jama Mohamed works for Equality Now.

* Please send comments to