Africa, Headlines

NAMIBIA-HUMAN RIGHTS: Taking CEDAW to the People

Theodora Nandjaa

WINDHOEK, Jul 29 1997 (IPS) - Protasius Andowa, an official in Namibia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, first read about the United Nation’s convention on women’s rights when he was reading a local newspaper this month.

‘The Namibian’ carried a report on how the country’s 1995 report on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was received before the international committee in New York. Andowa said it was the first time he had ever seen CEDAW.

Angula Amulungu, an officer in the Audio Visual Department of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting also confesses that he was puzzled when he heard reference to CEDAW on national television.

Amulungu mistook the acronym for a new “nickname” reporters had given to Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Namibia’s Director General of the Department of Women Affairs (DWA) in the President’s Office.

Namibia’s government, through the DWA, is working in the 13 regions of this Southern African nation to popularise CEDAW. The department, Ndaitwah told IPS, has taken “concrete steps to popularise CEDAW through simplified versions of the report (on CEDAW) which has been translated into seven local languages”.

The convention, she added, has also been “used as the basis for a communication strategy developed by the DWA to encourage women to be more assertive about their rights”.

Some CEDAW workshops have specifically been targetted at traditional and church leaders nationwide whose attitudes have been obstacles to women’s advancement and the enjoyment of their human rights.

Ndaitwah said her department had held workshops with traditional leaders to discuss “the question of inheritance which rips women of their properties and leaves them with nothing”.

Church leaders are being educated and lobbied through the workshops on the need to support the abortion bill, which is expected to be debated in parliament before the end of the year, so that women can exercise their right to reproductive health services.

According to Ndaitwah, the church leaders were consulted “in an attempt to convince them to allow their parish members to go for safe abortion after it has been legalised, and not to regard them as murderers who need to repent before being accepted in churches”.

The DWA’s Director General pointed out that since the country signed CEDAW in November 1992, the department has organised yearly information forums.

“All issues related to gender equality in the country”, are discussed at these forums attended by representatives from women’s non-governmental groups, women’s church groups, government officials, and men and women from various communities.

“We may not have mentioned the word CEDAW in our forums, but whatever we do for women’s advancement is related to CEDAW,” said Ndaitwah, adding that her department’s activities are centred around CEDAW’s articles.

CEDAW was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 18, 1979 and entered into force as an international treaty on September 3, 1981 after the 20th country had ratified it. The first 16 articles set out women’s rights, while Articles 17 to 30 deal with the administration of the treaty and its monitoring by the CEDAW international committee.

Andowa said that it is not enough for the DWA to target adults in its educational workshops on CEDAW. Those advocating women’s rights, he said, often target adults, while forgetting boys and girls.

Pamphlets on the convention should be sent to school libraries for students to read, and in turn, children will be able to explain it to their parents, Andowa added.

A team recently concluded investigations on how men and women are portrayed in educational materials used in schools, Ndaitwah said, and a committee has been set up to incorporate gender into adult and other formal education programmes.

Various workshops, she said, have been held with school headmasters to educate them on the importance of gender equality and to urge them to introduce gender debates in schools.

Ndaitwah said the DWA is now drafting the National Gender Policy to guide all government policies and programmes. Among the issues to be tackled by the policy are women’s economic empowerment in relation to men; strategies and policies needed to curb violence against women; policies to empower and integrate women with disabilities into the society as equal partners; and the need for the media to portray gender as a national issue and not just as a women’s issue.

The international committee in its review of the country’s 1995 CEDAW report “noted with concern that not many efforts are being made to integrate women in high positions of government as party lists are filled with men candidates, and that the constitution provisions are not utilised enough to enforce affirmative action in this regard.”

Namibia’s constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, and Article 23 on Affirmative Action, recognises that women have “suffered special discrimination” and need to be encouraged to play a “full, equal and effective role in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the nation”.

But the policy has not been translated into action. Out of 78 National Assembly members, 13 are women. Only two women are among the 20 Cabinet Ministers, and three of the 18 Deputy Ministers are women.

The ruling party, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), decided during its May congress that women should comprise “no less than half of the candidates on the party’s lists for local and regional elections”, and that “30 percent of the candidates on the list to be elected on its Central Committee should be women”.

The SWAPO Congress also “called on the government to pass legislation to ensure that at least half of the candidates for any national elections should be women”.

 
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