Widows, in Tanzania and many other parts of the world, face discrimination on a regular basis, which often condemns women to a life of poverty. In the face of this discrimination, says this research from the Social Science Research Network, there are no national or international consensuses on the importance of changing the customary legal rules relating to widows, and on the larger question of the proper place of customary law and harmful traditional, cultural, and religious practices in the changing African society.

Two books on African women and by African women published this month in France.

* Reines d’Afrique et héroïnes de la diaspora noire.
By Sylvia Serbin - Publishers: Editions Sépia, Paris, 2005

A journalist and historian, Sylvia Serbin lived for 30 years between Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, where she was born.
In her book, 'Reines d'Afrique et héroïnes de la diaspora noire' she writes about the life, glory and predicament of 22 women, all Africans, whether they are from the African continent, from the West Indies or from America. Some of these women are authentic and legitimate queens, such as Zingha, Queen of Angola, Pokou, Queen of Cote d’Ivoire, Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar while others have made history because of their heroic struggle against racism and discrimination such as the American Harriett Tubman or less known heroines like the Mulatto Solitude who fought the reinstatement of slavery by Napoleon, after it was abolished, and was killed while fighting.

Retracing the life of these African women and their contribution to Africa and to the Black Diaspora, Serbin succeeds in proving how extensive and sophisticated the African civilisations were much before the arrival of the Europeans and much before Africa was depicted as the “Dark Continent”.

Serbin admits that she has put “women” forward, because “women are never mentioned in history or text books” and also because universal history has yet to acknowledge a black female heroine. She reckons that because “in the history of black people, all great figures are men” time has come to know about the women who have contributed to Africa’s legacy.

* Safia
By Safia Otokoré - Autobiography – Publishers: Editions Robert Laffont, 2005

Safia Ibrahim Otokoré is a Somali woman, born in Djibouti in 1969 and married to the African football star Didier Otokoré (today they are divorced).

In 2004 Safia Otokoré, representing the Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party), is elected deputy mayor of the city of Auxerre in the Bourgogne region of France. She is also vice-president of the Regional Council in that region with a portfolio including youth, sports and discrimination. She is president of the European and International Commission for the decentralised cooperation of the Région Bourgogne

'Safia' is her life story as a poor child of a Somali refugee family in Djibouti. She retraces her long struggle to get out of the “misery” she would have been condemned to, if she had not pursued her studies and especially if she had not devoted all her energy to become a competitive sportsperson. In a poignant but lucid manner, she talks about Djibouti, about her family, about her sister Koltoum who was forced into marriage and about female genital mutilation, practised so widely in Djibouti and which she had to go through when only aged seven.

* With thanks to Eva Dadrian for submitting this information.

Violence against women, a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women, today remains one of the primary obstacles to empowering women and achieving peace and security for all. Women have been systematically deprived of knowledge and skills that might help them to become better equipped to protect themselves against violence, including knowledge of the existing laws, religious texts, positive cultural resources, international injunctions on human rights, and the demands made by other women for rights in their community and elsewhere. In the WLP Symposium, speakers will address major challenges to eliminating violence against women and girls and discuss grassroots, national, and regional measures needed to raise awareness, initiate reform legislation, and create synergy for ongoing efforts to prevent violence and to promote women's human rights.

The latest number of ratifications to the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa stands at ten, following intensive campaigning at the Fourth Ordinary Summit of the African Union (AU) that took place between 24-31 January in Abuja, Nigeria.

Members of a coalition of civil society organisations operating under the banner of Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR) worked during the summit to accelerate the ratification of the Protocol by African governments.

As part of their campaigning work, SOAWR representatives handed out red cards to ministers of those countries who have not signed or ratified the protocol. Ministers of those countries who have signed the Protocol but not ratified received yellow cards, while those countries who had signed and ratified the Protocol received a congratulatory green card.

Sparked to action by having received a yellow card (signed, but not ratified), Senegal sought to correct the record in a meeting of 51 African ministers by noting that they should have been awarded a green card. Senegal had erroneously submitted their ratification to the AU by fax, but this had been rejected. Senegal's President Wade later arrived in Abuja with the original instrument of ratification.

Following the summit, The Comoros, Libya, Rwanda, Namibia, Lesotho, South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Djibouti and Mali had ratified the protocol. A further two countries, Benin and Guinea, are in the process of ratification, while 24 other African countries have signed. Once 15 countries have ratified the Protocol it will come into force and the process of domesticating the provisions of the Protocol in national law will begin. The Protocol offers significant protection to the rights of women in Africa.

At the AU meeting, Winnie Byanyima, gender director in the office of the AU chairperson, said: "We must remember that rights are not given, they are claimed. I would like to thank the 19 women's organisations calling on the Heads of States to ratify the Protocol and deposit their instruments of ratification. Thanks to the efforts of your campaigns, we will acquire the number that we require. You should note that the Protocol stands apart from the tradition of most African instruments that are not ratified at such speed. We plan to work with you in future to promote women's rights."

The women had gathered at a school near Dukem Town, 35 km east of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to wait for leaders of a local NGO working with the Inter-African Committee, a pan-African NGO dedicated to fighting female genital mutilation (FGM). The NGO leaders had travelled to conduct one of their routine community-awareness training programmes on reproductive health. The 80 or so women, aged 16 to mid-30s, included three girls who had just finished high school. All but five had been circumcised and organisers of the meeting said some were infected with HIV.

Some women take the decision because they cannot contemplate supporting another child. Others are too young to take care of even one. Whatever their reasons, a growing number of Gabonese girls and women are choosing to have illegal abortions – often with disastrous consequences. According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, clandestine abortions are thought to have accounted for 28.8 percent of all abortions that took place last year – up from 25 percent in 2003, and 16 percent in 2001. A study conducted in 2003 indicated that 15 percent of women had had at least one abortion.

"I use a razor, scissors and thread," says traditional midwife Peris Machanja, describing part of her work in delivering a baby. "Sometimes I use gloves, which I disinfect to use for another job – that is, if they are not torn. If they are, I try to get new ones.” Fifty-five year old Machanja, who lives in the low-income area of Kayole on the outskirts of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, assists with about five births a month, although this figure can double during busy periods. Her fee for doing so is about 6.5 dollars. But, if Kenya is to reach the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing maternal mortality by three quarters in the next decade, officials may have to call a halt to the work of this traditional birth attendant.

Three years ago in 2002, police statistics showed that four to six females were raped daily in Lagos. But 60 per cent of rapes in the area was said to be unreported officially. Subsequent official and newspaper reports indicate that the frequency of rape, especially of minors, has rapidly increased nationwide, particularly in such cities as Lagos, Enugu and Cross River State. By official estimate, 70 per cent of the cases was not reported officially.

'Decade of Small Steps, Large Leaps', The United Nation's special five-day session on women's rights, known as Beijing+10, begins on February 28. Women's eNews will provide news and perspectives on the meeting. In the first of seven dispatches, Nicole Italo reports that in Africa, 10 years after the U.N. called for the strengthening of women's legal rights, African women's rights are still often caught in the tangle between traditional and civil laws.

Kenyan Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi has issued an apology for comments he made which outraged women's groups. On Wednesday, Mr Murungi said donor criticism of the government's fight against corruption was "like raping a woman who is already willing". Women's rights groups had staged noisy protests outside his office, demanding his resignation.

Africa may be totally different today than it was a century or so ago but many girls still face cultural practises that affected their great grandmothers. A lot of these traditional practices often favour men, since most African societies today are patriarchal. Subsequently, an African girl, who is supposed to have a formal education and has been exposed to the more positive aspects of the influences of Western culture, often ends up suffering the same societal inequalities that her great grandmother endured during her time.

Congratulations! Yours is the best coverage of African news. The trade liberalisation, gender and AIDS articles were outstanding. For me, personally, they not only inform, but help me to demonstrate that African women are innovative activists for peace, social justice and economic democracy, which are the only ways to bring the HIV/AIDS epidemic under control. Is it possible for you to include e-mail addresses or to provide printer-friendly versions of your postings to download and read at leisure?
EDITOR'S REPLY: We don't include email addresses so as to protect recipients from the threat of spam. But if you wish to contact authors, write to and we'll forward your message. Pambazuka News is distributed as an email in text form, so you should be able to print that out and read it at leisure. So why not subscribe - it's free (although we always welcome donations!).

We encourage you to take part in our Web Discussion Forum by logging on to the EASSI Forum, which is in preparation for the 49th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) due to take place in New York. You can go straight to the Forum by visiting http://www.eassi.org or http://www.eassi.org/forum/index.php?bulletinCategoryId=4

This report examines women’s political representation on the African continent, and shows how quotas have contributed to increasing women’s access to political power. Gender quotas are now increasingly viewed as an important policy measure for boosting women’s access to decision-making bodies throughout the world. Experience from Africa is very encouraging: over 20 countries on the continent either have legislated quotas or political parties that have adopted them voluntarily. This report illustrates the different quota types that are being implemented in different political contexts. The report includes 17 regional and country case studies. The country case studies include Egypt, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

The government of Djibouti has ratified the African Union's Maputo Protocol on female genital mutilation (FGM), which requires its member states to ban the practice. The protocol was ratified last Thursday by Djibouti’s prime minister, Dileita Mohamed Dileita, at a two-day subregional conference on FGM in the presence of representatives of the AU, No Peace without Justice (NPWJ), an Italian NGO, and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The activist organisation, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), will return to the streets of the capital, Harare, on St Valentine's Day next week to demand democratic and violence-free elections in March. Under the theme, "The power of love can conquer the love of power", the women will hand out red roses and cards to symbolise their anti-violence message.

Passed by Parliament in 2001, the Children's Act outlaws various forms of violation against children, including FGM, for females 18 and younger. About 14 other countries in Africa have passed similar laws against FGM. Djibouti joined the group last Thursday by ratifying the African Union's Maputo Protocol on female genital mutilation, which requires its member states to ban the practice. But activists in Kenya - sometimes identified as a leader in the anti-FGM campaign - say the country still has a long way to go.

Seven non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Tanzania have formed a coalition to fight female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that is still widespread in the East African country. "Various studies have shown that at least 18 percent of women in Tanzania are victims of FGM," Hellen Kijo-Bisimba, the coalition's co-ordinator, said in Dar es Salaam on Friday, ahead of its official launch on 6 February.

Top of the recent African Summit of Presidents in Abuja, Nigeria, were issues such as health, food security and environmental degradation. But a coalition of 19 women's groups under the banner of Solidarity for African Women Rights also highlighted the needs of women. In an interview with BBC, a member of the coalition - Ms Mary Wandia - of the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) – explained women’s issues were so important. "Our main message is that we need to see a demonstration of African leaders' commitment to women's rights and a commitment to their words; that when they promise that they want to ratify the women's protocol to ensure that it comes into force they mean what they say. For now they have not done that. We're waiting for the action."

Two years after its war was declared officially over, a wave of sexual violence continues to sweep through the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although the violence is not on the same scale as it once was, it remains a messy, unfinished conflict which has a huge impact on civilians - particularly girls and women. At least 40,000 have been raped over the past six years, according to a recent report by Amnesty International.