The only two female heads of state in Africa, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Malawian President Joyce Banda, have just committed to using their positions to improve the lives of women across the continent.

Malawi President Joyce Banda (left) and Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at a women's rights event in Liberia. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

Both Sirleaf and Banda have long championed women’s rights. And on Apr. 29 in Monrovia, two years into what the African Union (AU) has declared the “Women’s Decade”, they pledged to work together to accelerate those efforts.

“Today is a day African women must rejoice,” Banda said as Sirleaf stood by her side. “This is our day. And this is our year. And this is our decade!” And Sirleaf affirmed her – and Liberia’s – commitment to empower women.

“The two of us have great strength,” Sirleaf said. “Together, we can do more to empower women and to ensure that women’s role in society is enhanced.” She added that her country would work with the new Malawian government to advance women’s empowerment.

To be sure, the challenges before them are great. Using the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a barometer, Liberia and Malawi generally score low in the areas of gender equality and women’s empowerment, education for girls, and maternal health.

According to 2010 U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) reports on the two countries, Liberia is only likely to meet certain goals on equality and education, and Malawi remains unlikely to meet its targets for any of the three MDGs that focus on women.

But as Banda noted during her speech, there has never been a better time to advance women’s rights in Africa.

Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, was elected as Africa’s first female president in 2005 and reelected in 2011. While her first term in office focused on reconstructing a country devastated by two civil wars, one from 1989 to 1996 and the second from 1999 to 2003, she has set out to use her second term as president to make women’s rights and health a national priority.

Banda succeeded former President Bingu wa Mutharika after his sudden passing on Apr. 5. After she was elected vice president in 2009, she had a falling out with Mutharika, and was subsequently expelled from the ruling Democratic People’s Party and essentially barred from participating in government.

However, she remained vice president, and in 2011 she formed the opposition People’s Party. Since Mutharika’s death a number of MPs have left the former ruling party to join her.

Both Sirleaf and Banda govern countries with significant development challenges. So devastating were Liberia’s civil wars that nearly a decade since the end of the conflict, the country is still in a state of reconciliation and reconstruction.

In Malawi, Mutharika’s last years in office were characterised by an economy crumbling under government mismanagement, which was compounded by the withdrawal of donor aid because of human rights abuses.

Yet despite the fact that Sirleaf has had to focus her efforts on reconstruction and Banda is barely one month into her time as president, there is concrete evidence indicating that both women have put the advancement of women at the top of their agendas.

At her office in Monrovia, Liberian Minister of Gender and Development Julia Duncan-Cassell described advances in women’s empowerment as observable through representation in government, as well as in ordinary women’s participation in the democratic process in Liberia.

“In 1997, market women didn’t know much about elections,” she told IPS. “In 2005, they tried, but they all voted with thumb prints. But in 2011, most of the market women were able to mark their names.”

On education, Duncan-Cassell pointed to figures indicating that the ratio of girls enrolled in school continued to climb towards parity with boys. The 2010 UNDP report on Liberia and the MDGs confirms this, noting that the ratio of girls to boys receiving a primary education stands at 0.88 to one, and for secondary education, 0.69 to one. The document states that Liberia is on track to achieve its targets on girls’ education.

With regard to women’s health, Liberia’s five-year “Road Map”, launched in March 2011, aims to “halve Liberia’s high rate of maternal and newborn death” and calls for “increasing the number of skilled birth attendants at all levels of the health care system by 50 per cent.” According to the country’s 2007 Demographic and Health Survey, Liberia’s maternal mortality rate is 994 deaths for every 100,000 live births – one of the highest in the world.

Banda too has already accomplished much for women since ascending to the presidency.

She has strengthened the voice of women in government through the appointment of eight women to senior cabinet positions. She has assigned women to the positions of deputy chief secretary to government and deputy director inspector general of police. And she has advanced women’s economic empowerment through the introduction of an agricultural programme and a market initiative.

And with the presidential initiative on maternal health and safe motherhood that is still to be launched, she admits she is following in the footsteps of Sirleaf. “This one, I learned from my big sister,” Banda said.

“Malawi’s maternal mortality rate is as high as 675 deaths per 100,000 (live births),” Banda noted. “As a woman president and a mother, I feel it is my obligation to stop the unnecessary deaths of women.”

Litha Musyimi-Ogana, head of the Women, Gender and Development Directorate for the AU, applauded the partnership she sees taking shape between Sirleaf and Banda.

“I fully embrace the pronouncement,” she said in a telephone interview from Johannesburg. “It is wonderful news to hear that President Banda and President Sirleaf have prioritised the African Women’s Decade and (have agreed) to work together to advance women’s rights.” Musyimi-Ogana added that on behalf of AU Commission head Jean Ping, the organisation pledged to make its top representatives and resources available to Sirleaf and Banda, to accomplish the goals of the AU Women’s Decade.

Meanwhile, Banda said that she believed her responsibility for ensuring women’s rights extended beyond Malawi.

“I know that women in Africa still face many challenges due to HIV and AIDS, poverty, conflict, and harmful cultural practices, among other issues,” Banda said as she looked over to Sirleaf. “However, I firmly believe that you and I will tirelessly work together to make sure that women’s rights on the continent get better.”

Duncan-Cassell also noted that challenges lie ahead. But she maintained that Banda’s rise to the presidency of Malawi was a cause for celebration.

“Now we have Joyce,” she said. “Like President Sirleaf said, she’s not going to be lonely among men anymore. She has a counterpart.”

*Additional reporting from Massa Kanneh in Monrovia.

The widespread practice of marrying minors continues to be one of the most incendiary legal and political issues in Morocco today, causing open confrontations between hard-line Islamists and moderates throughout the country.

Speaking on national television last month, Mohammed Abdenabawi, an official of the Ministry of Justice, declared that 30,000 minor girls are married every year – roughly 10 percent of the 300,000 marriages recorded every year in this country of 32 million inhabitants.

The phenomenon is widespread, the consequences for young women and girls severe, and the efforts of civil society sustained, though maintaining momentum against a tide of cultural and religious conservatism is challenging.

A campaign to gather one million signatures to forbid the marriage of minors is already in progress, sparked by the death of Amina Filali, a 15-year-old girl who committed suicide after being forced to marry her rapist.

Supposedly to protect family and female “honour”, a court evoked legislation in the penal and family codes to force Filali to marry the man 10 years older than she who forced her, at knifepoint, to submit to him.

Both the court case and Filali’s suicide opened the floodgates to a deluge of public debate and activism around the issue, which had hitherto been a taboo topic in traditional Moroccan society.

Jamal Rhmani, a member of the opposition Socialist Union for Popular Forces and former Minister of Employment, told IPS, “The campaign has gathered more than 780,000 signatures up to now.”

Despite being a member of the political opposition and one of the lead organisers of the campaign to ban marriage of minors, Rhmani sees his involvement in activism first and foremost from his perspective as the father of a 14-year-old daughter.

“Before being a politician, I am a father. We cannot be indifferent to what is happening around us,” he explained.

Activists, rights groups and members of the opposition have been clamouring for the abolition of article 475 of the penal code, which allows rapists to get off scotfree if they agree to marry their victims; as well as articles 20 and 21 of the family code, which allows the marriage of minor girls.

But the root of the problem runs deep, and will require more systemic change than the abolition of one or two laws

“The culprit is archaic jurisprudence implemented by ignoramuses,” Chakib Khettou, a citizen of Casablanca, told IPS, referring to the Muslim law allowing the marriage of girls older than nine years, according to traditional law.

Back in 2008, Sheik Mohamed El Maghrawi, a well-known Moroccan Muslim scholar, published a Fatwa reiterating families’ right to marry off their daughters over the age of nine. His position provoked a major scandal but the scholar suffered no consequences.

During a press conference in the city of Marrakesh last April, El Maghrawi even expressed his attachment to his position, “based on the Quran and the words of the Prophet ” according to him.

However, opposition to this particular reading of Sharia’a law has become widespread.

Ahmed Faridi, a teacher who holds a licence degree in Sharia’a law, told to IPS, “Nothing in the Quran allows marrying a nine-year-old girl,” he explained. Even if it turns out that the Prophet of Islam himself had married a minor girl, “he is in that case an exception and cannot be a rule,” Faridi stressed.

Traditionalists won’t let go

Minister of Justice and Liberties, Mustapha Erramid, is not as moderate as some of the activists pushing for the marriage ban.

In a national televised address last March, the Minister said, “The marriage of minor girls is not forbidden by the law.”

A lawyer by trade, Erramid is “tolerant” towards the amendment of article 475 of the penal code, but refused to speak about the amendment of articles 20 and 21 of the family code.

The Islamist Minister hinted that demonstrations similar to those held against the National Plan for Women’s Integration in Development, enacted under the socialist government of Abderrahmane Youssoufi in 1999, were not far off.

Back then, thousands of Islamists hailing from the ruling Justice and Development Party (PJD) took to the streets of Casablanca against Youssoufi’s plan to include women in political and economic development, which they judged as “incompatible” with Sharia’a because it forbade polygamy and fixed the minimum age of marriage for women at 18 years old.

Still, current members of parliament are not too worried that today’s activism will see such a vehement reaction by conservatives.

“A national debate on this subject is at present necessary to amend the penal code and the code of the family. A legislative initiative is already being taken by the socialist group in parliament to guarantee more protection to minor girls,” Rhmani said.

The second chamber of parliament held a meeting on the subject last week. The president of the chamber, Mohamed Cheikh Biadilah, said the proposed amendments should be viewed in “the spirit of the new constitution”, adopted during the turbulence of the Arab Spring, which “commits the State to guarantee the social and economic rights of the family” and “to protect minors (regardless) of their family or social position” and “forbids any shape of discrimination based on gender.”

Biadilah also said, “The legislative power has the obligation to intervene every time it notices that a law has become incompatible with the development of the society.”

“All the laws that go against the dignity of women must be amended or even abolished “, said the president of the Chamber of Councilors in Moroccan parliament.

Increasing numbers of Malian women are being raped by Tuareg rebels and armed groups that have swept across the north of Mali since the beginning of year, expelling all government troops from the region.

Increasing numbers of Malian women are being raped by Tuareg rebels and armed groups that have swept across the north of Mali since January. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

According to Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, who is currently on a mission in Mali, there have been reports of rape and sexual violence taking place in towns and villages across the region.

“We’re very concerned about what appears to be a drastic increase in the targeting and sexual abuse of women and girls by armed groups in the north,” Dufka told IPS.

“Since rebel groups consolidated their control of the northern territory they call the Azawad, Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of rape and many others cases in which girls and women have been abducted from their homes, towns and villages, and very likely sexually abused.”

Dufka reports that most of the abuses have been, “perpetrated by rebels from the MNLA and to a lesser extent Arab militias allied to them.”

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is an umbrella term given to groups of armed Tuaregs who have come together with the declared goal of administrating an independent state, Azawad.

Since the colonial French left the region in 1960, there have been several Tuareg rebellions against the Malian government. Previous uprisings ended in negotiations and the appointment of rebel leaders to state positions.

However, the rebels say the Malian government has failed to stick to promises made in negotiations, and continue to demand an independent state.

This time, armed with a heavy arsenal of weapons left over from previous rebellions, and additional arms coming from Libya over the last few years, the MNLA have made unprecedented advances. This was made easier by the coup in Bamako and the subsequent withdrawal of state military in the north.

Commenting on the allegations made by Human Rights Watch, MNLA spokesman Moussa ag Assarid, currently in the Malian city of Gao, denied MNLA men were involved in the sexual violence. “These men are not MNLA, but are other men around,” says Ag Assarid speaking over the phone from Gao. He admitted, however, that “We cannot control all the people in Azawad.”

Although the MNLA declared an independent state on Apr 6, residents in the region say the rebel movement does not really seem to be in control. “One day, one armed group will come into town, then the next day it will be another; we feel very unsafe,” one resident in Gao who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS over the phone.

Since the conflict began, several armed Islamist groups have emerged in the region, adding to concerns for the future of women’s rights.

One group, Ansar Dine, led by Iyad Ag Ghali, a prominent leader in previous Tuareg uprisings, has begun attempting to enforce Sharia law in the north. Soon after entering Timbuktu, Ag Ghali announced the group’s beliefs on the radio.

“Misfortune is due to people’s lack of faith in God, and because they have abandoned the practice of Sharia, because we have changed our way of life under the influence of whites,” he said.

While Ag Ghali is estimated to only have around 300 men in his ranks, his influence goes far and wide. Many MNLA commanders are still loyal to him from previous rebellions, as are drug smugglers, and other Islamist groups in the region.

Since Ansar Dine announced Sharia law, there have been unconfirmed reports of Ag Gali travelling with leaders from AQIM, the regional Al Qaeda group. It is also believed that Nigeria’s extremist group, Boko Haram, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa have been operating in the region.

As residents report foreigners increasingly being spotted in the Islamists ranks, fears grow that Ag Ghali’s goal of creating an Islamic state could be closer to being achieved. Many Malian women, who have enjoyed freedom and relative equality compared to women in other countries in the region, are concerned this freedom could soon be a thing of the past.

“Since these groups have arrived, we hardly go outside, we are terrified what will happen if we forget to do something they have told us to do,” a 40-year-old market vendor in Timbuktu, who also wished to remain anonymous, told IPS.

“I have been working in the market all my life, it is how I feed my children, how can I just stop now? Even if they allow me to work, I am not used to sitting in the baking heat all day covered head to toe.”

It is reported that Ansar Dine and other Islamist groups have been going door-to-door ordering women to wear veils and respect Islamic law. They have been going to hairdressers and ripping down photos of unveiled women, shutting down brothels and prohibiting the sale of alcoholic drinks.

While there have not been any reports of women being punished by Ansar Dine for failing to adhere to Sharia law, women in the region are growing increasingly fearful of the possibility that they will start being punished if the Islamist group gains more control.

Food, electricity and infrastructure have also been severely affected by the conflict. In many cities food and water are running low, and it has been difficult for civilians to receive humanitarian aid.

“The vulnerability of women in the north is increased by the lack of medical care, non-existent rule of law institutions, and limited humanitarian assistance which could mitigate their suffering and deter further abuse,” says Dufka.

It would be too simplistic to think that Malawi’s problems have ended with the death of President Bingu wa Mutharika. But it is an opportunity for newly appointed President Joyce Banda, who is also leader of the opposition People’s Party, to step up and offer a new and more responsive style of leadership.

Malawi’s Army Commander General Henry Odillo hands over the presidential sword to President Joyce Banda at her swearing in ceremony. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

Mutharika, who assumed leadership in 2004 and was serving his second term of office, suffered a heart attack on Apr. 5 at his palace in Lilongwe. According to reports he was rushed to the country’s main referral medical facility, Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe. He was later airlifted to South Africa, the government said. Throughout Apr. 6 there had been unconfirmed rumours that he had died. But state radio only confirmed the following day that the 78-year-old president had died and declared 10 days of mourning.

Malawians danced in the streets and in marketplaces as a sense of jubilation swept across the country when the Office of the President and Cabinet finally confirmed the death. Hours later, Banda was sworn into office. She is southern Africa’s first female head of state and will fill the post until the country’s general elections in 2014.

She has dedicated much of her life to the economic empowerment of women and women’s rights. Banda, the daughter of a policeman, told IPS in an interview in December 2011 that women were significantly under represented in areas of economic decision making and the key to addressing the situation was to put more of the country’s money in the hands of its mothers.

Nelia Kagwa, the chairperson of the Women Traders Association in Lilongwe, told IPS that she hoped Banda would mend the country’s failing economy.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world as 74 percent of the population here lives on less than 1.25 dollars a day, and nearly one in 10 children die before their fifth birthday. The rising cost of basic commodities has added to these woes and the country is also experiencing shortages of necessities such as sugar and bread. The items have become even more difficult to afford since the government introduced a value-added tax of up to 16.5 percent on products such as bread, meat, milk and dairy in June 2011.

“Maize prices have almost doubled in the past year and many families can no longer afford a basic meal,” Kagwa said.

“She won a prestigious award on ending hunger in her community. She could end hunger for many Malawians if she is given chance.”

Banda was awarded the joint Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger in 1997, together with Mozambique’s former President Joaquim Chissano.

James Kaliwo, a street vendor in Lilongwe, told IPS that “a new dawn has risen over Malawi” following Mutharika’s death.

“Things have been getting worse economically and socially. God has answered our prayers. Mutharika caused problems for all of us by failing to improve the economy,” said Kaliwo.

Prominent local political analyst Boniface Dulani told IPS that while it would be too simplistic to assume that Malawi’s problems have ended with Mutharika’s death, there is no doubt that it offers the country an opportunity for a fresh start.

Dulani told IPS that Banda should make the most of her appointment until the country’s general elections in 2014.

“Whilst previously Banda would have had to count on the sympathy vote of Malawians, she could earn the confidence of voters by demonstrating that she has the ability to take Malawi in a new and truly progressive direction. She could seize the opportunity and win over the trust of Malawians who have grown increasingly suspect of those in the corridors of power,” said Dulani.

He said that it is not certain whether ruling party legislators would try to frustrate her agenda as they hold a commanding parliamentary majority.

However, many are hopeful that the country’s economic woes will ease. Dulani said that with the appointment of a new administration, donor support to Malawi would resume.

“Most of Malawi’s recent challenges, including those rooted in a myopic foreign exchange policy and the loss of donor support because of poor governance, can be easily and quickly reversed,” said Dulani.

Malawi’s donor relations suffered greatly following accusations that the southern African country has failed to respect the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and the right to freedom of the press. Donors had refused to release up to 400 million dollars and the United States suspended a 350 million dollar grant.

The country’s failing economy, and the fuel and foreign exchange shortages, saw unprecedented nationwide protests against Mutharika from Jul. 20 to 21, 2011. Twenty-one people were killed by the police and 275 were arrested. Banda was a vocal supporter of the protests.

Dorothy Ngoma, a prominent civil society leader who was among those leading the protests against Mutharika, said she has faith that Banda will rescue the country from its economic crisis.

“She is very capable. She is so reliable. I am so sure we will see change in this country very soon,” Ngoma told IPS.

Civil society leaders and some government officials also expressed their joy and support for Banda, who is also leader of the opposition People’s Party, as she addressed supporters and the media outside her home in Lilongwe hours before her inauguration.

“Malawi should adhere to the Constitution of the Republic in moving forward,” she said. At her swearing in ceremony she added: “this is no time for revenge; we need to move forward as country.”

Almost all the country’s cabinet ministers attended the signing in ceremony. One noticable exception was Peter Mutharika, the late president’s brother.

The two-day delay in the announcement of the presdient’s passing led to concerns that there would be a power struggle between Banda and the ruling party. Malawi’s Deputy Minister of Transport Catherine Gotani-Hara told IPS that Mutharika’s allies wanted his younger brother, Peter, to assume office.

It is an issue that Banda and Mutharika clashed on in the past. Mutharika expelled Banda, a former ally, from his Democratic People’s Party for insubordination when she refused to endorse Peter Mutharika as the ruling party’s candidate for the 2014 presidential elections.

Mutharika then excluded Banda from working as a part of his government. She launched the opposition People’s Party in September 2011 but remained vice president, as it is an elected and constitutional office.

No man, except for those raised here as children, lives in Umoja village in Kenya; one has not for two decades. It is a village only of and for women, women who have been abused, raped, and forced from their homes.

No man, except for those raised here as children, lives in Umoja village in Kenya. Credit: Hannah Rubenstein/IPS

But in this remote village, located in the grasslands of Samburu district, this mantra does not ring true. In Umoja, as one female resident says, “We are our own heads.”

Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, holds a unique status in the country: it is a village populated solely by women. For more than two decades, no men have been permitted to reside here.

The rule is one of the requirements of a community that has fought against overwhelming odds to become a place of refuge for women. It is a sanctuary where men – who have been the cause of so many problems for these women – are simply not welcome.

In the 22 years since its founding, the village has had a significant impact not only on the women who choose to call Umoja home but within the communities that surround it. The example that Umoja has set, coupled with the outreach efforts of its residents, has touched the lives of women in the region.

Celena Green, who is the Africa programme director for an organisation called Vital Voices that works with the women of Umoja, told IPS: “The existence of Umoja has allowed women’s groups in other surrounding villages to learn from the empowerment and pride of the Umoja women.”

Women from nearby communities attend workshops in the village that are aimed at educating women and girls about human rights, gender equity, and violence prevention. When the women return home, Green explained, “they begin to change the culture, demanding a safe, violence free community where women and girls are valued and protected.”

“Ideally, no woman or girl should ever have to flee her home to come to Umoja in the first place,” she added. “But ultimately, the aim of Umoja is to provide an emergency safe haven for those women who are in distress, and more importantly to contribute toward building communities where everyone is valued and can succeed.”

Umoja’s history began in 1990, when a collective of 15 Samburu women, who called themselves the Umoja Uaso Women’s Group, began selling beadwork and other goods to raise money for themselves and their families. As the group began to grow financially lucrative, they found themselves facing increasing harassment by men in their communities who felt that economic growth was not appropriate for the women, who traditionally play a subordinate role.

In response, the women, led by matriarch Rebecca Lolosoli, decided to break away and begin their own village, in order to ensure security and cooperation for themselves out of the reach of those who sought to undermine them.

Today, Umoja is home to 48 women who have come from all over the country. Their stories vary – some were young girls fleeing forced marriages to old men, others were raped or sexually abused, and several were widows who were shunned by their communities. Moreover, several women residing in the village are Turkana, taking refuge from the tribal violence currently raging in the central region of Isiolo.

The villagers, who rely on the sale of beadwork and profits from a nearby campsite and cultural center, pool their funds as a collective to support themselves. In addition to providing food and basic necessities for village residents, profits are used to cover medical fees and the operation of a school that serves both the village’s children and its adult women who wish to learn basic skills and literacy.

Nagusi Lolemu, an older woman with delicate hands and a melodious voice, is one of the village’s original founders. Sitting in the shade, her nimble fingers string red beads deftly in one fluid, unthinking movement, as she speaks rapidly in Samburu.

Lolemu’s story echoes a recurring theme in the village: she was widowed after years of marriage and subsequently rejected by the community she called home. “There were too many single women,” she explained to IPS through a translator. Single women, who are not permitted to hold property in Samburu culture, and generally are not educated, are viewed as a financial drain on the community. When her husband passed away, she was no longer welcome in her home.

Nagusi, who has been living in Umoja for 22 years, has two grown children. She does not question her decision to leave her home for Umoja.

“My children are educated, working, and giving back to the family and the community,” she told IPS. “In a regular village, this could not happen.”

In her village – like any other traditional community – there is little opportunity for women’s education and the consequential financial benefits it brings, she explained. Her daughter would have grown up as she did, illiterate and dependent on men for all her basic needs.

“Here,” Lolemu said, matter-of-factly, “everyone is equal.”

Green echoes this statement, explaining to IPS: “In a traditional village, women may not have had the opportunity to exercise leadership, to be in control of their wealth or resources, and they would more likely experience domestic violence, female genital cutting, child marriage and other traditional practices that discriminate against and physically harm women and children.”

In addition to barring men from residing in the village, the women of Umoja live by a set of self- imposed rules, which, as Lolemu explained, are based on ensuring equality and mutual respect within the village.

Residents are required to wear the traditional clothes and intricate beadwork jewelry of their people at all times, in order to preserve and promote their cultural heritage. The practice of female genital mutilation is not permitted. And the only males allowed to sleep in the village are those who have been raised there as children.

One of the most striking aspects of Umoja is the women’s attitude towards men. In a place where men have been the root cause of so many hardships, and, in most cases, the reason the residents fled their homes, it is tempting to think that the victims want nothing more to do with them and are happy to live the rest of their lives surrounded by other women. This is not the case at all – in fact, most of the younger women in the village plan on marrying and raising families.

The difference is that they are going to do it on their own terms.

Judy, a 19-year-old resident who fled an arranged marriage to a much older, polygamous man five years ago, is planning on getting married some day. She dates – outside the confines of the village, which is not only permitted but encouraged by the older residents – and is raising a six-month-old named Ivan, who squirms and coos in her arms as she speaks. One day, she will marry and leave Umoja for her husband’s village. But, until then, she is happy here.

When asked if there is anything she misses from her previous life, any element of living in a women’s- only village that she finds lacking, she laughs.

“No. Here we have everything,” she says, and smiles.

In Umoja, women are not only their own “heads” – each is her entire body.

A multi-pronged strategy to end female genital mutilation in Mauritania is making gradual progress, though campaigners acknowledge much remains to be done in a country where more than two-thirds of girls suffer excision.

A 2007 Demographic Health Survey found that 71 percent of women and girls in Mauritania have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM), carried out by traditional birth attendants on girls before they reach the age of five.

The survey reported the reasons given in support of the practice were religion, aesthetics and the promotion of modesty. It also found that the practice was less common among better educated families.

Khatto Mint Jiddou, who heads the campaign against gender-based violence at Mauritania’s Ministry for Social Affairs, Childhood and the Family, told IPS that the initiative involves a wide range of people, including civil society activists, doctors and religious leaders.

The national programme, supported by several development partners, includes lobbying for the adoption of a law criminalising excision, raising awareness of a fatwa (a religious notice) forbidding excision, and the setting up of regional offices to monitor the practice.

In March, 35 excisors – including many from the central Tagant region, where an estimated 97 percent of girls suffer excision – publicly announced that they were voluntarily abandoning the procedure. Jiddou said the women had been convinced of the dangers of the practice by the explanations put forward by doctors and theologians.

Djeinaba Ba, a gynaecologist in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, told IPS that FGM causes pain and trauma, and often results in serious infections. Massive haemorrhaging, which can lead to death, also occurs frequently.

Aziza Mint Meslem, a midwife and civil society activist working against FGM, said that girls who survive the harmful procedure only have more difficulties ahead.

“Some infections create dysfunction in the external mucus membranes of the uterus, which prevents the passage of sperm to the uterus, thereby creating sterility,” she said. She added that the practice also provokes obstetric fistulas and haemorrhaging during childbirth.

Religious leaders have also lent their voices to the campaign.

Hademine Ould Saleck, the imam of the old mosque in Nouakchott, said that he and his colleagues issued a religious notice, or fatwa, forbidding FGM in 2010, based on the risks identified by doctors and taking into account the emphasis Islam places on the dignity of human beings.

“We consider this practice, in its usual form, to be forbidden because of the damage it causes, and call on civil and criminal authorities to act against perpetrators,” he told IPS.

Saleck said that the fatwa issued by the Mauritanian religious community in 2011 received support from colleagues in eight West African countries: Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Chad.

There are additional incentives for birth attendants to renounce FGM: although those who give up the practice do not receive any compensation, they will be prioritised in the allocation of loans for income- generating activities and given preferential access to literacy classes.

But Meslem, who works with an NGO called the Mauritanian Association for the Health and Development of Women, says her experience in the field underlines the need for the adoption of laws specifically targeting FGM.

She told IPS that twice in the past two years, she has come across cases of young girls who have died due to haemorrhaging after FGM. In each case, it was her NGO rather than the girls’ parents who alerted police; both times, the woman responsible was arrested, held for questioning for several days, but then released with no further action taken.

The midwife lamented the lack of legal sanctions against excisors in the Mauritanian penal code. “It’s a flagrant violation of the rights of girls, because international human rights law stipulates that every person has the right to the integrity of her body,” said Meslem.

Gynaecologist Ba told IPS she has seen shifting attitudes recognising the harmful effects of FGM, early marriage and closely-spaced pregnancies. She observed, however, that the shift is noticeable among better-educated women living in cities and towns, and not among those who practice a nomadic lifestyle.

Meslem too sees reasons for guarded optimism. “We are seeing a positive trend, even if this phenomenon, rooted in socio-cultural considerations, is far from being brought under control.”

“There were three people. One person was holding me down; one person was holding my hand; and the other person was doing the job. They lay me down, and…” Fatu said of the female genital mutilation she underwent as an eight- year-old in Liberia.

FGM is a taboo and complicated topic in Liberia and it is dangerous for women to speak out about it. Credit: Travis Lupick/IPS

According to the World Health Organization, Fatu endured what is classified as a type II female circumcision (on a scale of one to three), where her clitoris and labia minora were cut away.

Now 23 and a student at the University of Liberia, Fatu’s circumcision was part of her initiation into the secretive Sande Society, a pseudo-religious association to which most Liberian women – depending on which tribe and part of the country they are from – are members.

The Sande and its male counterpart, the Poro, shape many aspects of culture, tradition, and society as a whole in this West African nation. The Sande “bush” schools are where young Liberian women – some as young as two years old – are supposed to receive instruction on the traditions of respect, how to run a household, and how to prepare for marriage.

It is also where their circumcisions happen.

The Sande society believes this rite of passage makes a woman strong and prevents her from becoming promiscuous.

International organisations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund argue that FGM is a human rights violation that denies women “their physical and mental integrity, their right to freedom from violence and discrimination, and in the most extreme case, their life.”

FGM’s central position in the Sande makes it particularly difficult to curtail, explained Minister of Gender and Development Julia Duncan-Cassell. But through cooperative efforts with traditional leaders, the government of Liberia is quietly moving to shut down the Sande schools and bring an end to female genital cutting in Liberia.

“Government is saying, ‘This needs to stop’,” stated Duncan-Cassell. “I can’t tell you that it stopped completely, but the process is ongoing.”

In the past the Liberian government has been unwilling to comment on FGM and Duncan-Cassell outlined the clearest position on the practice to date. She affirmed her office’s commitment to putting an end to female circumcision in the country. FGM is a taboo and complicated topic here in Liberia.

While Fatu mostly spoke positively of her experiences with the Sande, many women interviewed by IPS refused to discuss the society or FGM.

“It hurt. Seriously, it hurt. And there was a lot of blood,” Fatu said, contorting her facial muscles as she recalled the experience. Yet Fatu maintains she does not regret the time she spent in the Sande bush school.

“From that time till now, I feel like a woman. I feel proud,” she said, her last word spoken slowly, drawn out, and punctuated with the same emphasis she used to describe the pain she felt during her initiation.

Duncan-Cassell conceded that eradicating FGM in Liberia will take time.

“There has been a statement put out by the Ministry of Internal Affairs asking all of our mothers, our aunts, our sisters, to desist from such practices,” Duncan-Cassell said. “Government wants to respect the beliefs of the people but, at the same time, is telling them not to infringe on the right of someone else.”

There are no reliable statistics on the number of Liberian women circumcised; however, it is estimated that as many as two-thirds of women in the country have undergone the procedure.

The cessation of Sande initiations and FGM remains a highly sensitive issue for the government, and officials interviewed maintained that it would take years to put an end to the practice. However, an alleged deal exists that could see the Sande sidelined sooner than most expect.

Assistant Minister of Culture at the Ministry of Internal Affairs Joseph Jangar said that a deal has been struck between the Sande and Poro societies, whereby the Sande would hand over land used for initiations to the Poro.

“The women agreed,” Jangar said. “With that understanding, the women cannot practice Sande. Because of that, we are not issuing permits (to operate Bush schools) to any Sande Society.”

Jangar said that an official letter, sent on Dec. 9, 2011 to district superintendents and heads of both the Sande and Poro societies, requested that all Sande groves be closed down by the end of that year. “They all received the letter,” he said. “If we find any zoes (traditional spiritual leaders) practicing Sande school, we will fine them.” Monitors are scheduled to go out into the counties by the start of April, he added.

However, Minister of Internal Affairs Blamo Nelson claimed that he was not aware of the letter, but said that he sees FGM slowly becoming a thing of the past.

“The advocacy calling for an end to FGM should continue,” he said. “And I’m sure that in time these practices, that more and more Liberians are beginning to find obnoxious, will go away.”

Mama Tormah, head of all the Sande’s female zoes, said the society is currently undergoing a number of changes, including placing an emphasis on more formalised studies into the culture. Another is addressing a criticism often levied at the Sande – that it enrolls and circumcises girls far too young to take part on their own free will. Tormah acknowledged that 17 or 18 years should be the minimum age for students of the “bush” schools.

She, however, denied that grove schools were ever involved in FGM and chastised Duncan-Cassell for speaking publicly about this taboo subject. “You’re not supposed to ask me that question under lights,” Tromah protested.

Meanwhile, Nelson cautioned that traditions and beliefs are difficult things to change and, when it comes to an issue as culturally sensitive as FGM, are complicated to even debate.

A conversation on genital cutting in Liberia has no doubt begun. But for some, it has arrived too late.

In December 2011, 17-year-old Lotopoe Yeamah underwent her Sande initiation in Nimba County. According to media reports, complications left her bleeding for a week. When Yeamah was finally taken to a clinic, she was pronounced dead on arrival.

By Kristin Palitza
ABIDJAN , Mar 15 2012 (IPS)

“I would like to use contraception, but my husband is against it,” says Bintou Moussa*. The 32-year-old mother has just given birth to her sixth child at the Abobo General Hospital in Cote d’Ivoire’s commercial capital Abidjan.

A health worker explains the sexual transmission of infections at the family planning clinic in Yopougon. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

The family barely survives from the money Ibrahim earns from odd jobs here and there. But despite their difficult economic situation, Ibrahim refuses to consider family planning.

“My husband does not want to use condoms. He says it’s against nature. And I don’t dare to take the birth control pill because I am afraid he might find out about it,” Moussa explains.

When asked if she knows about her rights to sexual and reproductive health, the woman shakes her head. “As head of the family, it’s my husband who makes decisions about the health of the family,” she explains. That includes her body, she says.

Moussa is not aware of the option of having a contraceptive injected once a month, if she so wishes, and that she can do so without her husband’s consent. She also does not know how to access such health services because there is no family planning service at the hospital or any public clinic in Abobo, Abidjan’s biggest slum with an estimated population of one million.

In fact, Cote d’Ivoire’s commercial capital, which counts at least five million people, has only one clinic that offers family planning services free of charge. It is located within the premises of the public hospital in Yopougon, one of Abidjan’s largest suburbs, which lies about 15 kilometres south-west of Abobo and is run by the non-governmental health organisation Ivorian Association for Family Well- Being (AIBEF).

Here, staff counsel about 80 patients a day on issues relating to sexual and reproductive rights, including contraception, safe sex, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancies, and maternal and infant health. The clinic also runs outreach programmes through a mobile clinic to raise awareness about the services it provides.

“Our main hurdle is to overcome the patriarchal and cultural perception that the man makes all the decisions at home. But at the same time, men say it’s the woman’s responsibility to take care of the children and their health, including their own pregnancy, birth and post-natal care,” explains Dr. Nathalie Yao-N’Dry, the clinic’s programme manager.

“When effectively women cannot make decisions about accessing health services without the permission of their husbands, that’s a dangerous contradiction.”

Many women share Moussa’s experience in Cote d’Ivoire, a West African country where family planning is widely regarded as a “women’s issue” that husbands do not have to concern themselves with. As a result, very few men use the small number of public services on offer, while women continue to struggle to realise their sexual and reproductive rights.

AIBEF is trying to slowly change this. “Whenever a man is ill and comes to access general health services in the hospital, we try to recommend family planning services as well. But it’s very difficult to get men interested,” says Yao-N’Dry.

The other hurdle is availability of services. While AIBEF struggles to get men to buy into the concept of family planning, most other public health facilities in the country do not even offer such services. One of the reasons is that government has not made any specific allocation for family planning in its already low national health budget.

Only 4.5 percent of the country’s budget goes towards health, despite the fact that Cote d’Ivoire is one of the African Union countries that committed itself through the Abuja Declaration of 2001 to spend at least 15 percent of its national budget on health services.

“Health facilities throughout the country lack funds, skilled health workers and resources,” laments Germaine Moket, the medical services director of the local branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, an international organisation assisting with reproductive health and family planning services in more than 180 countries worldwide.

“As a result, most public health centres in the country don’t have contraceptives in stock, at least not regularly,” she explains. “And even if they do, they sell them at prices that the general population cannot afford, since those drugs aren’t given out free of charge.”

In the 10 months since Cote d’Ivoire has been trying to recover from its violent post-electoral crisis, the country’s new government has put into place a number of measures to improve health services in the country.

When Ouattara was instated in May 2011, he implemented nationwide free health care services to help the population recover from the effects of the post-election violence. Since Mar. 1, the scheme has been limited to free services for pregnant women, children under five and malaria patients.

“Mother and infant health are a priority of the health ministry that needs to be addressed urgently,” said Professor Allou Assa, ministerial spokesperson for the national Department of Health. But sexual and reproductive health services, which are preventative rather than curative, are currently not part of the free package.

That means women like Bintou Moussa continue to be left with few options. In a few days, she will return with her newborn to her small shack, knowing fully well that she might soon fall pregnant again. “We hardly manage to bring through five children. Now we have another mouth to feed. I really don’t know how I could cope with another pregnancy,” Moussa says.

*Name changed to protect identity of interviewee

Excerpt:

By Francesca Dziadek
BERLIN, Mar 1 2012 (IPS)

The Arab world is talking about a revolution; not just out on the streets but in films, in newspapers, in songs – using any means necessary to document events, expose the horrors of war and explore the struggles and possibilities that lie ahead as the Arab Spring feels the wintry chill of post-revolutionary democratic challenges.

During Arab Spring World Cinema day at Berlin’s 62nd international film festival, Arab filmmakers expressed hope, fear, defiance, resolve and resilience.

Caught between repression and the struggle for change, filmmakers have been documenting the tidal wave of transformation sweeping across Arab countries and creating a new, collective culture of resistance.

Many feel the artistic process has been a personal and political quest for reconciling the tensions between Islam, faith, freedom and democracy, but by far the strongest consensus among media makers has been – as Julius Caesar famously remarked while leading his armies across the River Rubicon in Northern Italy – “the die has been cast.”

Image production in war-torn Syria

This was no accident – most authoritarian regimes thrive on placing severe restrictions on the collective imagination of their populations, limiting their ability to conjure up alternatives to the daily routine of repression.

While working on a documentary about the ‘caricature scandal’, a story about freedom of expression circumventing censorship, Syrian producer and film activist Hala Al Alabdallah unearthed a law forbidding the use of “images devoid of commentary”. The discovery highlighted just how insidious repression can be.

But while state forces attempt to control everything from free association to artistic production, resistance and creativity have come together in the squares or “agoras” of the Middle East and North Africa, opening up new public spaces for social solidarity, overcoming collective fears and expressing hope and a new sense of belonging.

For the first time, it seems, the feeling of being a citizen of one’s own country is proliferating among the Syrian masses, buoyed by a cultural resurgence that includes street dancing and turning old folksongs into revolutionary anthems.

“People came to the streets asking for freedom; even in a (muzzled) country like Syria we hear slogans chanting that Syrian people are one. I see the incarnation of freedom in poetry,” said Al Alabdallah pointing out the powerful nexus at work between insurgency, culture and engagement.

Mohamed Ali Atassi, a cultural producer in exile, turned to filmmaking out of psychological necessity, “when I realized I could no longer express the complexity I was feeling without picking up a camera,” Atassi, whose “creative solutions” include obtaining footage from inside the country using the internet and Skype interviews, told IPS.

As revolution and the struggle for change spreads across the Arab World “witness-filmmaking” is emerging, as a formidable art enabled by YouTube – a new form of dissent-inspired ‘auteur’ film. Increasingly, a generation of mobile-savvy youth are becoming gatekeepers of the visual world, archiving that which cannot be denied to people rising up against state power.

Despite her fear, Younis felt compelled to order her newly trained team of young video journalists to “get out there and keep the cameras rolling.” In their toughest assignment yet, the 20-year-olds had to get on the streets and ‘learn by doing’ the dangerous process of reporting a revolution.

One of the video journalists reporters, Ahmed Abdel Fatah, was shot in the eye while filming people being killed on the Qsr el-Nil bridge during the Internet blackout of the 18-day-long Cairo revolution last January.

The resulting dramatic footage was edited into a documentary entitled “Reporting… a Revolution” – a powerful example of witness-filmmaking by six young reporters including Abdel Fatah.

“I am a videographer, my eye is my most precious asset,” he said. “But we will never stop. This is our job, it’s what we know how to do best and we’ll keep doing it.”

Well aware of the contradictions implicit in “guerrilla journalism”, Younis faces a daily struggle with the ethics of journalistic objectivity, as the lines between documenting revolution and revolutionary documentary filmmaking blurred into non-existence.

Arab women face the camera

Many acts of defiance amongst women are increasingly poignant expressions of a new readiness to speak up without fearing the consequences of being heard.

Examples like Aliaa Magda Elmahdy’s subversive act of posting a nude photo of herself was seen as a groundbreaking statement on the dignity of the naked female body trapped in a gender power struggle.

“The nude picture is indicative of a new state of fearlessness and this gives me hope because an incident of this kind would not have occurred before the revolution,” pointed out Viola Safik, a German- Egyptian documentary filmmaker talking in Berlin about changing perspectives in the Arab world.

Safik also warned that the opening up of cultural frontiers could lead to an era where art will become more aggressive, potentially engendering violent backlashes, like the power of the regime to label cultural producers as “traitors” or “unbelievers”.

Undeterred, women are slowly and tentatively facing the camera. Long-repressed controversial issues like marriage freedom, the meaning and implications of financial independence, tradition, what to accept and what to refuse, were all central questions in Hanan Abdalla’s debut documentary “In the Shadow of a Man”.

Born in the backstreets of Cairo, 69-year-old Wafaa, the documentary’s protagonist, looks back at the “honour” check she was forced to submit to on her wedding night and has no qualms or regrets about her divorce, though she sadly never recovers a sense of respect for men.

As violence rages throughout the Arab world, with the spotlight largely on Syria and Bahrain, Berlinale Festival jury-member Boualem Sansal, the Algerian novelist and poet, pointed out that Algeria has somehow escaped scrutiny, despite the fact that president Abdelaziz Bouteflika “strangles his people morally and culturally, an act that is tantamount to cultural genocide,” Sansal said on the last day of the Berlin film festival.

His words are a sombre reminder that the die may be cast but crucial dominoes in the Arab world have yet to fall; and when they do, the cameras will be rolling.

Excerpt:

Eight years ago when Mary Sitali’s husband divorced her, by sending a traditional letter to her parents saying that he no longer wanted her and they could “marry her to any man of your choice – be he a tall or a short man, the choice being entirely yours,” she returned to her village in rural Zambia with their two children and no way of supporting them.

The Barotse Flood Plain, about 190 kilometres long and 70 km wide, floods during the peak rainy season that starts in late January. Credit:Lewis Mwanangombe/IPS

At home in Kandiana village, in Zambia’s Western Province, her late father allowed her to farm his two pieces of land, about a quarter of a hectare each, while the then 51-year-old Sitali waited for another man to marry her, and while her father continued to maintain ownership of the land.

The village is on the fringes of the Barotse Flood Plain, about 190 kilometres long and 70 km wide, which floods during the peak rainy season that starts in late January.

One of the pieces of land that Sitali’s father let her farm was near this flood plain and she was able to plant the traditional rice seed known locally as “Angola”.

The second offer of marriage never came. But through her efforts as a rice farmer Sitali was able to partially support her children, her mother, and even her late brother’s three children.

But Sitali is what the NGO Concern Worldwide describes as a “marginal farmer” because although she works hard, the food she produces is usually not enough to feed her family for the whole year. Other women farmers like Sitali have also had to endure months of hunger, especially towards the beginning and end of the harvest.

Rice has never been a serious cash crop in Zambia, despite its ability to alleviate poverty and chronic hunger. In the 2010 harvest statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture it does not feature among the country’s top 10 cash crops, which include maize, cassava, wheat – predominantly cash crops for white commercial farmers – and groundnuts.

For this reason it has always been outside the basket of crops that receive farm subsidies from the government.

But Sitali is a member of the Nañoko Cooperative Association, which negotiates for farm support for its members from both the government and civil society. It is one of the more than 87 such cooperative associations in the country to which women farmers belong.

According to government statistics, more than 1.5 million women work in agriculture, either as paid employees or as small-scale farmers. Most are semi-illiterate or illiterate and have no formal training in farming practices.

However, NGOs like Concern Worldwide, Civil Society for Poverty Reduction, Pelum Association, Keepers Zambia Foundation, Action-Aid International, Oxfam International and many others support Zambia’s women farmers with training, seed, fertilisers, farm animals and implements. And now the government has started subsidising rice farmers.

“Under the government’s Farmer Input Support Programme we now give rice farmers two bags of subsidised chemical fertilisers – one basal, and a top dressing… They are also given a 10 kilogramme pocket of rice seed,” George Muleta, a field officer for the Ministry of Agriculture, said. On the open market fertilisers can sell for as much as 37 dollars for a 50 kg bag, but with the subsidy it only costs 10 dollars.

The Western Province is the poorest region in Zambia, according to the country’s 2000 national census. Here there are almost two million households, and women like Sitali, who are either divorced, widowed or unmarried, head up to 19 percent of these homes.

And 13,750 women in this province are currently engaged in rice farming, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Patrick Chibbamulilo, senior programme officer at the Japan International Cooperation Agency, said that between 1988 to 2008 Zambia’s national rice harvest grew from about 9,293 metric tonnes to about 24,023. But in only three years from 2007 to 2010 it jumped from 18,317 metric tonnes to 53,000 – a leap of about 288 percent.

Rice farming in Zambia is still rudimentary as the yield per hectare is only 1.44 metric tonnes, compared to the African average of 2.5 metric tonnes per hectare and the world average of 4.15 tonnes per hectare, according to records at the International Rice Research Institute.

For the women in Western Province, farming maize has not been a viable option because the soil here does not support its growth. While it can grow on the flood plain it will be washed away by the seasonal floodwaters from January to May before it matures.

But Sitali and other women here have now benefited from the introduction of a new seed variety of wheat, locally called Nduna.

“We used to go hungry in the lean months of September, October and November – before the mangoes ripen,” Sitali said. “But not anymore, and all thanks to Nduna.”

Nduna, in the local Silozi language of the province, is the title of a traditional leader but the Ministry of Agriculture introduced a wheat seed variety of the same name in 2010. And it was developed specifically for the wetlands of Western Zambia, Muleta explained.

“The introduction of wheat as a second crop has really helped us. Otherwise we would have died of hunger. It has really put money in our pockets,” Butete Biemba, a rice farmer from Ushaa village in Western Province, said. Like Sitali she is a single mother looking after a family of six, after her husband died of HIV/AIDS. She is also a member of the Nañoko Cooperative Association.

Now both Sitali and Biemba earn 60 cents per kg for their wheat. It is more than twice the amount they can sell their rice for, which goes for 25 cents per kg at harvest time.

“Unlike rice, wheat does not require so much water to grow. Just the wetness in the soil is good enough for the crop. And the great thing is that by September all the wheat would have been harvested, leaving the farmers time in which to prepare their fields for the next rice planting season,” Muleta said. (END)

As Somalia’s transitional government and various stakeholders meet Wednesday to discuss the inclusion of the country’s clans in the new government, women politicians have called for a greater role in the leadership of this East African nation.

Most Somali women have to provide for their families as the country’s female politicians call for greater representation in parliament. Credit: Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

The Somali government, regional autonomies, civil society, and the non-militant Islamist group Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a will meet in Garowe, Puntland state from Feb. 15 to 16 to discuss the composition of the country’s new parliament as the transitional period ends this August.

In exclusive interviews with IPS, the Minister for Women’s Development and Family Care, Dr. Mariam Aweis Jama, and the director for Women’s Affairs at the Presidential Palace, Malyun Sheik Heidar, said it was time that Somali women played a key part in the country’s leadership.

Jama said that in Somalia women are denied access to leadership and accused Somali men of not respecting women and preventing them from having a greater role in politics.

A woman has only ever held the ministerial post for Women’s Development and Family Care, and no woman has been appointed to other ministerial roles.

“As I remember, in the country’s history only the Ministry of Women’s (Development and Family Care) was always given to the Somali women. But that time was passed and we are going to have an equal share in the future cabinet,” Heidar said.

Both Jama and Heidar said they want to see more women in various ministerial posts and in the country’s other top leadership positions.

Heidar said that it was shameful that there is no regional female governor in the country, which consists of 18 regions and nearly 100 districts. “We only have one female district commissioner in Mogadishu, and that is unacceptable to us,” she said referring to Deqo Abdulkader, the commissioner of Wardhigley district in Mogadishu.

“Women are about 70 percent of the people and that is why Islam allowed that a man can marry four wives, so it is misfortune to neglect the role of women who are a majority in every community. We need (to be part of the) Presidency, we need a woman to become Prime Minister or Speaker of Parliament,” Jama said adding that Somali women are also lobbying to lead diplomatic missions abroad.

Jama said that according to Article 29 of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Charter, drawn up during the Somali National Reconciliation Conference in Kenya in 2004, women must comprise 12 percent of the transitional parliament. However, she feels they were cheated and not given enough posts in the current government.

Only 41 out of the 550-member Somali parliament are women – a mere seven percent. The Human Rights Committee is the only one of 27 parliamentary sub-committees chaired by a woman, Hawa Abdullahi Qayad.

However, women’s representation in the country’s 20 political parties has grown from five percent to at least 11 percent since 2004, although women mostly work in public relations and women’s affairs.

Women’s representation in parliament is also set to increase to 30 percent when the transitional period ends in August.

At a conference mapping out the country’s new constitution in Djibouti from Jan. 6 to 12, participants unanimously accepted a motion that 30 percent of the next parliament’s seats would to go to women. Somali lawmaker Sheik Jama Hajji Hussein, a moderate religious man and a long-time politician, said he had made the recommendation.

“In the era of Prophet Mohamed … women were teaching at Islamic schools, also the prophet’s wives used to teach some of his companions. So learning from this, women may have a big role in the community and it does not matter if they serve as politicians or a woman becomes the Somali Prime Minister or Speaker of Parliament,” Hussein said.

But Jama said that a 30 percent representation is not enough.

“We are not satisfied with 30 percent and I am telling you with a loud voice that after the transitional period ends we want 50 percent of parliament’s seats to go to women,” Jama said.

“There are thousands of educated women, including hundreds who have specialised in policy, so I am confident that Somali women currently have the knowledge and the power to lead,” she added.

For her part, Heidar wants to be chief of the country’s cabinet. “From now on nothing can prevent us from taking high posts in the country’s leadership and in the future I want to become Somalia’s Prime Minister.” The Prime Minister is the 2nd highest-ranking person in Somalia, after the President.

“In the years to come I will run for Parliamentary Speaker … I am sure someday that a Somali woman will lead parliament, or the whole country,” Heidar said of her plan to occupy one of the top jobs in Somalia.

However, women here still face resistance as Somali men have different views on women’s role in government. Most do not accept that women have a role in policy development or governance. Here, in this Horn of Africa country, religious and cultural zealots preach that women should not play a role in politics.

“Our Islamic religion tells us that those who are led by women will fail, so in accordance with Islam women must refrain from their ambition of leading a country and having representation in policy,” Ugas Abokar Islow Hassan, a well-known Somali tribal leader told IPS, adding that women must refrain from aspiring to political posts.

Sheik Farah Yusuf Mohamed, a fundamentalist preacher and Imam at Al-Huda Mosque in the capital, believes that a “woman’s mind is incomplete to lead a country” and that, according to Islam, they are only allowed to care for their homes.

But Ali Mohammed Nuh, the leader of the United Somali Republican Party believes that Somali women must be allowed to play a role in politics.

“In my party the representation of women has been expanded and I am prioritising that women have more membership in political parties—in my party we have a female deputy chairperson for public affairs,” Nuh said.

“Now women make up about 10 percent of our party’s members and I am very hopeful that the number of women in the United Somali Republican Party will increase in the years to come,” he added.

Zhang Daliu, 46, a carpenter from China never imagined himself in the dreadful confines of a stinking and overcrowded Zambian jail where conditions are so terrible that they lead to gastronomic disorders and skin diseases within days of confinement.

A copper mine in Zambia. When Luanshya’s copper mine closed in 2000 more than 6,000 people lost their jobs, triggering massive poverty. Credit: Blue Salo/Wikicommons

But that is how the dice has fallen for Zhang and three other expatriate Chinese artisans: Hong Pin Liu, 46, a carpenter; Yang Gang Qiang, 36, a welder; and Zhu Xiang, 51, a bricklayer.

The four men are facing a possible life imprisonment should they be convicted of indecent assault and sex with a minor, after charges were brought against them by prosecutors in Luanshya, a town on the southern fringes of Zambia’s mineral-rich Copperbelt Province. Each charge carries a minimum jail term of 15 years with hard labour, with a maximum life sentence.

The four men are accused of having sex with young girls under the age of 16, the legal age of consent in Zambia, in exchange for money.

This sex scandal has started a heated debate in this Southern African country, with some accusing the girls of bringing shame on Zambians by turning to prostitution at such an early age.

Others feel that the problems of poverty and desperation prevalent in Luanshya, which forced the young girls into prostitution, first began during the corrupt regime of former President Frederick Chiluba. Chiluba sold Luanshya’s copper mine in 1997 to the Indian Binani Industries for just 35 million dollars during the privatisation of the country’s mines.

Barely three years after the sale, it fell under receivership and more than 6,000 miners lost their jobs. This triggered massive poverty and hardship in Luanshya, and for the next six years few could afford to feed themselves and their families.

In 2009, when China Non-Ferrous Metals Mining Group acquired the mine, many of those in Luanshya were living in dire poverty. While the sale of the mine meant that there would be jobs again, it also led to the influx of Chinese workers.

The Chinese mine workers, contracted by the Luanshya Copper Mine to revive the former Roan Antelope Mining Corporation (Zambia) copper mine and developing the new Muliashi opencast copper mine, landed in Zambia with a contingent of 270 men, and no women.

Zambia is home to more than 80,000 Chinese of an estimated population of 925,000 Chinese now living and working in Africa, the majority of whom are men working in various jobs in urban and rural areas. In these tough economic times the Chinese here became seen as the only ones with money to spend.

Mary Mumba is a housewife who has lived for more than 20 years in Roan Township, the sprawling high-density mine suburb in Luanshya. She has witnessed the degenerated of the town into a haven for prostitutes, copper thieves and drunken layabouts.

She understands why the young girls offered the men sex in exchange for money.

“Many families here are poor and they will usually go for days without a meal. As parents living in poverty we understand why these girls went so far as to give in to the Chinese. They are the only people with real money in this town,” Mumba complained.

Another resident, Rhoyda Musonda, blamed poverty and the girls’ parents for the scandal.

“We are to blame. These girls were not forced by the Chinese to have sex with them. But as parents I am sure they saw (the girls buy) unusual things, which they could not afford. This should have warned them,” she said.

But Gift Mulenga, a miner in the town, is indifferent about the scandal. He said that here most poverty- stricken young women and girls prostitute themselves to men who have money to spend, regardless of nationality.

“The Chinese just happened to be men of a wrong nationality, that is all,” Mulenga scoffed.

And Mulenga may seem to be right. The rape of minors has increased in Zambia in recent years and mostly Zambian men have been charged with crimes.

Policemen at the Zambia Police Service’s Victim Support Unit said that the rape of minors has increased from 1,676 in 2009 to 2,028 in 2010.

Perpetrators include Zambian teachers, farmers, traditional medicine men and even policemen themselves.

Last year three teachers were suspended from the Ndola Girls’ Technical High School, in Copperbelt Province, for having sex with their underage pupils. In the northern district of Milenge, in Luapula Province, a 75-year-old man was charged with raping an eight-year-old girl.

The increased number of cases has led the umbrella grouping for gender activists in Zambia, the Non- Governmental Organizations Coordinating Council (NGOCC), to call for a national consultative meeting later this year.

Engwase Mwale, executive director of NGOCC, says the meeting will map out new strategies on how to tackle the problem.

“It is not good news at all. That is why we want to meet with our members and work out ways of controlling these cases,” she said. She would not speculate on the reasons for the increased number of cases.

For most Ugandan women, obtaining a commercial loan to start a business has been very difficult. Many do not have the required collateral of land title deeds and many cannot afford the interest rates charged by commercial banks.

Dorothy Kabajungu, 50, has started a firewood business after obtaining a loan from a women’s bank. Credit: Wambi Michael

But six women-led rural banks have begun changing the lives of women in rural Uganda, easing their access to credit and enabling them to start small businesses and improve their food security.

About 20 kilometres from the Ugandan capital, Kampala, is Wakiso. Here the African Women Food Farmer Initiative, a cooperative savings and credit society, is one of the six rural banks run by women. It has over 1,600 savers and borrowers and is supported by the Hunger Project, an international organisation promoting sustainable end to hunger.

“It is a unique bank because it is run by women and it supports women, especially those engaged in agriculture. We mobilise women and encourage them to fight hunger and poverty by saving as well as accessing small loans,” said Rose Nanyonga, the bank manager.

Nanyoga explained that unlike commercial banks, this village bank is owned by women who have a stake in its growth.

“Our members buy shares in the bank. So they own it. And they get dividends at the end of every year,” said Nanyonga. All seven of the bank’s board members are also women.

The bank does not merely provide clients with access to credit. Outside the banking hall agricultural input, lanterns and even solar panels are available for sale to the bank’s clients.

Joel Komakec, a project officer from the Hunger Project, told IPS that they want to ensure that the bank’s borrowers buy the right seed and equipment with the money loaned to them.

“With the current energy crisis in the country everyone is rushing to buy solar panels. But the chances are that a borrower will access a loan only to buy a substandard one. So we make sure they get the right one,” said Komakec.

Daisy Owomugasho, the Hunger Project Director in Uganda, told IPS that the village bank microfinance programme is part of a strategy being promoted in Uganda and eight other African countries.

“So the credit they get in the form of microfinance is supposed to help communities either grow food, or access inputs, or improved seed or any other thing that they might need. We look at it as a holistic approach to ending people’s hunger and poverty,” said Owomugasho.

Owomugasho said men were also free borrow from the bank.

She said communities are trained how to effectively manage and use credit in order to escape poverty.

“But we realised that to empower women they also have to be in charge of credit. They are taught book- keeping skills, banking skills and they are able to manage the rural banks themselves,” said Owomugasho.

She said all the six banks are not only making a profit, but have had a high rate of loan repayments because their members feel that they own the banks.

Fourteen kilometres away from Wakiso is a blue metal kiosk that provides banking services to the rural areas around Kikandwa Parish and beyond.

It is run by Aisha Nansuna, who collects the daily deposits and facilitates withdrawals from clients who cannot travel to the main branch.

Nansuna told IPS that the location of the kiosk has helped instil a culture of savings among rural women in Wakiso. “You see women bringing even the smallest amount of money for saving because the bank is near,” she said.

Nansuna is also a beneficiary of the rural bank. Behind the kiosk is her well-stocked medicine shop.

“I have benefited a lot from our bank,” she said, “I started with a loan for poultry, then I later applied for 1,500 dollars, which I used to establish this drug shop.” With the money she makes from her business she has been able to send one of her children to university.

Dorothy Kabajungu, 50, is another beneficiary. She told IPS rural banks have lower interest rates compared to commercial banks.

“We are now paying 20 percent interest and they give us a period of 10 months to repay that amount. But I’m told the other banks are charging over 30 percent for loans,” she said.

“This bank is very good because it is our own bank. We, the villagers, we like it very much because we are not put under too much pressure to repay loans,” she said.

Kabajubgu began with a 125-dollar loan, which she invested in poultry. Once it was repaid, she was given access to a larger loan of 500 dollars, which she has invested in poultry, but it also using to start a firewood business.

“I have just taken on the firewood business because charcoal is very expensive and there is demand for firewood,” she said explaining that through the skills training she was taught to identify and follow a need.

Kabajungu told IPS that through the training she has learnt how to survive even amid hard economic times.

A campaign to stop people buying merchandise from street vendors is gaining momentum in Malawi’s main cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu after the small-scale traders went on a rampage undressing women and girls wearing trousers, leggings, shorts and mini-skirts.

Vice President Joyce Banda (r) and Minister of Gender Reen Kachere (l) at a meeting to condemn the abuse of women by the vendors. Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

Street vendors occupy the pavements and street corners in the busiest parts of the country’s major cities and towns. Here they sell everything from clothing to electronic items to food and groceries. But when the vendors in Lilongwe began rioting last week in protest against their forced removal by the local city council, things took a turn for the worse as vendors began stripping women and physically assaulting them.

Dubbed “lero nkugule, mawa undivule,” which is vernacular Chichewa and translates into “today I buy from you, tomorrow you undress me”, the campaign was initiated on Jan. 18, the day after the assaults. Women activists want to use the campaign to teach the vendors a lesson on respecting women, according to Seodi White, executive director of the influential women rights organisation, Women in Law in Southern Africa-Malawi.

White told IPS that the call to boycott the vendors is also being extended to men who also want to protest against their conduct.

“We want to send a clear message that we don’t want to go back to the past when we did not have freedom of dressing,” said White.

Malawi was under a dictatorship until 1994 when it adopted democratic rule. During that time, however, women were banned from wearing shorts, mini-skirts and trousers. But the vendors now claim that they want to reinstitute this dress code and “bring back sanity among women.”

Recently, the street vendors have become a powerful force politically; in August last year the country’s President Bingu wa Mutharika provided them with an undisclosed sum of money to use as a revolving loan fund.

Mutharika also wined and dined up to 2,000 vendors at his flamboyant palace soon after the Jul. 20 to 21 nationwide protests against bad governance and the declining economic situation in the country. Up to 21 people were killed by police and 275 were arrested during the protests and looting, in which the vendors actively participated.

During the dinner, Mutharika rallied support from the merchants and asked them not to participate in any demonstrations again. He promised that he would never remove them from the streets.

But on Jan. 5, the Lilongwe City Assembly, the capital city council, attempted to remove the vendors from the streets into existing designated areas. The traders rioted and overwhelmed the police who tried to quell the fracas, which saw businesses closing down for a day. The Malawi Army had to be called in to disperse the vendors who went back to trading on the streets the next day.

Tensions continued to run high and on Jan. 17 the vendors turned against women and girls claiming that Mutharika had sent them to “clean the streets of women dressed inappropriately.”

Joyce Ngwira, one of the many women who were stripped naked as she walked in Lilongwe Old Town, told IPS that she is still traumatised following the ordeal.

“I was wearing my decent pair of trousers only to see a group of vendors pouncing on me. They pulled me in different directions and tore off my clothes. It took a group of other passers-by to rescue me,” she said.

The conduct of the vendors quickly spread to the country’s other main cities of Blantyre and Mzuzu. Since then many women have changed their way of dressing and have begun wearing conservative long skirts and dresses when going to work and to the shops.

Since last Wednesday, armed police have been patrolling the streets to protect the women and girls and 15 people have since been arrested, according to police spokesperson Dave Chingwalu.

“The men found causing trouble for women have been charged with violence and malicious damage” said Chingwalu. “We will not just watch women being harassed; there’s freedom of dressing in this country and no one has a right to dictate how women dress.”

Meanwhile, women activists and human rights defenders held a protest meeting in Blantyre on Jan. 20 where a cross section of people, including the country’s female Vice President Joyce Banda, the Minister of Gender Reen Kachere and other politicians, gathered to condemn the abuse of women by the vendors.

When the attacks started Banda had told the local media that economic frustrations should be blamed for the ill conduct of the vendors. “There is so much suffering that people have decided to vent their frustrations on each other,” she said.

Malawi continues to reel under severe economic problems after the country’s major donors cut aid to the country last year. Up to 40 percent of Malawi’s national budget has been dependent on donors and 80 percent of the country’s development budget was being provided under the Common Approach to Budget Support, which includes Britain, Germany, the African Development Bank, Norway, the European Union and the World Bank. The British and German governments are already refusing to release up to 400 million dollars.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a United States government foreign aid agency leading the fight against global poverty, also announced last year that it was putting on hold 350.7 million dollars meant to improve Malawi’s energy sector.

Meanwhile, the vendors have already noted a decline in sales following the boycott, according to Ganizo Makupa, general secretary for vendors in Blantyre.

“There are just a few unruly people who are undressing women and denting the name of vendors. We are very sorry about this behaviour and we are looking at ways of instilling discipline among our group,” said Makupa.

In the ward of a partially destroyed clinic, Mangiro (who did not give his last name) sat on a bed next to his wounded nine-year-old daughter, Ngathin. The little girl is fortunate, she survived the recent inter-ethnic clashes in Pibor county that killed her mother and sisters.

Members of the Murle ethnic group wait to receive food aid after attacks from a rival tribe that the U.N. says affected at least 120,000 people. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

There are still no official figures released on how many people were killed, but the United Nations says at least 120,000 people have been affected by the violence.

Three weeks ago, at least 6,000 armed members of the Lou Nuer tribe attacked Pibor county, which is home to the Murle who have launched similar attacks. They destroyed and damaged homes and buildings, including this clinic run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Villagers were massacred during the assault, including Mangiro’s wife and children. He said his family fled their village when it was attacked and he found Ngathin the following day.

“We found the mother and she was dead and the child was still alive and we carried her here,” he said through a translator. “They attacked us as a family. The mother and the girl’s other sisters are dead.”

He moved aside the sheet to reveal a bandaged wound on Ngathin’s leg where she was shot while fleeing members of a rival ethnic group.

The surviving members of Mangiro’s family are among the 120,000 people the U.N. says have lost their homes and their cattle, which are the key to their livelihoods.

The U.N. has launched a huge emergency operation to bring food to those people, many of whom have been living in the bush for weeks, surviving off wild fruits. The U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) is using helicopters to deliver food to communities that are inaccessible by road in this isolated region.

In the aftermath of the attacks, the U.N. first estimated that 60,000 people had been affected. On Friday, Lise Grande, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan, told reporters in Juba that the estimated number of people in need of aid had doubled and may rise even higher. The U.N. has a contingency plan for 180,000 people, she said.

The number of people killed remains a mystery. Immediately after the attacks, the county commissioner estimated 3,000 dead, but the government quickly dismissed that figure. James Chacha, the Pibor county medical officer, told reporters that about 2,000 were killed.

Despite repeated requests from journalists, neither the government nor the U.N. has released figures of bodies counted so far by their investigators.

“We have also been doing recces (reconnaissance flights) over the areas to look at the numbers of tukuls (homes) burnt and so on but there is no credibility in the total figure here that would lead to a number that can give an indication,” Hilde Johnson, the U.N. Secretary General’s representative to South Sudan, told reporters Thursday. “It is far too early.”

The number of wounded is also unknown, according to MSF.

“We are very worried about the medical needs of the people who are still in the bush,” said spokesman Karel Janssens. “We hear from patients and our staff that there are still many wounded in the bush, but as long as we don’t see their direct medical needs it is difficult to answer to that.”

Judith McCallum, a former South Sudan country director of a non-governmental organisation who is writing her PhD thesis on the Murle, said the longer the investigation takes, the less likely the truth will ever be known. Wild animals have already eaten many bodies, she said in an interview.

Whatever the figure of the dead, it will add to the already 1,100 people the U.N. says were killed over the past year in fighting between the Murle and Lou Nuer. After an August attack killed about 600 Lou Nuer, the Sudan Council of Churches launched a peace initiative that was meant to bring tribal leaders together in December to sign a peace agreement.

But the process broke down and by mid-December U.N. aerial patrols reported that at least 6,000 Lou Nuer youth were marching towards Pibor.

Representatives of the armed movement called it the White Army, in reference to the ash the fighters rub onto their bodies. The group issued statements publicising its planned attack on Pibor and vowing to “wipe out the entire Murle tribe on the face of the earth.”

Johnson warned that such rhetoric is “in violation of both international law and South Sudan’s domestic laws.”

“We have been informed that repetitive hate language continues to be used, calling for ethnic violence and inciting communities to take aggressive actions,” she said.

The government has promised to investigate and hold accountable those responsible for inciting the violence. In the wake of the attacks it dispatched 3,000 security personnel to the conflict area and plans to use troops as a “buffer zone” between the tribes.

Johnson said the U.N. has deployed about half of its 2,100 combat-ready peacekeepers to Jonglei state, which is home to both the ethnic groups.

But security forces have so far been unable to prevent small-scale counter-attacks by Murle youth. On Jan. 16 at least 47 people were killed in an attack on Duk Padiet county, according to Philip Thon Leek Deng, a member of parliament from the area.

Standing in front of thousands of people who gathered in Pibor to receive food aid, WFP Country Director Chris Nikoi appealed for funding to sustain the operation.

“These people have lost everything,” he said. “The international community needs to step in and provide humanitarian organisations the resources we need to help people.”

By Isaiah Esipisu
GARISSA, Kenya, Dec 19 2011 (IPS)

The Garissa Maternal Shelter in North Eastern Province, Kenya is the only such facility in an area with the country’s highest maternal mortality rate. At 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births, it is almost double the country’s average.

A pregnant woman in Kenya's North Eastern Province with one of her children. Overpopulation in the area contributes to poor maternal health. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

“The low attendance is largely due to poor awareness of the facility’s presence, ignorance, and lack of transport to the facility,” said Dr. Amal Alshabibi, the Deputy Medical Superintendent at the Garissa Provincial General Hospital, which hosts the maternal shelter.

The shelter is the only one in the province as the government is still assessing its sustainability.

According to the 2009 Kenya Demographic Health Survey, maternal mortality countrywide stands at 448 deaths per 100,000 live births. But the rate in North Eastern Province is double this.

“This rate is highly unacceptable. And the main reason is because women have little or no access to healthcare facilities due to the long distances (needed to travel), some cannot afford to pay for healthcare services and, sometimes, just because of ignorance,” said Alshabibi.

The region is also semi-arid and in some parts, arid. Many of the communities here survive only because of the food aid they receive. And many here, like Habiba Issak who has had four miscarriages, still rely on traditional birth attendants. For her four previous pregnancies, 37-year-old Issak miscarried in the care of traditional birth attendants in Mandera, some 500 kilometres from Garissa.

But when she was three months along with her fifth pregnancy, she was determined that her baby would live.

So Issak walked 50 kilometres from her village to a clinic in Mandera Township. Health experts there immediately referred her to the Garissa maternal shelter after learning her case history.

“Here we admit women who have a history of complications during pregnancy and delivery, or whose pregnancies have been described by health experts as potentially high risk, yet they cannot access a health facility near their homes,” said Alshabibi.

The shelter also admits women who have had teenage pregnancies, miscarriages, two previous Caesarean sections, a low-lying placenta, mild preeclampsia or high blood pressure, among many others.

Though this maternal shelter is unique. Unlike others in the country, it allows mothers to stay here with their children.

“These are not hospital wards. It is a home for expectant mothers who are likely to develop complications during pregnancies, or at the time of delivery,” explained Alshabibi.

“Being the only maternal shelter in the region, it serves women from hundreds of kilometres away. Yet it can only be fair if they come along with their young children because some of them have to be monitored at the facility for several months before their due date,” said Dr. Stephen Wanyee, the assistant country representative at the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA).

Though this facility was founded in 2007 and is supported by the Kenyan government, the U.N. agency has adopted it.

“We are taking it on as a pilot project because we have never tried it in such a community with numerous challenges. If it succeeds, then we might consider duplicating it within the region as a strategy to reduce the alarming maternal mortality rate here,” said Wanyee. Hawa Ali is one of the women living at the shelter with her children. Sitting with her four youngest children, the mother of 11 patiently waits for her turn to be examined. She is here because she is expecting triplets.

“Since this facility was established, we have never lost a client or an infant,” Hamadi Muhumed, the deputy nursing officer at Garissa Hospital, said reassuringly.

“Through close monitoring by fellow health experts, all women who have passed through here have always gone back home smiling with their babies,” he said. He remembers a woman who was admitted to the shelter a year ago after she had 12 miscarriages because of cervical complications.

“But when she came to the facility, she was monitored until she gave birth to a baby boy, whom she named after Gullet Yusuf, the medical doctor who supervised her before and during delivery,” Muhumed said.

Sadia Abdirahaman has had three miscarriages but described it as a “dream come true” when she delivered a healthy baby girl here.

“Though this region is sparsely populated, there is definitely a need for maternal shelters in other areas like Awjir and Mandera so that people do not have to travel several kilometres in order to access this particular one,” said Muhumed.

Excerpt:

By Travis Lupick
BLANTYRE, Dec 16 2011 (IPS)

On an elegant veranda adorned with a red carpet, Malawi’s Vice President Joyce Banda recalls how her childhood friend Chrissie Mtokoma was always top of their class and how she struggled to beat her. But now decades later Banda is a likely contender for the country’s presidency in 2014, while Mtokoma lives in poverty.

Malawi's Vice President Joyce Banda recalls how her childhood friend was always top of their class and how she struggled to beat her. Credit: Katie C. Lin/IPS

“She went to school in the village and I went to school in the town,” begins the highest-ranking woman in Malawi politics. “I would get home Friday evening and Chrissie would be waiting for me by the roadside.”

Banda tells parallel narratives contrasting her own upbringing with that of Mtokoma’s. “In the village school, Chrissie was first in her class, all the way to standard six (grade eight),” she tells IPS. “I was always number two or three, always fighting to beat her. But I couldn’t.”

Later, both girls were accepted into prestigious secondary schools. But after just three months, Mtokoma was forced to drop out.

“Chrissie’s uncle couldn’t pay for a second semester,” Banda says. “That was it for Chrissie. She went back to the village and into a vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance, early marriage, and then early motherhood. By the time I finished school, she had maybe five children. And today, Chrissie is where I left her.”

Banda maintains she was only able to stay in school thanks to the middle-class income her father earned working as a policeman. “So I went on, finished, and now I am vice president of this land,” she tells IPS. “Chrissie, she is locked up in the village, in poverty. And that makes me angry. Why am I here and she is not?”

As Banda entered adulthood, these childhood memories drew her attention to the benefits of education, and especially economic empowerment, to which she has dedicated much of her life.

In recent years, Malawian women have made significant gains in their struggle for full gender equality. Women are increasingly represented in national politics, for example. Malawi’s May 2009 federal election saw the proportion of female Members of Parliament rise from 14 percent to 22. And though a minority, it is not difficult to find women’s names among the ranks of corporate board members.

Yet women in Malawi remain disproportionately affected by poverty. In 2004, the National Statistics Office found that while only 25 percent of the country’s households were headed by women, they accounted for 58.4 percent of the country’s poorest homes. Moreover, women in Malawi remain significantly under-represented in areas of economic decision-making.

Banda and other leading women argue that the key to addressing these problems is to put more of the country’s money in the hands of its mothers.

Seodi White, national coordinator for Women and Law in Southern Africa, recalls her involvement in the country’s first marches for women, which were held in the late 1990s. More than a decade later, she argues that there is still much work to be done.

Even small amounts of money can create life-changing opportunities for the country’s most disadvantaged women, White says. She describes the results of an experiment her organisation led in a village in Mangochi District. Women were given roughly 110 dollars and left to do with it as they wished.

“We found out that these are not idle hands,” White says.

One woman made sweets out of sugar and sold them to nearby schools. Another baked and sold small cakes. And a third invested in a tobacco operation. The women made enough to keep their small businesses going, and invested excess earnings in purchases that benefited their families; blankets for their children, iron sheets to improve a dwelling’s thatched roof, and household items such as salt and sugar that previously were only provided by their husbands.

“This kind of power can create a level of decision-making at the family and community level that can have cascading effects on the country,” White emphasises.

She points to studies by financial institutions such as Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank, which, time and again, have shown that women are significantly more likely than men to invest in areas that alleviate poverty such as health, education, and business improvement.

“Women are trained to care for others,” she reasons. “Very few women would just use money for their own personal gain.”

At the side of the road in Blantyre, a group of women selling scraps of plastic discuss what they wish for their businesses. At the top of everyone’s list is an investment or small loan.

Cecelia Goba, 40, and Ellen Mawuwa, 35, say that they would use funds to import and resell goods from neighbouring countries such as Mozambique.

“I would buy clothes and shoes outside this country and sell them here,” Mawuwa says. “We have friends in such businesses and they are doing quite fine.”

A number of non-profit organisations are active in Malawi supplying the sort of micro-loans made famous by the Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. And the vice president’s newly-formed People’s Party recently launched an initiative called Orange Achievers, which aims to maximise the economic potential of Malawian women.

But supply cannot meet demand. And as Mary Malunga, executive director for the National Association of Business Women, explains, there are a host of other challenges Malawian women must overcome if they are to excel in the professional world.

“Women need to work 10 times harder than men to prove that any job that a man can do, a woman can do too,” she explains. “Women, due to perceived social and cultural roles, are not respected when they are in leadership positions.”

Malunga, a successful businesswomen herself, offered a few words of advice.

“To get to where I am today, it took what I call the three Ps: patience, perseverance, and prayer,” she says. “You need to persevere through all kinds of challenges and obstacles which, at times, will make you feel like you will never reach your intended destination.”

White echoes Malunga’s remarks. “Determination, determination, determination,” she emphasises, warning that this may mean sacrificing other aspects of one’s life, including having a boyfriend. Falling pregnant may end a young girl’s dreams.

“You might get pregnant, and that would be the end of it,” White explains. “Most girls don’t realise the kinds of difficult decisions that some of us had to make to reach where we are.”

And at the vice president’s compound in Blantyre, Banda reiterates that economic empowerment is the path to education and prosperity. But she stresses that this does not mean anybody should wait for a handout.

“My advice to younger women is that we have a moral obligation to make it,” Banda maintains. “Regardless of what we face, we need to forge ahead, we need to keep going. For us, it is a responsibility that we have in order to push our fellow women forward.”

Excerpt:

Olonana Ole Pulei’s community is a sub-tribe of Kenya’s Maasai ethnic group. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
DURBAN, South Africa, Dec 8 2011 (IPS)

For the Laibon community, a sub-tribe of Kenya’s Maasai ethnic group, the 33,000-hectare Loita Forest in the country’s Rift Valley Province is more than just a forest. It is a shrine.

“It is our shrine. Our Gods live there. We gather herbs from the place. We use it for bee- keeping. It therefore forms part of our livelihood,” said Olonana Ole Pulei, who is in Durban, South Africa, to represent his community at the ongoing 17th Conference of Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

According to Nigel Crawhall, the Director of Secretariat for the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC), different African communities have incredible indigenous knowledge that they use in the conservation of forests and biodiversity in general, and this should be recognised during the negotiations in Durban.

“Different communities have different practices that they use in forestry conservation,” he said.

Crawhall gave an example of how the Bambuti and Batwa pygmy communities, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, conserved the forest using traditional methods. Both communities depend on the biodiversity of animal life in the equatorial forests in order to survive.

“Usually, they know how to identify particular trees that can be cut down in order to create a unique opening on the canopy, which attracts light in the closely-packed Congo forests. The light then attracts animals, birds and insects, thus giving them an opportunity to hunt,” Crawhall told IPS.

This helps conserve the biodiversity, as well as the forests because this method can only work if the forest canopy is intact.

In Kenya, the Maasai culture forbids any community member from cutting down a tree, either for firewood or any other purpose. People are also forbidden from interfering with the taproots or removing the entire bark of a tree for herbal extraction.

According to their cultural belief, one can only use tree branches for firewood, and fibrous roots for herbs. If the bark of a tree has medicinal value, then only small portions of it can be removed by creating a “V” in the bark. The wound is then sealed using wet soil.

“We believe that the soil helps in healing the wound on a tree. This is cultural, and we all believe that it is an abomination for one to injure a tree, and not help it heal,” said Ole Pulei.

It is a practice that has been passed down from generation to generation among Maasai community members. Among the Laibon community, it is this indigenous knowledge that has aided in the conservation of the Loita Forest.

“All logging activities observed on Maasai land, including the destruction of the Mau Forest, are done by foreigners because the Maasai culture does not allow such activities. This is the indigenous knowledge that helps in forest conservation,” Ole Pulei told IPS.

Such beliefs make the forests part of the community, where community members have feelings for the trees, and where cutting down a tree could amount to an offence against the Gods and their culture.

“We have several other communities all over the continent who co-exist with forests. They include the Tuareg community in Algeria, Yiaku community in Kenya’s Laikipia region, the Ogiek community also in Kenya, the Kung community in Botswana among others,” said Crawhall.

Though according to Crawhall, all Africans are indigenous although there are some groups who live by hunting and gathering, while other groups practice pastoralism, and others practice dry-land farming.

Despite the fact that there is no standard definition of indigenous people, the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognises that particular communities, due to historical and environmental circumstances, have found themselves outside the state system and underrepresented in governance.

“The Bushmen of the Southern African region, or the Ogiek community in Kenya who live in forests are a typical example of groupings categorised as indigenous,” said Crawhall.

He points out that Africa has more than 40 groupings in different countries that survive entirely on hunting and gathering. However, IPACC works closely with 155 communities from 22 African countries who are recognised as indigenous because of their historical and environmental circumstances.

As a result, representatives from these communities have joined the rest of the world in Durban to have their voices heard, so that their contributions to forest conservation are recognised as part of the climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts.

“We believe that African traditional ecological knowledge is the foundation for appropriate and effective national adaptation policies,” said Crawhall.

Through the IPACC secretariat, the 155 community-based organisations in Africa have drafted their position for the Durban negotiation platform. They want the negotiators to come up with a position that is representative to African parties, indigenous African people’s organisations, traditional institutions, traditional authorities and value systems.

They are calling for the formation of a regional body that is legally binding under the United Nations, to handle issues on conservation that are difficult to deal with at national level.

“One of the prevailing gaps in most of the IPACC-member countries is that there is no land tenure for communities who live in forests, or depend on forests,” said Crawhall.

However, different countries have started responding to the needs of their local communities by including them in their national climate change adaptation strategies, with Kenya taking the lead.

The country is in the process of drafting the Climate Change Adaptation Bill. And the indigenous communities will have their say on the bill because according to the constitution, they must be consulted on draft legislation so that they can make contributions.

“We have traversed the entire country seeking views on this bill, where local communities have been able to give their contributions. Our vision is to participate and lead in the development and implementation of climate change sensitive policies, projects and activities within and outside our Kenyan borders,” said John Kioli, the chairman for the Kenya Climate Change Working Group, who is attending the Durban climate change negotiations.

* This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

By Badylon Kawanda Bakiman and - -
KIKWIT, DR Congo, Nov 12 2011 (IPS)

The 11 candidates contesting presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo all pledge to improve peace and security in the country – promises received with varying degrees of scepticism by Congolese voters.

“Our ambition is to provide our country with 150,000 soldiers and 200,000 police officers – well- trained personnel – with a view to greater stability in terms of both national defence and public security,” declared Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito on Nov. 4, as he announced the campaign platform of the Presidential Majority, the group which is campaigning for another term for the incumbent president, Joseph Kabila.

Muzito believes that reforms of the army, police and security services which are already under way are on the right path. “The improvement in pay, with the objective of paying every last soldier and police officer more than 100 U.S. dollars (a month), as well as the cleaning up of staff, will contribute to the establishment of a strong army and national police.”

DRC’s army in particular includes large numbers of poorly-trained personnel, former members of armed groups who have been absorbed into the national army. Training – and in some cases dismissing – unsuitable fighters is a key task facing the government.

Meanwhile, insecurity remains a pressing problem, particularly in the east of the country. Members of the national army, as well as fighters belonging to the country’s myriad rebel groups, have been implicated in widespread assault, murder, rape and terrorisation of the population.

The National Strategy for the Fight Against Gender-Based Violence, a document published in 2010 by the Ministry for Gender, the Family and Children, estimates that six million people have been killed or displaced by DRC’s successive wars, the majority of these women and children.

“The growing number of attacks by armed men against civilians has forced tens of thousands of people in (the eastern provinces of) North and South Kivu to flee,” notes the DRC chapter of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its website.

According to an independent study carried out recently for the ICRC, 76 percent of the country’s population has been affected by the armed conflict. Fifty-eight percent have been displaced from their homes; nearly half have lost a close relative; and more than one in four people know someone who has suffered sexual violence.

Working with responses provided by a nationwide sample of more than 3,400 women in the country’s most recent Demographic and Health Survey, U.S. researchers calculate that between 1.7 and 1.8 million Congolese women have been raped in their lifetime: over 400,000 reported having been raped in the year preceding the data collection in 2007.

In an article published in the American Journal of Public Health in June, the study’s authors – Amber Peterman of the International Food Policy Research Institute, Tia Palermo of the School of Medicine at Stony Brook University and the World Bank’s Caryn Bredenkamp – also report that more than one in five women surveyed reported suffering sexual violence from their husbands or partners – leading them to suggest future policy.

Yet Muzito did not set out clearly what President Kabila will do to fight against gender-based violence, if he is re-elected.

“The improvement of working conditions for magistrates and measures to boost morale in the justice sector aims to establish a judicial system better able to guarantee the rights and freedoms of citizens, and to put an end to the impunity that has been so widely condemned,” he explained.

Vital Kamerhe, who is running against Kabila as the presidential candidate for the opposition Union for the Congolese Nation, has offered a more concrete proposal: “If we are elected, we will put in place a joint international court to try and severely punish the perpetrators of rape and violence against women.”

Kamerhe, a former ally of Kabila who served as president of the National Assembly from 2006 to 2009, says the joint court would have competent and incorruptible judges who would be well paid – all part of measures to ensure the judicial system is well equipped to end impunity.

“For good security, we will have a well-trained army and police, strong and very well paid,” he adds.

“The 150,000 troops and 200,000 police called for by (Kabila’s Presidential Majority) will prove insignificant for a country of 2,245,000 square kilometres and around 63 million inhabitants,” says Viviane Lengelo, president of the Network of Women in Action for Integrated Development in DRC. However, she strongly supports the creation of a joint international court for gender-based violence. “Women have suffered so much for nothing.”

Politicians’ promises don’t seem to have convinced a sceptical public. “Simple demagoguery,” says Rose Muntupanza, a farmer in Bandundu, in the southwest of DRC. “For years now we have heard so many honeyed words – but without concrete actions.”

“Promises are only promises,” agrees Mbuta Mwashi, a member of the Union of Mobutuist Democrats, one of the 400+ political parties. “We are waiting for concrete action.”

“To ensure security for all citizens in a country as large as the DRC is not easy – a country where women suffer from violence of all kinds,” says Laurent Bwenia Muhenia, of the African Association for the Defence of Human Rights, a local civil society organisation. The winner of the elections must respect his promises, “if not, that will not go down well with the population, above all with women,” he added.

Excerpt:

When Al-Shabaab militants called the Somali national women’s basketball team captain, Suweys Ali Jama, and told her she had two options: to be killed or to stop playing basketball, she decided that neither was really an option at all.

The Somali national women's basketball team is in training for the Arab Games in Qatar. Credit: Shafi'i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

“I will only die when my life runs out – no one can kill me but Allah … I will never stop my profession while I am still alive,” Jama told IPS.

“Now, I am a player, but even if I retire I hope to be a coach – I will stop basketball only when I perish,” Jama said.

The Al-Qaeda-linked military group controls large parts of Somalia and occupied almost half of the country’s capital, Mogadishu, until its surprise withdrawal on Aug. 6. However, the group’s presence in the city remains as Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack on the capital on Oct. 4, which killed at least 70 people.

Now Jama and members of her team have received death threats from the Islamic militant group, which views women’s participation in sport as “un-Islamic”.

In August 2006 the Somali Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a group of Sharia courts, issued an order banning Somali women from playing sport calling it the “heritage of old Christian cultures.” At the time the ICU controlled Mogadishu, but lost control of the city in December 2006.

Al-Shabaab, which was the armed wing of the ICU, has not altered their stance on women playing sport.

Aisha Mohamed, the deputy captain of the national women’s basketball team, said the militants also threatened her.

“‘You are twice guilty. First, you are a woman and you are playing sports, which the Islamic rule has banned. Second, you are representing the military club who are puppets for the infidels. So we are targeting you wherever you are,’ Islamists warned me during phone calls. But I am still clinging to my profession,” Mohamed told IPS.

Mohamed is one of the prominent national team members who belong to the Somali military sports club, Horseed. Mohamed’s mother is a former member of the women’s national team and she has been playing the sport since she was a child.

Basketball is the second-most popular sport in Somalia after football and, aside from handball, is the only other sport that Somali women play. However, women earn meager salaries as professional basketball players.

“I am a human being and I fear, but I know that only Allah can kill me,” 21-year-old Mohamed said echoing Jama’s sentiments.

So the team is training for December’s Arab Games in Qatar inside the safety of the bullet-ridden walls of the Somali police academy’s basketball court.

On a day with a clear blue sky overhead the women, dressed in loose fitting tracksuits and T-shirts and wearing headscarves, sprint from one end of the court to another amid the presence of hundreds of policemen.

When they are done they line up to take shots at the basketball hoop. All week they train for two hours a day here and only take off on Thursdays and Fridays – the Muslim weekend.

In the evening when the women leave the safety of the training base they swap their training gear for the anonymity of the traditional Islamic dress and veil. They also wear a Yashmak, a small piece of cloth to cover their faces.

Somalia’s first women’s national basketball team was formed in 1970 and participated in African and regional competitions over the years despite never winning a tournament, according to the National Olympic Committee President Aden Hajji Yeberow.

But the 2006 ban on women playing sports halted the growth of women’s basketball in this East African nation said Somali Basketball Federation Deputy Secretary-General Abdi Abdulle Ahmed.

“The Islamist ban led to some women (quitting the sport), because of fear,” Ahmed told IPS.

President of the Somali Basketball Federation Hussein Ibrahim Ali said that whenever women’s involvement in basketball grows, something occurs to set the sport back.

The 2006 Islamist ban, which lead to nearly two hundred women quitting the sport because of fear of reprisals, was one such incident. The two decades of civil war in the country, was another. Since mid- July a severe drought has affected the country, with famine declared in regions of southern Somalia.

Ali added that lack of sponsorship and insecurity were the biggest killers of sport in Somalia.

“So when the world knows that Somalia has undergone such hardships and our women are playing in an international tournament, this would really be great publicity for the whole country and, in particular, for the basketball federation,” Ali said.

The women’s coach Ali Sheik Muktar said that he is hopeful that his team will be successful in the upcoming Arab Games.

“To have a women’s team means a lot to Somalia,” Ali said.

When Aisha Diis* and her five children fled their home in Somalia seeking aid from the famine devastating the region, she could not have known the dangers of the journey, or even fathom that she would be raped along the way.

New arrivals at Dadaab wait for a medical check up. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

Diis left her village of Kismayu, southwest of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, for the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya’s North Eastern Province in April.

“I was in a group of many women and children, but four of us had come from the same village, hence, we related (to each other) as one family. Along the way, we stopped to make some strong tea since the children were feeling very tired and hungry. One woman remained behind with the children and the three of us went to search for firewood,” Diis told IPS through a translator.

“We were ambushed by a group of five men who stripped us naked and raped us repeatedly,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. “It is something I have not been able to forget. But I wouldn’t like my children to know about it.”

But the trauma Diis and the other two women had to undergo is not an isolated incident.

As hundreds of tired, weak and malnourished women and children stream into Dadaab from famine-hit Somalia daily, the journey, for many of the women, would have been a harrowing one.

Tired and dusty, most women carry their babies tied to their backs. For many this precious cargo is the only possession they have managed to save from their homes in Somalia. Some, however, are slightly more fortunate and come with their children and what few belongings they have packed onto donkey carts.

They rarely talk about what has happened to them on the way here, when they arrive.

Instead, most register as refugees and undergo medical screening with their children. Then they are allocated a tent and basic household equipment.

The tents have no lockable doors, no windows, and no furniture, not even a bed. But all the same this is a place that the refugees can call home – for now, and perhaps for many years to come. (Some of the refugees were born here in 1991 when the camp was first established, and have not known any other home.)

But even after the women have settled in, many do not come forward to speak about the violence they experienced on their way to the camp.

“Gender-based violence is a hidden side of the famine crisis,” said Sinead Murray, the gender-based violence (GBV) programme manager for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) at Dadaab.

“As per the rapid assessment done on GBV in Dadaab released by the IRC in July, rape and sexual violence were mentioned as the most pressing concerns for women and girls while fleeing Somalia and as an ongoing, though lesser concern, in the camps,” Murray told IPS.

“Some women interviewed during (the IRC) survey said they witnessed women and girls being raped in front of their husbands and parents, at the insistence of perpetrators described as ‘men with guns.’ Others were forced to strip down naked, and in the event they were raped by multiple perpetrators,” said Murray.

But Diis, and the two women who were raped with her, are some of the few Somali women who reported the violence they have been subjected to on their journey to Dadaab. In Diis’ case, she was brave enough to do so because she is a widow, and does not fear recrimination from her family as other women do.

“I did not fear to disclose my case to the medical officer because I did not have a husband,” said the widow whose husband was gunned down in Somalia by unknown assailants seven months ago.

“Many women are assaulted on their way to the refugee camp by unknown armed men, especially when travelling in a group without men,” said Ann Burton, a senior public health officer at the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) at Dadaab.

“However, most of them are reluctant to report such cases since they fear that their families will blame them, communities will reject them or simply because they feel ashamed to talk about it.”

Diis was given post exposure prophylaxis, a short-term antiretroviral treatment used to reduce the likelihood of HIV infection, after she reported her rape.

“After I reported my case I was given some medicine, and I was monitored for three months after which I was informed that I had not contracted HIV. That was one of my biggest concerns,” said Diis. She also received counselling.

The other two women who were raped with Diis were also counselled and received post exposure prophylaxis.

Diis said that she is aware of other women who were raped before their immediate family members and did not report it to the medical staff at the camp.

Not reporting the rape just adds to the suffering of the women. Burton said: “Survivors often do not get critical life-saving care because of keeping it a secret.”

So far, only 30 cases of rape were reported between January and July 2011 according to the UNHCR at Dadaab. But medical experts at the camp say that this is a small fraction of a huge problem faced by women.

Once they arrive at Dadaab some women continue to experience gender-based violence from their intimate partners. Murray said this includes early marriages and survival sex – where women are forced to exchange sex for access to basic needs.

Though such GBV incidents are said to be less frequent within the camps, some women told IPS that they feel insecure and scared at night while sleeping in the makeshift shelters.

“The camps do not have fences and at the same time we are not able to lock our shelters throughout the night. Anything can happen in the dark hours,” said Amina Muhammad who lives in Dadaab.

The biggest risk at the camp, according to the women IPS spoke to, is when they travel long distances in search of firewood.

*Not her real name

By Rosebell Kagumire and - -
LIRA, Uganda, Aug 12 2011 (IPS)

Ester Abeja has experienced both physical and emotional atrocities. She was captured by Uganda’s feared rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and was forced to join them. But not before the soldiers made her kill her one-year- old baby girl, by smashing her skull in, and then gang raped her.

Ester Abeja, who was abducted by Lord's Resistance Army says it is important for sexual violence survivors to have a face. Credit: Rosebell Kagumire/IPS

In Ogur, Lira in northern Uganda, Abeja has come to a temporary medical camp run by Isis-Women’s International Cross Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE), a women’s organisation working with women in conflict and post-conflict settings.

The camp is specifically for women with reproductive health complications, which they have mostly sustained from being raped during the almost two decades of war.

For most of the women here it is the first time they have been offered special medical attention since the war ended in 2006, and for many it is the first time they have been treated by a doctor. It is also the first time that many of these women have ever spoken out about the violence they had to endure.

Abeja is one of the many women struggling to survive the horrors of the war. Her home is a few kilometres from Barlonyo, where the LRA massacred over 200 people in a single attack in February 2004.

The LRA fought in the north and north eastern parts of Uganda for 23 years. The war, which forced close to two million people into internally displaced persons camps for decades, was the most brutal that Uganda has faced since independence from Britain in 1962.

Thousands of people died as a result and the war was characterised by its use of child soldiers and the conscription of civilians into the rebel group. The LRA were forced out of the country in 2006 and are currently operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and western South Sudan.

Abeja was captured in 2002. She was a wife and a mother of six children when the LRA abducted her with her youngest daughter and her son.

“When they abducted me I had my one-year-old baby girl and the boy. A few kilometres away from home, they forced me to kill my child,” she says tearfully. “I hit her head on the tree and she died. The rebels immediately began to rape me.”

Abeja can’t remember how many men they were; she says there could have been 10 to 15.

“The group that captured me raped me right after (I killed) my child. They even pushed different objects inside me as they raped me. Others were cutting (me) with machetes as some raped (me),” Abeja says as she shows the scars that remain on her arms and thighs.

She doesn’t know what happened to her son or if he’s still alive.

Abeja was sick for many weeks in the bushes of what is now South Sudan. Once she recovered she had a man waiting to be her ‘husband’. Like many abductees, Abeja had to kill or be killed. In her four years with the LRA she tells IPS she can’t recollect the number of people she was forced to kill, but she puts the number at more than 40.

Abeja was one of the lucky few that escaped. She returned home in 2006 with a boy who is now about five years old.

Since the war ended in 2006, people went back to their original homes and depended on emergency aid.

A recovery and development plan was put in place in 2009 by the Ugandan government but this has not covered the emergency medical needs of the population. Most of the money went into building new blocks of health units and rehabilitating the destroyed ones.

It is not surprising that of the 400 women screened here at the Isis-WICCE medical camp, many are found to have pelvic inflammatory diseases.

Dr. Tom Charles Otim, a lead gynaecologist at the camp, says Abeja has lived with a prolapsed uterus for years now.

Uterine prolapse – the descent of the uterus into the vagina or beyond – is one of the long-term complications associated with sexual violence.

In Abeja’s case, her uterus is hanging out. But she allows her photo to be taken saying it is important for sexual violence survivors to have a face.

She and 39 other women are referred for further treatment to a regional hospital many kilometres away. She will need surgery, which costs about 200 dollars, to remove her uterus.

Like the many women who were raped during the war, Abeja not only has to live with the physical scars of the rapes but the psychological effects as well. She and women like her have to endure intense stigma from the community.

Her husband rejected her after she returned, and left her to raise their four surviving children and her child from the war.

As Abeja struggles to narrate her story, fighting back the tears she wonders: “Do they think I wanted to be abducted and raped by the rebels? Do they think I wanted to kill my own child?”

Otim tells IPS that women like Abeja need more support than just surgery.

A majority of the women seeking medical treatment at the camp have chronic pelvic pain as a result of pelvic inflammatory infections.

“The infections are high here; because of the war, the women were not able to access medical care early,” says Otim.

“This has had an effect on the women’s sexual lives and the majority of them have painful sex, and sometimes they don’t want to have sex but they have to because their husbands don’t allow (them to refuse).”

Many women who have come to the camp have fertility problems. Otim says pelvic pain takes a long time to cure and the women will need about 40 dollars for more follow-up visits at regional health centres, which are usually more than 40 kms away.

“Women cannot claim to have peace if their reproductive health is still an issue they are trying to contend with and struggle with on a daily basis,” Isis-WICCE’s programme manager Helen Kezie-Nwoha tells IPS.

She says because of the sexual violence behind these reproductive health complications, women in northern Uganda need a specialised programme to provide them with the needed health services.

“Reproductive health issues are not easily spoken about, it is not something women will come out in public and speak about,” Kezie-Nwoha says. But “we have built confidence over years of working with these women; that’s why the women can be able to open up and talk about the wartime rapes.”

She says government needs to rethink its approach in post-conflict northern Uganda by putting human security needs first.

The district health officer in Lira, Nelson Opio, tells IPS that most of the reconstruction in the health sector has largely concentrated on building structures, and cannot address the immediate medical needs of a post-conflict community.

“When war ends, there’s a silent war that has to be fought,” he says. “Politicians here think they will just put up structures so they can say ‘This is what I did during my time’ and ignore people’s real needs.”

Most health centres in the district have no medical officers, while the entire district has only two gynaecologists.

Excerpt:

By Eprahim Nsingo
LUSAKA, Aug 10 2011 (IPS)

In Zambia’s highly patriarchal society Edith Nawakwi, 52, has broken a few records on the political scene over the last two decades. And she broke another one on Sunday by being the only female candidate to file for nomination to run for president in Zambia’s upcoming elections.

Edith Nawakwi is the only female candidate to run for president in Zambia's upcoming elections. Credit: Ephraim Nsingo/IPS

All candidates are required to file nomination papers with the country’s Supreme Court to get legal confirmation that they are standing as a presidential candidate. Come election day on Sept. 20, about 17 candidates will battle it out to lead the country. Nawakwi is well-known in Zambian politics. In 1997 she became the first woman in southern Africa to be appointed as a minister of finance. The former member of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) left it in 2001 when she and other officials opposed then President Fredrick Chiluba’s bid for a third term.

They formed the Forum for Democratic Development (FDD) and Nawakwi was elected as the party’s first vice president. In 2005 she became the first Zambian woman to lead a political party when she was elected president of the FDD.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: You have just filed for nomination as a presidential candidate. What was going through your mind? A: As I went to file my nomination, as I walked up to the Chief Justice, I asked myself ‘Why am I doing this?’ I was (asking) myself ‘am I equal to the task?’ But when I looked at my supporters and their excitement, it helped me appreciate the trust. I believe Zambia is ready for a woman to be president. Only a woman can bring about real change in this country.

Q: What can be done to change the mindset, the negative perception and stereotypes about women? A: Zambian women have the same rights as men, and running for political office is not an exception. When I took over as minister of finance people had all sorts of negative questions because I was a woman… I was minister of finance during one of the most difficult phases in the history of our country, but I managed to contain the situation.

I was minister of finance at a time when Zambia was at its lowest. I remember there was a day when I was required to effect payment for half a million dollars and the government did not have any money. We had to borrow from one of our commercial banks. We were trying to liberalise the economy but we had no income in the country. I was privileged to be one of those who managed to push through the structural adjustment programme.

Liberia has had the best leader (President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf) post conflict to manage that economy. And it is not just about the economy, but people’s attitudes as well. I believe that if Africa believed that one of its major assets is women, we would be much better.

Look at what is happening in Libya, Somalia and all the carnage… who is making those decisions? The motherly instinct of a woman would not allow such, as mothers our stomachs move when we see such carnage.

I believe that with women in charge, we would not be seeing most of the conflicts we are seeing in Africa today.

Q: You are the only woman who has filed for nomination as president. You are also the only female president of a political party in Zambia. Is this a sign that women are not yet ready for the challenge? A: We have to start somewhere, and this is what we have been discussing with other women. I am a product of the women’s lobby myself… in a highly patriarchal society like ours, you have to break that mind-set that women cannot do certain things. I was democratically elected as president of our party at a convention that was contested by five men and they all confirmed that I was better than them. Having broken that barrier, I see more of our (women) colleagues coming in.

Q: What is it that you are going to do differently during this campaign? A: Nothing and no one will stop me now. I believe that Zambia will only be saved by a woman and that Zambia is ready for a woman president. As soon as the men heard I was contesting, they all panicked. I will work and deliver like I delivered when I was minister of finance. The current leadership belongs to the liberation struggle era. We need leadership for the 21st century!

Our agenda when we get into government (will) be to provide a constitution that provides for the rights of all individuals, including women and persons with disabilities.

Q: In terms of policies, what are the major highlights of your manifesto? A: We are pushing for the decentralisation of political and economic power, to ensure that our people are empowered to drive development.

I am a passionate believer in the power that the country has in its people… our people’s quality of life continues to decline, yet we are one of the richest countries in the world. There is no deliberate policy to put the ordinary Zambian at the centre of any economic policy.

This is because we have an over centralised government and this has been the case since the colonial days when resource allocation was done in line with (what) had been used in Britain. This unfortunately resulted in corruption. Resource allocation is centred in the hands of a few … we need political and economic decentralisation.

If you have decentralisation, even members of parliament will now be interested in serving their people at the local level because that is where the resources will be directed. You will see that most of the world’s successful economies have been decentralised.

Q: How do you intend to make decentralisation work in Zambia? A: I think that for purposes of accountability and transparency there is a need to make sure planning is influenced from the district. We would want to have the minister of finance to come up with budgets for districts, which then coordinate the allocation of resources.

Excerpt:

Only six sub-Saharan African countries have failed to reduce the number of women dying in childbirth over the last two decades. High-spending South Africa is among them, with maternal mortality rates more than quadrupling since 1990. Human Rights Watch researcher Agnes Odhiambo says this is largely due to a lack of accountability.

Maternal mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole have been reduced by a quarter compared to 1990 levels. But the continent’s most developed economy is moving in the opposite direction: South Africa’s maternal mortality rate in 1990 was 150 per 100,000 live births; in its 2010 MDG progress report, the country reported this had risen to 625 per 100,000.

“HIV is a big factor in maternal mortality in South Africa,” says Odhiambo, adding that improved reporting means deaths that might have gone unrecorded in the past have also been added to the total.

“But even with all that, the kind of negligence that is happening in our facilities… from what women were saying, substandard care is a big problem and that is an issue that we truly have to think about.”

Health workers failing patients

The survey, ‘Stop Making Excuses: Accountability for Maternal Health Care in South Africa’, reveals a picture of serious neglect, including women in labour being sent home from hospitals without being examined, women ignored or made to wait for hours – even days – by nurses when they asked for help, women being physically and verbally abused by staff, and others forced to change their own sheets or carry their newborns around the hospital while still weak from giving birth. Women with HIV and those from other parts of Africa also reported experiencing discrimination.

“For me, that is failing women,” says Odhiambo. “You fail women when a woman loses her baby and you don’t even bother to explain to her what caused the death of that baby… Or when women are made to clean up their own blood, or when women are forced to sleep (in the same bed) with their baby barely three hours after a c-section, when they’re not yet strong enough.”

The provincial secretary for the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) in the Eastern Cape, Xolani Malamlela, acknowledged that health workers’ performance sometimes falls short, but said the union’s assessment is that the problem begins with poor management of health institutions.

Malamlela says that health workers are frequently overworked and are not always paid on time, leading to a demoralisation of staff. He also says procurement policies that have centralised control of stocks of medicine and equipment in the provincial capital have deprived individual hospitals of the capacity to manage vital supplies.

“But we cannot deny that you might here and there find those reckless staff… and we must also play our part in encouraging our members not to deal with patients in a very reckless manner,” he says.

Managers failing patients and health workers

Odhiambo’s report is critical of a failure to act on complaints – not only in sanctioning individual health workers but in recognising system-wide problems that contribute to abuse and neglect. She points out that South Africa’s health authorities are negligent on another level, in failing to collect appropriately detailed information about maternal mortality that would guide policy.

The country has not conducted a Demographic and Health Survey since 2003, for example. Cost is cited as the reason for the delay, but countries with lesser resources have more up-to-date statistics.

“Our health systems are challenged,” says Marion Stevens, a midwife and member of Women in Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Health. She says the main factor in maternal deaths is HIV/AIDS, but argues that the national health department’s focus on the pandemic is poorly executed.

“Accountability is an important issue, because it asks the question why. With all the resources that are being spent on AIDS, why are we not looking also at women’s health, and in particular at maternal mortality as a related issue?”

The focus on AIDS, she says, has come at the cost of considering a continuum of health care. For example, women are told not to go for antenatal care until they are 20 weeks’ pregnant because clinics are overwhelmed by other demands.

“So for women who are ill when they’re pregnant, if they want to get well, or if they are HIV-positive, or if they want to choose to have an abortion, then they essentially come in very very late, and that’s problematic.”

Stevens says the health department has designed a powerful new strategy for sexual and reproductive health rights which provides for greater accountability and integrating issues of HIV and AIDS into a holistic view of women’s health, but since it was completed in May, the document has been sitting on someone’s desk.

Restoring accountability

Odhiambo says that South Africa’s health system lacks adequate monitoring by patients. “A lot of monitoring of what is going on has been done from a provider point of view, but I think there’s a need to bring in patients to say what is not working for them.”

She envisions that this could help to break down the barrier between health workers and users of the system. “Health workers are feeling targeted by this notion of patient complaints, but they’re feeling targeted because the mechanism is not being used in the way it should.

“If patient complaints are implemented properly, then health users and health workers should be friends, because health users are complaining about the problems they’re facing in different facilities, as are health workers and nurses, so the two can really join forces and push the government to make the changes needed so that you’ve got happy users and happy providers.”

On Apr. 5, the United Nations Children’s Fund will launch a report on teenage pregnancy in Sierra Leone. Teenage pregnancies account for 40 percent of maternal deaths in the country, and the report comes as public health authorities recalibrate strategy to address a problem that endangers both mothers and children.

This young woman from Makeni dropped out of school when she had her first child at 16. Credit: Anna Jeffreys/IRIN

Seventy percent of teenage girls in Sierra Leone are married, according to a 2008 survey by the World Health Organization, in a country where early marriage is supported by traditional practice.

The United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) report, “A Glimpse Into the World of Teenage Pregnancy in Sierra Leone”, states that “such importance is given to girls marrying as virgins that the age of marriage often coincides with the first occurrence of female menstruation”.

Drawing on research conducted in four regions, UNICEF’s report finds the typical consequences of teen pregnancy are social stigma, unstable marriages, poverty and the end of a girl’s education. UNICEF cautions that comprehensive evidence-based data on the phenomenon is still limited, but the issue has become a focus of concern for educators, doctors, politicians and parents alike.

Poverty and stigma

Kadiatu – not her real name – lives in Kissy Mess Mess, in the eastern part of the capital, Freetown, with her three children. Now 27, she recalls how she became pregnant with her first child.

“We were a poor family and I was really in want for virtually everything, from food, clothing, to even paying school charges… so I got this man that was ready to provide all of these, so i yielded to him,” she told IPS.

Her boyfriend was 30; she was just 15 at the time, preparing to take her Basic School Certificate Examination. She was taken to the doctor with what was suspected to be appendicitis – it turned out that she was three months pregnant.

“I told my boyfriend immediately,” Kadiatu recalls.

His reaction? “You have to get an abortion! Just get rid of it!”

“The man – who had been showering me with gifts and telling me all kinds of loving words – denied that he was responsible for the pregnancy,” Kadiatu recounts. She had the baby, but like many others in her position, she dropped out of school.

“I became pregnant again at 17 for almost the same reasons as the first pregnancy. Now I have three children, I am still a single mother and my only means of survival is to hawk fruits in the market and rely on favours from men who promise love,” she says, “but what they really want is to sleep with you and run away afterwards.”

In 2009, village chiefs in one northern province passed bylaws that require that when a schoolgirl falls pregnant, she and the father must both drop out of school. This scheme quickly drew criticism for only compounding the problem of stigma and a high dropout rate.

In Koinadugu District, also in the north, the Biriwa Youth Association for Development took the opposite tack, offering school-age girls between the ages of 12 and 16 the chance to win scholarships to attend university – if they passed regular examinations by a community nurse to “prove” they were virgins. This initiative too was quickly scrapped.

Stigma aggravates problems

In a draft report for the World Health Organisation, Dr Helenlouise Taylor noted that few teens have ante-natal checkups, instead trying to hide their pregnancy or try to abort. This makes early detection of potential problems in a high-risk group very difficult.

For her research, directed towards developing strategies to reduce Sierra Leone’s maternal mortality rate, Taylor visited 14 districts of the country, observing conditions, interviewing health workers and using a questionnaire to collect information about patterns and trends of maternal care as well as training and equipment in health facilities.

In the draft report’s recommendations for teenage pregnancy, Taylor says measures to reduce coerced sex and unsafe abortion and increase access to contraception for adolescents are all important, and makes several important suggestions regarding information and reducing social stigma to encourage young mothers to make use of available health care.

She urges a review of life skills and biology in the school curriculum, as well as tighter links between schools and antenatal clinics – possibly even offering antenatal care at schools. She also calls for appropriate training for health personnel and teachers to help both groups communicate accurate and effective information on sex and birth control to teens.

Maud Droogleever Fortuyn, child protection director for UNICEF in Sierra Leone, told IPS that bringing about changes in behaviour and attitudes will take time. She said UNICEF has been supporting local NGOs conducting baseline surveys to improve understanding of the extent and nature of teenage pregnancy, developing modules to improve knowledge, as well as working with traditional authorities to develop effective bylaws that will support teen mothers, especially with completing school.

Peggy Kapanda has bad memories of the time she spent living with her uncle when she was young. She was treated as a second-rank child. But this only motivated her to do a better job herself. At her small home in John Laing compound, in Zambia’s capital Lusaka, she and her husband take care of two other children in addition to their own three young boys.

Peggy Kapanda with her extended family: her own three sons and two young cousins she has also taken into her home. Credit: Jorrit Meulenbeek/SNS

“They are my aunts’ children,” says Kapanda. Dorothy, now in the last year of high school, was unable to go to school in the village where she stayed. The nearest school was far away, and after her father died her family had no financial means to send her there.

For Kapanda, a teacher by profession, taking the girl in was a natural thing to do. “Staying there in the village, without going to school, she would have been married now, with I don’t know how many children. I feel pity for these children who have no school, no future.”

While her aunt is grateful, Kapanda finds a lot of people in town do not understand her action. “They see it as wasting money. Why do I educate these children when they won’t even stay around to take care of me later? But that is not why I do it.”

Taking care of distant family members beyond your own small family unit used to be common in Zambia, like in most African cultures. No matter how poor one may be, people are still expected to take responsibility for others in their extended family.

In Zambia, a proverb in the Bemba language captures it well: “Clothes can be too small, but food can never be too little to share”. But in recent years this culture has slowly been changing, as people start to see the disadvantages of this system.

Changing circumstances, changing attitudes

Jack Kampole, a communications consultant and video producer who runs his own company in the capital Lusaka, recognises the tensions and pressure that come with family expectations. Through hard work, he has managed to build his own house in Makeni compound for his wife and his two kids.

“Before I was married I was already working. I told my brothers: this is the time I can help you pay school fees and everything. But now I am married I have my own family to take care of. I have to make my own plans.”

He currently has one of his younger brothers staying with him, but some family members feel he would be able to do more, and that his big house has plenty of space for more of his brothers.

Collins Phiri, who came to Lusaka from the Copperbelt province looking for business opportunities, experienced the same thing.

He is now setting up his own taxi business, and feels that if you want to make a career for yourself, it is best to move out of the town where you have your family, because once you start making money, the demands and requests for assistance you get from family members will hold you back, leaving you with little money to save and invest in your own business.

Social welfare organizations and churches have been calling for a return to the extended family system, especially as a way to take care of the country’s enormous number of orphans.

As a result of the AIDS pandemic there are between 750,000 and 1.2 million orphans in Zambia, according to the HIV/AIDS National Strategic Framework 2006-2010. A survey done in Kitwe, Zambia’s second largest town, revealed that almost 20 percent of children under 14 did not live with their parents.

“In our family tracing surveys for orphans and street children we have had many cases where we ended up finding the relatives”, says Teddy Masuwa. He works for Macnet Zambia, an organisation providing counseling and activities for street children, but also trying to reconnect them to their families.

“But in many cases the relatives refused to take the child,” Masuwa says.

“People think: you are an NGO, you must be getting a lot of money from donors, why don’t you take care of them?”

Masuwa sees this attitude especially in towns. “In rural areas the extended family system still works, because there families require a lot of manpower. If there is an orphan boy, an uncle will just say: come here, so he can help in cultivating the land. But in town, people don’t see a benefit. They will only see their salary getting smaller.”

Masuwa blames it on the culture of capitalism, replacing the spirit of “African humanism” that former president Kenneth Kaunda promoted for 27 years after independence. “We were used to staying together. We never knew aunties or cousins. Everybody was your mother or your brother,” he recalls.

“Nowadays most people think they will do better when they just focus on their own business, but I don’t think that’s true. We need each other for development.”

* Published under an agreement with Street News Service.

Marwa Sharaf el-Din, an Egyptian law PhD candidate at Oxford University, spent part of International Women’s Day in Tahrir Square this afternoon to perform Zajal, a popular traditional form of Arabic poetry.

“Do I have to be broken to be an oriental woman; do I have to always say ‘yes’ to be an Egyptian woman?” her satirical poem reads.

Music bands and other performers will be showcasing their talents in front of thousands of people who will march to Tahrir Square to mark International Women’s Day, which takes place every year on Mar. 8.

“Unlike the confrontational protests we had… to topple the regime, this protest is more of a celebratory one. We want to celebrate the achievements we have accomplished so far in Egypt,” Sharaf-el Din says.

“What we also want to do in today’s rallies is remind the government that women make up half of the country, that we should be part of the decision-making in the new Egypt, that we can’t go backwards.”

A step back

The day before was a very disappointing one for women and women’s rights activists across Egypt – when just one woman was included into the newly sworn-in cabinet. Essam Sharaf, Egypt’s new prime minister, has instead announced the creation of committee that deals with the advancement of women, formed under the supervision of the cabinet.

“I appreciate the prime minister’s acknowledgement of women’s role but I do not agree that this is the solution. I highly doubt this newly created committee will have any power,” says Sharaf-el Din.

Aalam Wassef, an online activist who has long campaigned for women’s rights and says this new arrangement is “condescending to women”.

“It’s like saying you women can have your little committee while we men do the serious business.”

Wassef will be present in Tahrir Square to distribute 10,000 flyers calling for gender equality that he and his friends have printed using their own money. They will also be distributing thousands of stickers that read: “Sally was martyred for both of us;” “My sister has the right to wear what she pleases;” “I am a provider and a caretaker, where am I from the social protection system.”

Laila Mustafa, a veiled woman in her 40s, came across Wassef on Tahrir Square yesterday evening and offered help. She took 1,000 banners to distribute them among her neighbours in Boulaq el Dakroor, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Cairo.

“I finished distributing all the banners and today I am coming to the square. I do not want to make demands for women. I just want to show presence.

“Today’s demonstration is a good opportunity to show the government that we exist.”

Picking their battles

Throughout the uprising, women were at the forefront of the street protests.

However, they have largely kept quiet about their gender rights in a country where they have faced rampant discrimination and received little legal protection against widespread violence and sexual abuse.

They were careful not to display any intention of wanting to advance one group’s rights over those of another.

“We did not speak of our gender rights during these protests because it was not the right time. We spoke for the political and social rights of all Egyptians. If we were to campaign for our rights as women in parallel with the revolution’s national goal, that would have been called political opportunism,” says Hala Kamal, an assistant professor at Cairo University and a member of the Women in Memory Forum.

But only days into the post-Mubarak era, many women’s rights activists have begun to feel suspicious that the national umbrella they rallied under, whose slogan was democracy, equality and freedom for all Egyptians, may be leaving them out.

Their disillusionment began when no women were selected by the military council to be among the 10-member constitutional committee responsible for making constitutional revisions.

Another disheartening setback that raises questions about the future of women’s rights in Egypt is the return of sexual harassment to the streets.

Returning from the front lines

While the protests have been hailed for being harassment-free in a society infamous for widespread sexual harassment, Engy Gozlan, who works with HarassMap, an initiative that enables women to report sexual harassment via SMS, says sexual harassment incidents have returned to their pre-protests level. It is estimated that more than 80 per cent of Egyptian women have encountered sexual harassment.

Fears that the condition of Egyptian women could return to ‘normal’ after the uprising appear legitimate. After all, there have been several cases in history of uprisings that prove that “women can be used in a revolution and then told ‘thank you, you can go back home,'” Wassef says.

Thus while the widespread participation of Egyptian women in the uprising can be considered “one more step towards women’s empowerment, it should not hold expectations,” says Marina Ottaway, the director of Carnegie Endowment’s Middle East programme.

Reflecting on the Algerian national liberation struggle in the 1960s, Ottaway says: “Frantz Fanon, [one of the most influential writers on the Algerian struggle at the time], has argued that the war of independence has changed the relations between men and women and enhanced the participation of women in the public sphere.”

“But as soon as the war ended and the revolutionary fervour was over, the old gender roles were reinstated. Old customs proved to be very entrenched and hard to change.”

Moreover, Joost Hiltermann, who wrote extensively about Palestinian women’s movements during the first Intifada which begun in the late 1980s, observed in 1991 that “despite women’s activism, their social and political position in society has essentially remained the same”.

Hitlermann, who is now the International Crisis Group’s deputy programme director, says: “It is usually the case that during a national crisis, women play a very active political and social role because everyone is on the barricade. But, when the crisis is over, women return to their original roles.”

From this perspective, Amal Abdel Hadi of the New Women Association in Egypt says that the recent marginalisation of Egyptian women following the uprising is an embodiment of a patriarchal society that is difficult to change.

“This is the default. This is what people were born into and this is how they work. No one wants to make an effort. No one believes in the cause of gender equality.”

Exercising suffrage

Meanwhile, women’s rights activist Hala Kamal is calling on people to look through the lens of Egypt’s own history and reflect on the 1919 Egyptian uprising, which was characterised by the wide and unusual participation of women.

“The outcome of that uprising was incredible progress for women. It led to the establishment of the Egyptian Women Union in the 1920s and the pressure of new women movements increased through out the 1930s and 40s.

“So I am very optimistic that this revolution which, unlike the 1919 revolution, already includes well-established women’s rights organisations, will be positive for women’s rights.”

She also argues that women’s participation in building the future of Egypt has already started widening.

“Even the conservative discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood is now talking about including women in their Consultative Council. Keep in mind that I am talking about the most conservative party in Egypt.”

On the all-male constitutional committee, Kamal believes it does not provide adequate insight into the future of women’s participation.

“The committee was formed with the specific task of amending articles related to elections and which do not address any gender issue. Also keep in mind that the people who formed this committee are the military, an institution that is already insensitive to gender issues.”

She says that women’s rights organisations should instead shift their focus to gaining representation in the upcoming general committees that will be formed in the coming weeks to change the whole constitution.

“This presents an opportunity for women to be part of devising new gender-sensitive legislation,” Engy Gozlan says.

Women’s coalitions are pushing for 30 per cent representation in these general committees. But for their efforts to be successful, Nevine Ebeid, a women’s rights activist, says: “Women need to wake up now.”

“We are still within the revolutionary fervour. The toppling of the regime is done, the changing of the government is done. This is the time for distributing the booty and women should be strongly present for that.”

“If we do not push hard for our rights and lobby for our representation, our situation may regress to even [worse] than it was before the revolution.”

With the dust of the uprising still unsettled, women’s rights activists are well aware that, over the coming weeks, they will have to seize the moment and fight the battle for representation one institution at a time.

Their success or failure may set the course for how the women’s rights scene will look like over the next decade.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

For the government of Uganda, the timing of David Kato’s death couldn’t have been more unfortunate. Kato was killed on Jan. 26, a national holiday to commemorate the ascent to power of the ruling National Resistance Movement party.

Kato was the face of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), an advocacy group actively campaigning against the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

The international press, foreign governments and gay rights activists have cast Kato’s death as the result of the prevailing climate of homophobia in Uganda; a charge the government refutes.

Kale Kayihura, the Inspector General of Police, insists that Kato’s murder had nothing to do with his activism, saying that he was just a victim of a private disagreement.

“The circumstances surrounding this incident have no indication regarding Kato’s campaign against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill before Parliament,” Kayihura said in the days after the murder became public.

Police initially declared Kato’s death as the latest in a spate of crimes committed by thugs in the Mukono area near Kampala, which has seen more than a dozen people battered to death using iron bars in the last two months.

“The killing was an act of thuggery,” Information and National Guidance Minister Kabakumba Masiko stated at a recent press conference. “It was not organised because of what he was. Much as homosexuality is prohibited by the Constitution, his death was a (private) mission gone bad. The government is doing whatever it takes to ensure that those who killed Kato are brought to book.”

Human rights activists, though, beg to differ. They maintain that it’s no coincidence that Kato was killed just a month after his face appeared in a local tabloid that published pictures and addresses of Uganda’s “Top 100 Homosexuals” under the screaming front-page headline, “Hang Them!”

In a press release soon after the police’s statement, the activists wrote: “The Sexual Minorities Uganda and the entire Ugandan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Community stand together to condemn the killing of David Kato and call for the Ugandan Government, Civil Society, and Local Communities to protect sexual minorities across Uganda. David has been receiving death threats since his face was put on the front page of Rolling Stone Magazine [a Ugandan tabloid, unrelated to the U.S.-based magazine], which called for his death and the death of all homosexuals.”

Kato’s lawyer claims that the activist had feared for his safety prior to his death, even alerting police. But the government and conservatives believe that by condemning Kato’s murder as an act of homophobia, the local gay rights movement and its foreign supporters are intent on pushing their agenda by converting a victim of random violence into a martyr.

The heated war of words between conservatives and human rights activists has cooled slightly since police arrested Enock Nsubuga, who confessed to committing the murder, but is by no means over.

Nsubuga, an ex-convict, confessed to killing Kato in an extra-judicial statement he recorded at Mukono magistrate’s court.

The 22-year-old Nsubuga claims that he killed Kato for enticing him into homosexual practices with material and financial promises that never materialised.

“The suspect was working in Kato’s garden at the time of the activist’s death,” says police chief Kayihura. “According to the suspect, Kato, 46, promised to pay him money for having sex with him. But Kato never fulfilled his promise.

“The suspect then took a hammer from the bathroom and fatally beat Kato. The attack was not a hate crime, as has been widely reported, but rather stemmed primarily from the suspect’s desire to get money from Kato.”

Kayihura nevertheless cautioned the public and anti-homosexuality pastors to show sensitivity towards the gay community in the country. “You should stop engaging in extremist campaigns that can be interpreted differently.”

If the police had hoped that Nsubuga’s confession would put the matter to rest, they must have been monumentally disappointed.

Gay rights activists have questioned the veracity of Nsubuga’s confession, stating that, the latter’s claims are designed to portray gay people in unflattering light.

“Nsubuga’s reasons for murdering Kato depict Kato as a deceitful human being. He’s also portrayed as someone who used promises to make Nsubuga do things the latter didn’t want to do,” a SMUG official said.

“This is consistent with messages from homophobes who have accused the gay rights movement of using gifts and money to entrap and entice young students into homosexuality. This is wrong. It’s also a calculated attempt to smear Kato’s name even in death and to further depict the gay rights movement in Uganda in negative light.”

Some activists have expressed fear that Nsubuga might be a fall guy, as the government tries to deflect international scrutiny on Uganda over protection of gays.

Val Kalende, from gay rights group Freedom and Roam Uganda, insists that the government can’t wash its hands clean of responsibility.

“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009. The Ugandan Government and the so-called U.S evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”

Uganda retains anti-sodomy laws that punish homosexual acts by up to 14 years to life in prison and is considering passing an Anti-Homosexuality Bill that would impose the death penalty on homosexual behaviour.

* This article first appeared on the Street News Service

By Fatima Asmal
DURBAN, Feb 10 2011 (IPS)

Zanele Magwaza-Msibi is a woman with a mission: to serve the people of South Africa. She is poised to become leader of South Africa’s newest political party, the National Freedom Party (NFP), after breaking away from the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), where she served as national chairperson.

In this new role she comes into the growing tradition of female political party founders and leaders in South Africa, first achieved by Helen Suzman, one of the founders of the apartheid-era Progressive Party and one of the few white voices challenging racial discrimination at the time; Helen Zille, the current leader of the Democratic Alliance; and Patricia De Lille, founder and president of the Independent Democrats.

Fatima Asmal spoke to Magwaza-Msibi about her reasons for leaving the IFP and her aims and aspirations for her new party.

Q: What were the challenges you experienced as the female national chair of the IFP? A: It is a fact that there are some people within the IFP who don’t believe that a woman can be a leader. It was ironic because I was the national chairperson of the IFP, the second to the president. Therefore, I was occupying the very highest position in the IFP and I was getting a lot of support from the president and other members.

But there are some within the party who don’t believe that a woman can take a leadership position and be at the helm of the party.

Q: Why did you break away from the party? A: I did not want to do that. It took me about two and a half years to take a decision. In fact, it was not my decision but I felt I could no longer continue because I took it as a constructive dismissal from my party.

I don’t want to talk about what has been going on inside the IFP because I don’t want people to have a bad picture of the party as if I’m saying it because I’m disgruntled, because I’m not disgruntled.

I loved the IFP very much and the leadership of the IFP. It was a very difficult decision to take but, ultimately, I felt that there was nothing else that I could do because I tried to mend things between us but I failed.

Q: And your motivation for forming the NFP? A: It was not me, it was the support — the ground support that I have and the aspirations that people had for me. I couldn’t just slaughter those aspirations, I couldn’t just try and break away from them because I have worked so hard since I was young for the communities and people know me very well. It was them having seen that I’ve gone through a lot in the party. They felt that they knew that ultimately the party was going to expend me or dismiss me and they came together and started something.

Q: What do you hope to achieve with the NFP? A: My main objective is to serve the people of South Africa and to serve them better than anyone else. You can’t serve people unless you are in a political party and unless you are in government.

I have a track record, fortunately for me. I’ve been the mayor of Zululand for thirteen years. In the period I’ve been the mayor I’ve been chosen as the number one district in terms of service delivery. I’ve never had toyi-toyiing in my area of jurisdiction, even from within the municipality.

I believe very strongly that if you work, you have to work with the people, you have to inform them. I believe very strongly in clean governance, in service delivery, I believe very strongly that we have to fight corruption, I believe very strongly that the issues which affect more especially the voiceless – women and young people – those issues should have prominence in whatever I do, and also the elderly people.

In Zululand I’ve been working with all those people. I was the only municipality that was able to go out and get funding from overseas. I’ve built more than 450 classrooms in my tenure as mayor, [despite] that not being my responsibility and obligation as mayor.

My conviction is that in South Africa, we need a very strong opposition, an opposition that’s going to help the ruling party, to keep it on its toes – because if there is no strong opposition, the ruling party gets too much power and too much power corrupts and corrupts absolutely.

That is why there’s a lot of corruption, that is why there’s a lot of nepotism, that is why there’s a high level of unemployment and corruption that is going on in all levels of government, because the ANC has become too big.

I don’t want to see our country sliding into a one party state. Therefore I believe very strongly that we have to get an opportunity to serve the people and to serve them better than everyone else.

Q: How has the party been received thus far? A: I’m very much humbled by the reception that I’m receiving from all the communities where I go. I received a call from a very passionate woman from Limpopo who was saying she learnt about me having started the party and they have spoken to a lot of people. She said she has already informally registered about 900 people to join our party.

We only introduced the party recently at the Durban City Hall but I was amazed at the number of people who attended – the newspapers were saying there were more than 5,000 people there – I was humbled.

That same day I went to Nongoma in Mhlabatini where the president of the IFP comes from. I was amazed. Over two days I had about 6,000 people who had registered as members there and more than 5,000 in Ulundi. It says to me the people are coming in in their numbers…I think people are taking it as a breath of fresh air.

Q: How do you rate your chances as woman leader of a political party? A: There is always a first. I know that it is the first time that South Africa has a black woman as a leader of a political party. I know that it is still very difficult for some traditionalists to believe that a black woman can successfully lead a party but I think we are going to succeed because of the people that I have, the calibre of the leadership that I have and also the ground support that we have – I do believe that we will definitely succeed.

Q: Have you learnt any lessons from Helen Zille’s experiences? A: One of the lessons I’ve learnt from her is to be there when people need you. Not be there only when it is elections. I’ve seen her traveling the whole country, going to the territories that were not pro-Democratic Alliance previously. I think that is a lesson – I personally believe very much in people and in communities and in working with them.

Q: As a woman, do you have any intention to canvas support from other women specifically? A: I do believe that women will definitely support me. Women are more sympathetic towards the needs of the people…If there is no food at home on the table, you know best as a woman. If you don’t have money to pay your children’s school fees, the person who knows that first is the woman. As a woman, I would know first about the needs of the people, more especially the needs of the poorest of the poor.

Excerpt:

Staying in Chawama, a compound outside Zambia’s capital Lusaka, I spent many an evening chatting to the local women as they sat outside and cooked on their charcoal braziers. It intrigued me how a lot of the gossip would come back to one topic: the importance of ‘chinamwali’, the traditional initiation training most Zambian women go through before they get married.

Drumming at a chinamwali session. Credit: Jorrit Meulenbeek/INSP

From the way things sounded, this is the key to a successful marriage, but during our chats the women never quite revealed what is actually taught during these mysterious ceremonies. Of course I grew more and more curious, and when I finally got the opportunity to attend one, I did not have to think twice.

After paying the entrance fee of 2,000 Zambian kwacha, less than half a dollar, I walked into the small, dark living room. It had just one window and the furniture had been shifted to the side. It was cramped with women of different ages, from old senior teachers to recently married matrons, and of course a handful of fellow students.

In the corner two ladies were seated, holding large drums. The door was closed behind me, and while I was still trying to gauge the atmosphere, the ladies started undressing, some just pulling up their shirts to reveal their bellies, while others remained with only their underwear and a ‘chitenge’ cloth wrapped around their waist.

Without any further introduction, the drums started beating and the women burst out in song. The drum beats were so intense and loud that I could physically feel them, as the ladies all started shaking to the rhythm in sync, instructing us to copy them.

As I watched the more experienced ladies dance, tilting their waists independently of the rest of their bodies, I really did not think my body was capable of doing such. But as I struggled to imitate, the old ladies would come to stand behind me, holding my thighs to make sure only my waist would be free to move.

“No, no, you’re doing a Shakira,” they said when I would still be shaking too many other parts. When I finally managed to get it right, they clapped and cheered with excitement.

Bridget Banda, who went through this training before she got married three years ago, looks back on it as a very positive experience. “I have grown because of it. I see more maturity in myself. Now, when I see women who did not go through it, I think I am much better off.”

She feels most Zambian men want a woman who is initiated. “Did you not go through training?” is a commonly heard remark from men scolding their wife. In some cases disappointed husbands even end up sending their wives back to be taught more, one of the worst possible embarrassments for the family.

“Most men know what to expect of a woman before they get married,” Banda explains. “So when their wife does not live up to that, they end up having affairs.”

That is one of the main risks of not going through initiation, says Florence Mutambo, one of the experienced ‘banacimbusa’ who are teaching me. “If you do not know how to please you husband in bed, he might just end up going to a prostitute,” she puts it plainly. “Those people are professionals at these things, so he will be much better off there.”

The first minutes of this quite explicit training were pretty awkward. Some of my fellow students and teachers would really get into it, almost as if they were actually in the act. But when I looked around, everybody else seemed quite comfortable. Shy and reserved as Zambian ladies may be about these issues in public, inside this room the atmosphere was amazingly free and open.

“I am going to try this with my husband tonight,” one lady said. “My husband never likes it when I do this,” complained another, after which one of the old ladies would give some more tips and tricks on how to do it better.

The next day I learned even more moves and skills, like how to shave my husband ‘down there’.

After making sure the door was shut, there was nobody peeking through the window, and stressing “this is only for the bedroom, this is only for your husband,” one of the matrons started giving a detailed demonstration of how all the moves we had learned are used in context. Holding her imaginary husband in every imaginable position, she went on for more than fifteen minutes, while the other women clapped and threw money at her in appreciation.

The way lovemaking was turned into a series of dance moves made it more abstract and fascinating to watch. It was nothing like a porn movie, but more like being in a theatre and watching a fine art performance. I could only admire these women, who have almost perfected this skill.

Before I came here, I would not have believed it was possible for women of different generations to freely share such intimate knowledge on this level. It really functions as a social and educational platform, and the way we bonded made it into a great experience. Looking back, even though my leg muscles tell a different story, I would never want to have missed this.

* This article first appeared on the Street News Service

Since arriving in Cape Town five years ago, Erina Manyene (not her real name) has eked out a meagre living picking up shifts doing laundry and cleaning other people’s homes in the city’s leafy southern suburbs.

Domestic work: essential yet undervalued... Credit: Ray Mungoshi

Manyene (28) left her young son, then only seven months old, in the care of her common law husband in her native Zimbabwe, crossed the crocodile-infested Limpopo River and crawled under thick layers of barbed wire to enter South Africa at an unauthorised crossing point.

“There has been a reversal of roles since the Zimbabwean crisis started. Because the type of work available in foreign countries is more suited to women, husbands are remaining behind to take care of the children while we venture out,” said Erina, a former school teacher in Harare.

International aid agencies estimate that between one and three million Zimbabweans have fled the country in the last decade to escape political repression and spreading poverty.

Many of the reluctant migrants are highly trained professionals – teachers, lawyers, journalists, engineers, doctors and nurses –forced to downsize their trades in their adopted countries to cobble together a frugal life on the fringes of South Africa’s main economy.

An escape from poverty?

Traditionally, domestic work provides an entry point into the South African job market for new arrivals and is a crucial employment area for both in-country and transnational female migrant workers. The Zimbabwean women beef up an expanding legion of domestic workers from Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi and Mozambique, spread across South Africa.

Statistics South Africa indicate that 42 per cent of black women from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) who lived in the Johannesburg area in 2001 worked in private households, although they represented only 4.9 per cent of women working in this atypical sector in the precinct.

Their remittances contribute to shoring up ailing economies in their home countries. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says globally, migrant worker remittances rose from US$60 billion worldwide in 1990 to US$328 billion in 2008, contributing over 10 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 22 countries in 2006.

World Bank figures show that $1, 2 billion was sent out of South Africa last year, the bulk of it to surrounding countries.

On average, migrant domestic workers earn between R1200 and R2 000 (about US$170 to US$300) a month, which they use to pay rent, buy food and send to their families at home. Beatrice, a retired Zimbabwean police officer and single mother of three, says she sends at least R2 000 home quarterly to pay for her children’s education and meet their daily needs.

Many migrants in low paying jobs rely on informal channels, dubbed omalayitsha, to send money and household goods home. “If I had not left Zimbabwe, my children would be out of school by now because the pay I got as an inspector was not enough to meet all our needs,” said Beatrice.

Isolated and without fundamental rights

However, findings of an ongoing study being conducted by the Domestic Workers Research Project (DWRP) at the University of the Western Cape confirm that migrant domestic workers suffer arduous working conditions for low wages and are often sequestered behind their employers’ high walls, cut off from family and friends for long periods.

“The regulations that they lay down for you is not to bring anyone on the premises. I felt sometimes like I was in a prison cell,” said Hester Stephens, president of the South African Domestic Workers and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU).

While some of their South African counterparts have made notable headway towards claiming labour rights such as minimum conditions of employment, minimum wages and leave pay, most migrant domestic workers are denied access to trade unions and are resigned to their situation.

“You see here in South Africa, most of the people they under rate us… In our workplace most of the people they want to pay us low money. Maybe they will say R50 a day, because they know us Zimbabweans we are stranded and desperate people, and we do not have money,” said a migrant domestic worker in Cape Town.

The immigration laws relating to workers from other parts of Africa present make it very difficult to implement policies that would ensure their fundamental rights and dignity.

“Foreigners” may only be issued with a quota work permit if they fall within a specific professional category; a general work permit and exceptional skills permit if their skills are deemed beneficial to South African development.

Evidently, domestic workers are not eligible for the various categories of work permits and would struggle to obtain permanent residence status, which is earned after more than five years of continuous legal residency in South Africa.

In practice, the only basis on which non-South Africans who do not possess the requisite “qualifications or skills and experience” can obtain the right to work is if they qualify for refugee status, a daunting task for most potential refugees.

Threat of violence, deportation

Migrants also face xenophobic resistance both at work and in society at large. They suffer silently for fear of approaching law enforcement agencies because anti-migrant tendencies run deep within the police force and in government departments.

The world was shocked by the violence that swept the country in 2008 when locals attacked mainly black people from other African countries. The “makwerekwere” (foreigners), the attackers alleged, were “stealing” locals’ jobs, women, houses and were a drain on scarce resources.

Analysts attributed the violence to a number of factors but the main factor appeared to be local leadership, either encouraging xenophobia or failing to prevent it.

Following a fresh episode of xenophobic violence that flared up in October 2009 when an estimated 2,000 Zimbabwean migrant farm workers were forced out of their shacks at De Doorns, some 140 km northeast of Cape Town by bands of locals, an African National Congress councilor for the area was fingered for fanning the attacks.

Isolated incidents of violence against black Africans have been reported countrywide since the end of the football World Cup in July. The government has vehemently refused to acknowledge that the violence was inspired by xenophobia, arguing instead that it was the handiwork of common criminals.

This is cold comfort though to migrants like Grace Matenhese who was chased out of her corrugated iron and board shack along with her infant child in the dead of night at De Doorns. “Being a single mother in a foreign country is not easy at the best of times, but it is even harder now that we have been deprived of our livelihood.”

Like the majority of aspiring African migrants seeking low-skilled work, Matenhese failed at the first hurdle in her attempts to acquire a work permit. Consequently, she lives under the perpetual threat of deportation, violence and exploitation because of her status as an “illegal foreigner”.

Yet these hurdles have failed to dissuade women migrants from streaming into the country to seek work.

*Ray Mungoshi is a Research Assistant with the Domestic Workers Research Project, Faculty of Law, University of the Western Cape

Hundreds of residents from civil society organisations marched in the streets of Bulawayo on Dec. 1 to mark the 16 days of Activism Against Violence Against Women and Girls . But sex workers and members of gay groups were barred by police from joining the demonstration.

A dozen organisations took part in the event in Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo. The commemoration was organised by the Musasa Project, an organisation that deals with domestic violence, under the slogan  “Structures of violence :Defining safety and security for women and girls.”

Among the marchers were around thirty men and women from the Sexual Rights Center (SRC), an organisation that advocates for the rights of homosexuals and commercial sex workers. Wearing pink t-shirts emblazoned “Pink and Proud”, they were carrying banners calling for the Zimbabwean authorities to respect the rights of sexual minorities.

Sibonginkosi Sibanda of the Musasa Project – which organised the 16 Days event – says the police asked to see the leaders of SRC.

“After the march, one police officer came to me and told me that someone had brought to their attention that we were marching with an organisations that promotes sexual diversity,” she told IPS. Police told her that because homosexual acts are against the law in Zimbabwe, they could not be present at an event where speeches that promote homosexuality would be made.

Police officers called the director of the Centre out of the crowd and told her to gather her people together and leave. The SRC’s director declined to speak to IPS for this story, or even be named.

Another woman who works with the group spoke on condition that her identity be protected.

“In line with the main theme of the day,” she told IPS, “we also wanted to have a hand in fighting violence against women and our main points were fighting against correctional rape of lesbian women and fighting against violence against sex workers.

“We were told the police have something against some of our principles and what we stand for as an organisation. Our main aim in marching was for the women’s rights. Are we then saying  lesbians and commercial sex workers are not part of society?”

Zimbabwe is one of many African countries in which homosexual acts are illegal; president Robert Mugabe is on record as saying gays and lesbians are worse than pigs and dogs. Zimbabwe, like neighbouring South Africa, there has been a reported increase in what have been termed “corrective rapes” – sexual assaults on women thought to be lesbians.

Some of the other organisations who took part in the march condemned the police action, saying it violated basic human rights. Lawyer Lizwe Jamela says the police did not have the authority to bar the Sexual Rights Center.

“If it was the police that ordered them out, I don’t find  it in order because it was not a question of [the police] vetting who participates or who does not because they were also [only invited guests at the event]. I think it was just arbitrary. From a human rights point, it’s definitely wrong.”

There have been a number of high profile violations of gay and lesbians’ rights in Africa this year. Malawi sentenced two men to jail after they got engaged in a private ceremony; the men were released, but their trial provoked an outpouring of public ridicule.

In Uganda, parliament is considering a law that would make homosexual acts punishable by death. Several people have been attacked there after their names appeared in a list of supposedly gay Ugandans published by a tabloid.

In November, Mali and Morocco led a vote to remove sexual orientation from a UN resolution against extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions – virtually every other African country followed their lead.

At the end of hte same month, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga unexpectedly told a crowd in his Nairobi constituency that Kenyans found engaging in “homosexuality or lesbianism” would be imprisoned: Kenyan law, dating back to the colonial era, punishes homosexual acts with up to 14 years in prison.

The incident at Bulawayo’s 16 Days of Activism event is a reminder of the violence directed against African gays and lesbians in violation of their human rights.

The harm done by female genital mutilation is still enormous in Podor, a city in the north of Senegal, say officials at the local hospital. While the practice is declining slightly, some religious leaders in the region still support it.

Commemorating the 10th aniversary of a declaration abandoning FGM in the town of Malicounda Bambara: progress elsewhere has been slow. Credit: Heba Aly/IRIN

On Oct. 3, religious leaders from 60 of the 300 villages in the district approved a declaration to abandon genital mutilation and early and forced marriage. But other clerics have spoken out against the declaration, defending both practices as an integral part of local traditions.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) has been forbidden by law in Senegal since 1999, but the practice has continued briskly in Podor, despite campaigns by NGOs discouraging it.

The U.S.-based NGO Tostan (the name means “breakthrough” in Wolof) encourages women and marabouts in Podor to give up excision and forced marriage. According to its regional coordinator, Abdoulaye Kandé, to speak against FGM is not the same as speaking against Islam or trying to introduce social norms contrary to the customs of the region.

“Between now and 2015, the Senegalese government has set itself the objective of making the practice of excision a distant memory for the communities who still subscribe to it. Our organisation has to collaborate with the authorities to effectively end FGM and forced and early marriage. We will continue to raise awareness of the communities on the harm of these practices,” he said.

But Amadou Ba, a sociologist at the Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis, a city not far from Podor, says this practice cannot be eliminated in a day and one must first make the merits of ending it clear to local opinion leaders without frustrating anyone.

“To sensitise the masses or a group of people will have no effect. FGM, early and forced marriage are etched into the lives of the communities of Podor,” says Ba.

“How else can one understand that a young girl who has not been cut is excluded from a group of women? She is not considered a woman. Therefore it’s preferable that organisations fighting against FGM put in place other communication strategies and approaches to address the practice of excision.”

According to certain religious leaders in the region, to fail to practice excision and early marriage is against the precepts of Islam. Thierno Hamath Mbodj, the imam of a mosque in another town in the area, Diattar, says that Islam has never forbidden the practice of excision or early marriage of young girls.

“To cut a girl is fine, and strongly recommended by Islam. These practices have existed for a long time and never had a negative impact,” he said.

“No one can forbid us to do what Islam authorises. We will continue to cut our girls and we’ll give them away in marriage at the right time.”

But Gamaji Saré, another imam from Podor, doesn’t share this view. “Some say that it’s not mandatory, others the opposite. Religious leaders must meet to agree on abandoning the practice, because everyone knows it is forbidden by the law. Even Islam doesn’t authorise it, it’s more a part of our tradition.”

Hawa Abdoul Bâ, a member of the Podor Community Management Committee, says that women are afraid not to excise their girls. “According to what we know, a woman who is not cut is difficult to satisfy sexually. That’s why one must take a daughter to the old lady to cut the clitoris so she can control her sexuality until she’s married,” she said.

But Aminata Ba Diallo, a former FGM practitioner from Podor, said that parents no longer take their daughters to have them cut. “I was speaking with a friend who is still cutting. She complained that parents no longer bring their daughters. In my neighbourhood, Somna, from January until now, only 12 girls were cut and their parents are being threatened by the authorities. The practice is shrinking.”

According to health officials in Podor, the side effects of female genital mutilation that they are seeing are enormous. Aside from the removal of the clitoris and the minor lips of the vagina, midwife Fatou Diaw Sène lists cases of sexual dysfunction, tetanus, fistula and difficult childbirth as frequent experiences amongst mutilated women.

Dr Maodo Malick Diop, the chief doctor of the Podor health district, explains that FGM makes birth difficult because of the narrowing of the vulvo-genital area.

“The minor lips of the female genitals play a large role in childbirth. They are elastic and open to allow the head of the baby to pass through. With excision, they lose this elasticity. Complications linked to excisions frequently force us to resort to caesarean sections,” he told IPS.

The risk of repeated caesareans, according to Diop, has often led women to have tubal ligations done to avoid future pregnancy and protect their health.

In Podor, he said, seven of ten women who come to give birth have undergone genital mutilation.

“Excision is a practice to be condemned,” he said.

Women continue to join the Zimbabwe Republic Police, despite mixed reactions to their presence in law enforcement and allegations of abuse by fellow officers.

Retired Detective Inspector Pedzisai Shumba expresses a widely-held view about the roles women can play in policing.

“They handle the paper work at road blocks as men do the searches and are often used to trap high-profile as well as dangerous criminals,” he says.

“Women also investigate rape better than men, and sufferers of such trauma feel better talking to female than to male officers,” he explains.

Selby Hwacha, a renowned human rights lawyer, says police work is not only physical but also involves intellectual duties. “I would not have any problem with my daughter joining the force if she chooses it as a career.”

He says women in the police force are particularly important at this time in Zimbabwe – “a traumatised nation” – because they are better placed to deal with cases of domestic-based violence, rape and other social ills.

It’s a job

According to Zimbabwe Republic Police National Spokesperson, Assistant Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena, the ZRP does not “categorise its officers along gender lines.” They are trained together, carry out duties together and are promoted on merit.

Female officers occupy a number of senior positions in the ZRP, heading districts and provinces; while two of the five deputy commissioners at national headquarters are women, Bvudzijena says.

The force, 30,000 strong in 2005, plans to increase its membership to 50,000, but with no deliberate efforts to recruit a specific number of women.

Police sources told TerraViva that roughly 25 percent of police officers are female. Each year, scores of young women join the numbers of school leavers scrambling for jobs in the ZRP.

“I wanted to be a teacher, but my parents couldn’t afford the fees. A former schoolmate persuaded me to join her in the police, saying the course was free and short,” recalls 23-year old Constable Ernet Mudzori.

According to Bvudzijena, male and female recruits alike join the force today out of desperation, not out of passion like in the past.

“They just want something to occupy themselves with [in the current economic hardships].”

Mudzori says she has come to like the job after training. She was also lucky to have been posted to the administration section of the Police Protection Unit, providing security to state officials like judges, governors and ministers.

Allegations of abuse

All not ‘rosy’ for most female officers: most emerge from their training with memories they would rather keep to themselves.

Retired inspector Shumba: “Some of these children are first abused before given jobs… Last year at Morris [Police Training Depot] two instructors were fired for that.”

Shumba claims recruitment rules have been “grossly compromised, mainly by politicians.”

“They first take turns at the desperate girls before passing them on to senior police officers, who also exploit them until training is over…

“In the field there are more violations and the women end up used to it,” alleges Shumba. “I wouldn’t encourage my daughter to join… I know what is happening because I have been there.”

Police spokesman Bvudzijena denies Shumba’s allegations of ill-treatment of female officers during recruitment, training and at stations.

Regarding the claim that two instructors were dismissed for abuses in 2009, he said, “Those will remain allegations. There are no such incidents…”

As long as there is no political interference in the police, says Retired Assistant Inspector Mugove Chipashu, women remain an integral part of the system.

He says that in the police as in any workforce involving thousands of employees, there will always be bad elements that need to be “dealt with decisively.”

Zimbabwe last year launched the ZRP Women’s Network to improve cooperation, coordination, sharing of best practices, expertise, skills, challenges and solutions on gender issues in the police force.

Gender training for peacekeeping operations “is not something you do for two weeks before you go for deployment,” says Florence Butegwa, UNIFEM representative to the African Union (AU) and U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

Private Linda Mensah patrols the city of Buchanan with the Ghanaian Battalion of the United Nations Mission in Liberia. Credit:

The growing international recognition of the value of female peacekeepers has spurred efforts by the AU, with support from UNIFEM, to increase the number of women in its peacekeeping operations.

Nigeria is leading the way in terms of African women’s presence in the deployment of peacekeeping forces, and is hoping to increase numbers in line with the global effort launched just over a year ago to raise the proportion of women in United Nations Police (UNPOL) peacekeeping operations to 20 percent by 2014.

This would be just over double the current 8.7 percent – 1,218 UNPOL women deployed around the world – according to the U.N.

Other African countries are following suit. Rwanda will be deploying 130 women under the joint U.N.-AU peacekeeping force in Darfur later this year.

Excerpts of Butegwa’s interview with TerraViva follow.

Q: What specific efforts are being made to ensure the recruitment of more female peacekeeping officers? A: This is part of the ongoing conversation at the African Union and with the member countries, because the recruitment is the responsibility of the member country. In countries like Rwanda we are partnering with the Ministry of Defence and the police forces to ensure that the country increases its own recruitment and focus on women in the armed forces.

The idea is to ensure that there is not only an increase in the numbers of women in Rwanda’s armed forces but also, when they contribute to U.N. or AU operations, those women who are very well trained will be deployed and that they will be of a level of seniority to make a difference.

Q: How have member states responded? A: It varies from country to country. In Liberia, the effort was to have well-educated armed forces that understand human rights. Many women could not qualify, partly because of the general level of education of women in the country.

The government was able, with the support of the peace-keeping mission and U.N. organisations, to come up with a special curriculum for accelerated qualification for women and young men.

Q: The AU Commission is developing a gender-training manual for peacekeeping operations. How will the manual be used and by whom? A: UNIFEM is supporting the Gender Directorate in this regard and the manual will be available for use both by the AU institutions and, most importantly, the troop-contributing countries. The idea is that gender should be integrated in the curriculum for training armed forces.

It’s not something you do for two weeks before they go for deployment. For effectiveness it must be part of the culture of training.

Q: What effect have women in peacekeeping missions had on peace and security in conflict zones? A: It depends. For instance, I worked in Liberia [where] the whole idea is that women survivors – particularly of gender- based violence – feel more comfortable opening up to some of these women peacekeepers.

But dealing with and responding to gender-based violence as well as knowing how to understand the gender relations in a conflict area should be the responsibility of absolutely everyone.

Q: How is the opening of the application process to women likely to affect the nature of training which is perhaps viewed as having a very ‘masculine’ ethos? A: I don’t know, because this is the beginning of a process. So far, in some countries they see a change, but obviously I think the underlying values of the command structure being masculine in nature also has to be interrogated. There has to be some conversation because it’s not just about passing on information and if the structures do not allow a soldier to respond accordingly…

The training obviously should not just be for rank and file [soldiers], because if the senior commanders are not able to integrate gender sensitivity in their command structure, then you don’t have an impact.

Q: Won’t women in peacekeeping forces themselves be vulnerable in any way to gender-based violence? A: Without institutionalized gender sensitivity there is always a risk of that, but we have countries that have had soldiers who are women. For example, in the U.S. there are occasional cases of sexual harassment and abuse.

The important thing is that it is clear policy that this is unacceptable and that there is a mechanism for redressing that. So we hope that African governments take [it] seriously and the same kind of models are put in place.