Oxfam public dialogue on the African women's rights protocol

Report on World AIDS Day Public Dialogue on the African Union Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa

On 30 November 2004, to mark the occasion of World AIDS Day and its intersection with the 16 Days of Activism Against Violence Against Women, Oxfam Great Britain facilitated a Public Dialogue on the African Union Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, at our offices in Pretoria. Given the fact that the themes respectively are: Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS – ‘Have you heard me today?’ and For the Health of Women, For the Health of the World: No More Violence - the focus of the event was on Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS within the framework of the Women’s Protocol.

The Women’s Protocol is significant in three ways; first, it reinforces attention on women rights that other international and regional instruments have elaborated, eg CEDAW, the Dakar Plat form for Action and the Beijing Platform for Action. Secondly it is the first instrument in International law to explicitly put women’s sexual and reproductive rights to medical abortion when pregnancy results from rape or incest or when the continuation of pregnancy endangers the health of a mother and to call for the legal prohibition of female genital mutilation. Thirdly, it is the first time in Africa that there is an instrument developed by Africans for women in Africa.

Penny Plowman, a gender consultant, facilitated the event. After welcoming the participants and introducing the panel, Judith Flick, the Oxfam Global Lead on HIV/AIDS and Regional Director for Southern Africa gave a brief introduction of the work that Oxfam does in the context of HIV/AIDS and gender – and established the importance of the AU Women’s Protocol within that framework.

Joe Malahlela, a Member of Parliament and Member of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services spoke to the South African government’s position on the AU Women’s Protocol. He stressed the importance of civil society as an active part of democracy that plays a vital role in letting parliamentarians know what is expected of them - ‘You have a right to make your call be heard’.
He alerted to the reservations the South African government has to the AU women’s protocol:
Ÿ Article 4 j) in regards to death penalty it should not be applied to pregnant and nursing women. That contravenes the South African constitution as death penalty was abolished.
Ÿ Article6 d) it requires marriages to be registered. This contravenes the customary law ion South Africa, as customary marriages are not required to be registered.
Ÿ Article 6h) referring to the nationality of children in cases where the nationality where one of the parents is a foreign national the children are not automatically South African nationals if they pose a threat to the national security interests.
Parliament has ratified the AU women’s protocol the only step left is to deposit it at the African Union Secretariat. Discussions following his presentation surrounded the need for an analysis of country dynamics in each instance where the Protocol will be adopted - specifically with regards to conflicting domestic laws within a country eg the instance of sharia law in West Africa and the gross human rights abuses that occur against women, even though sharia law is bound by a broader constitution.

Emelda Boikanyo, an independent gender consultant spoke to the uniqueness of the AU Women’s Protocol – unlike other international gender instruments, it tackles the issues of African Women, head on. The expectation on the protocol is that it is translated into laws that are implementable and translates into concrete support of women in protecting their rights. Emelda stressed the importance of fora of this nature to brainstorm instruments and tools in support of effective implementation of the AU Women’s Protocol. In looking specifically at the AU Women’s Protocol, the following issues were raised:
· Stigma and discrimination eg. HIV positive women who are given the death penalty because they have chosen not to breastfeed.
· A separate point related to the need to go beyond family planning and education and being able to make an informed decision about whether to have a pregnancy – highlighted in the article on Choice on termination of Pregnancy.
· Another article in the Protocol highlights the right to be informed of your partners status – it was noted that firstly, this infringes on the rights of both partners, but more importantly, in the case of women, disclosure leads to extreme violence.
· The issue of language discourse was another key issue raised: the Protocol asks member states to distribute this information so that women can understand these rights – the message, however, gets lost in translation. In addition, information, education and communication materials need to be made available in indigenous languages.

Sisonke Msimang, the Gender Advisor to UNAIDS in the Southern Africa region, looked at the broader mapping of why the Women’s Protocol was needed. She highlighted a number of important issues, but also a number of problems.
· At some point, there was a debate of gender not being an African concept, and this Protocol is important because its genesis is in Africa. It has also been a very significant step because it was a political action out of concern for women’s rights in Africa – taken be very conservative African leaders.
· The preamble on the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights clearly has a pre-occupation with the need to protect traditional values, which is something we can all stand behind; however it left too much scope for the shifting in promoting and protecting the rights of women – women’s activists felt the need to specifically define and protect the rights of women, and justified the need for a women’s protocol as a supplement to the charter. The problem though, is that the Charter is based in the fact that the law needs to protect women – which works well in the public arena eg courts, but how do we ensure that women’s rights are protected in the private domain eg, at home and behind closed doors. In addition, the Charter did not cover the way HIV/AIDS was eroding women’s rights.
· On the positive side, the Protocol highlights the protection for vulnerable groups eg widows.
· A gap in the Women’s Protocol is that is does not go far enough in articulating sexual rights (very specifically, choices on sex – when, where, with whom, etc) and choice on Termination of pregnancy.
· This value of this Protocol is that it can be used as a monitoring and evaluation tool to hold government’s accountable and to push governments to implement laws in support of protection of women’s

The debate that followed the two presentations looked at the following issues:
· What was the process of consultation around the Au Women’s Protocol? Whose document is it, and who decided what should go into it and what should be left out. This followed into a debate about gender and traditional values, and certain groups of women feeling as though other women did not have a right to talk on their behalf in claiming that Female Genital Mutilation, amongst other issues, was a human rights abuse.
· The following point highlighted concern around the implementation of the Protocol. It was noted that African governments are great are ratifying protocol’s, but are not very good at domesticating it. Laws may be amended to comply with the provisions of a particular protocol, but the weakness is in the implementation that makes a difference in the daily lives of women. The concern was around what the AU Women’s protocol is going to achieve that will make it different from CEDAW, Beijing, etc.
· An issue of accountability of Government’s was raised: in South Africa, to get things done, we have to exhaust all our channels – how is the Protocol going to differ? How is it linked to gender machinery like the CGE? It was responded that accountability becomes a challenge when a document like the AU Women’s Protocol, has no timeframes. The extent of how gender machinery like CGE can be linked in will depend purely on the extent to which civil society chooses to tap into this.

Prudence Mabele, Executive Director of the Positive Women’s Network highlighted the concerns experienced by people living with HIV/AIDS. She looked at:
· The gaps that we are currently experiencing in relation to statistics on how many women are on ARV’s, how many have dropped off the programme, how many have died from ARV’s;
· The issue of virginity testing and the pressure it put on young women – and the change of transmission mode through anal sex.
· Condom usage and negotiation thereof.
· Socio-ecocnomic and social impacts surrounding HIV/AIDS eg. Housing, poverty, welfare, etc
· Stigma and Discrimination
· Lesbians and oral STDs and transmission

Judith Flick summarised the need to work on various levels with the Women’s protocol – one element being ensuring that it is ratified, and the second level of working hand-in-hand with activists in ensuring implementation. In addition, she raised the issue of the slow speed of behavioural change in relation to the high speed at which the virus is mutating (medical science).

ENDS.