Voices of African Women BULLETIN

Voices of African Women Bulletin

After a brief hiatus, our Voices of African Women bulletin is up and running again. Since the seminars last year, WILPF has been busy getting support for women’s organisations. The declaration is online and keeps gaining more support. On WILPF’s 94^th birthday, African women with WILPF activists delivered the declaration and the signatures we had received so far to Downing Street. We have since received a reply and will be engaging in dialogue to increase support to African women’s organisations.

On the same day, the Scottish branch of WILPF hosted an event on women in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Scottish Parliament, which was well attended by MSPs.

In the coming months we will be meeting with African embassies, calling on African governments to support women’s organisations in their country. We will also be starting to work on Security Council Resolution 1325 in African countries to increase women’s participation in decision making.

Come along to our next meeting on the 22 August to find out how you can contribute to this important campaign.

News

A call to action: Implement the Africa Women's Rights Protocol

In the five years since the adoption of the Protocol to the Africa Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, some 26 countries have ratified Africa's first regional human rights instrument. But with 27 countries yet to do so, the challenge remains to see each African nation commit to fully upholding women's rights. Moral arguments aside, implementing women's rights offers clear social and developmental benefits for all, argues Norah Matovu Winyi, benefits which will only be realised through sustained political will. Read the whole story http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57219

Promoting women's land rights at the 13th AU summit

With Sirte, Lybia, hosting the 13th African Union summit this week, Lyn Ossome of Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR) challenges African heads of state to keep women's land rights on the developmental agenda. At a time of marked global economic difficulty, women remain acutely vulnerable to unstable food prices and restricted access to land, meaning that African governments must now more than ever challenge discriminatory laws and customs, Ossome argues. If the AU's summit is offer progress, Ossome contends, African heads of state must make strong commitments to policies favourable to women's empowerment such as subsidising non-industrial agriculture and securing women's land tenure. Read the full story at http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57220

Safeguarding women’s rights will boost food security

African women play a critical role in ensuring the food security of the continent, writes Mary Wandia in the run-up to the 2009 African Union Summit (24 June-3 July), which has its official theme ‘Investing in agriculture for economic growth and development’. Highlighting that women contribute 60-80 per cent of the labour used to produce food both for household consumption and for sale, Wandia writes that improved women’s ‘access, control and ownership of land and productive resources are key factors in eradicating hunger and rural poverty’. Yet while land is ‘critical for improving women’s, social security, livelihoods and their social status’, culturally embedded discrimination continues to weaken their land rights and livelihood options, Wandia cautions. It is therefore essential, Wandia argues, for governments to ensure that women’s rights are comprehensively addressed in the AU ‘Africa land policy framework and guidelines’, scheduled for adoption at this year’s summit. Read the full story http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57225

Denied the right to a dignified life

Traditionally African culture dictated that elderly citizens be treated with respect, writes Anushka Sehmi, but as economic constraints erode the extended family system and fuel rural-urban migration, many old people languish in villages with no-one to care for them. With a quarter of African women left widowed by mounting conflict, disease and poverty, Sehmi explores abuse of and discrimination against elderly women in the light of cultural practices such as widow-inheritance and land ownership. Noting that ‘there is almost no legal or policy framework’ that safeguards the rights of elderly women in Africa, Sehmi calls for states to ratify and implement treaties that protect them, such as the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa and for marginalised groups to ‘be engaged and educated regarding their civic and political rights’. It is up to us to lobby and push our governments to perform this task, says Sehmi, or ‘these forgotten women will forever be denied the right to a dignified life’. Read the full story http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57227

Actions

Stop Nigerian Military Attacks in the Niger Delta!

“The helicopter gunships hovered low over a crowded street, where people had gathered to celebrate an annual festival, and opened fire with machine guns and rockets…” --BBC Report

On May 14th, the Nigerian Joint Military Task Force (JTF), laid siege to towns along the coast, attacking from air, land, and sea. Although the Nigerian government maintains that the attack was targeting militant groups that obstruct oil flows, what transpired was a massive assault on the communities and villages of Gbaramatu kingdom.

Thousands of lives have been lost and upwards of 20,000 persons displaced in the ongoing military offensive. This is an inexcusable abuse of military power and authority by a government which is heavily supported by the United States .

Nigeria is slated to receive approximately $4.5 million in military training, hardware sales, and counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics education in 2010. It is intolerable that the U.S. taxpayer must subsidize a repressive government’s slaughter of its civilians. President Obama should make it clear to Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua that the U.S. will not support leaders who abuse their own citizens.

Voice your concern today by signing this letter to President Obama!

Solidarity statement on the SOAS cleaners

Nine cleaners from the School of Oriental and African Studies were taken into detention after a dawn raid by immigration police on Friday 12th June. Five have already been deported, and the others could face deportation within days. One has had a suspected heart attack and was denied access to medical assistance and even water. One was over 6 months pregnant. Many have families who have no idea of their whereabouts. This petition is an expression of solidarity, and well as a call for a halt to the deportations. Sign the petition.

Events

Moyo Wa Taifa Fundraiser

Moyo Wa Taifa Pan Afrikan Woman’s Solidarity Network warmly invites you to their bi-annual fundraiser for the 1^st Pan Afrikan Solidarity Resource Centre in Accra, Ghana. A night of pure entertainment, there will be spoken work from OneNess, ShakaRa, AmeN NoiR, and Black Arts Production, music from Sarina Leah, Nkhem, Nutty NRG and more. There will also be a raffle on the night to win return tickets to Accra.

When: 6-10pm, Saturday 18 July

Where: Clapham Methodist Church Hall, Nelson’s Row, Clapham High Street, SW4 7JR (beside Sainsbury’s)

For more information call 07757 060 313 or email njeri4freedom@yahoo.co.uk

Get Involved

Voices of African Women Follow-Up Meeting

Join the core group who is driving this campaign forward. At the next meeting Alice Ukoko will be speaking about the current issues facing women in the Niger Delta.

When: 1pm, Saturday 22 August

Where: Ground floor, Tindlemanor, 52-54 Featherstone St, London EC1Y 8RT

For more information contact us on 0207 250 1968 or email office@ukwilpf.org.uk

On 5-8 November, grassroots African women campaigners from diverse nations travelled to London to share their stories. The seminar series included a forum at Parliament House, a round table discussion at Chatham House and a seminar discussion at the Amnesty International office.

This Voices of African Women Bulletins aims to keep you up to date with what is happening in Africa, and what you can do about it. If you would like to unsubscribe please email us at office@ukwilpf.org.uk Please feel free to circulate to your friends and networks.

Cop 15 - Observer Status

Written by Talyn Rahman

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom may be given an 'observer status' within the Climate Change COP 15 meeting in 7-15 December. This is a very exciting opportunity to watch world leaders in formulating a new agenda from the Kyoto Protocol.

Having participated at the Youth Forum with Global Humanitarian Forum, starting a working group based on the Copenhagen Manifesto we had created would be a great start to communicating our message to world leaders. It would be great to get Y-WILPF and other youth forums involved in this so that we can also push for gender-persepective within this manifesto. Join WILPF and help get our message for climate change at COP 15.

Join WILPF!

January 2008 - WILPF's Office Administrator

Reported by Talyn Rahman

Joining WILPF was the best thing I could have done in realising my capabilities and achievements in a political NGO. Working internally helped me understand WILPF's movements and policies, thus innovated me to become an active member and create working groups that supports WILPF's agendas. From now on, I will keep WILPF's news updated on this blog, covering my time with them and how young members are involved.

I was featured on SOAS's newsletter regarding my experience with WILPF. Check it out.

http://mercury.soas.ac.uk/e-newsletter/e-news_1-2008/enews1-rahman.html


To join WILPF UK, please visit this website: http://www.ukwilpf.org.uk/

We are always looking for new members and I will be happy to tell you about what we do in more detail.

Re-launch of Scotland WILPF

Tuesday 26th May

Reported by Talyn Rahman

As the YWILPF representative, I was invited to join Diane and Sasha to travel to Scotland. This was my first visit whereby I had a short presentation to make about YWILPF. It was exciting to journey to Edinburgh for a possible re-establishment of the Scottish WILPF branch. Diane, Sasha and I had an inspiring time meeting activists in Edinburgh, who were excited to restart the WILPF branch up there. WILPF women present in the meeting were Sasha Jesperson, Diane Brace, Helen Kay, Janet Fenton and myself. 5 non-members, who later joined WILPF, were also present.

The meeting itself began with a small photo exhibition of WILPF’s past and present, followed by Helen Kay’s short history of Edinburgh and WILPF. For an insight to WILPF, Janet discussed why she had joined WILPF and her current project in Edinburgh. Diane did an excellent job explaining WILPF’s current standing and international status, which intrigued many of the women in the room.

In order to encourage the younger members in the meeting, I thought it fitting to explain why I joined WILPF and how, after one year, I got on the WILPF executive board. YWILPF is about members being active, and I went on to explaining future initiatives planned, with the possibility of expanding YWILPF into Scotland through the Scottish parliament. We had two young people in the crowd who worked for the Scottish parliamentary and two other women who worked at universities in Scotland, which was a very encouraging start.

Sasha emphasised the importance of national WILPF branches and what strategic changes are coming about the organisation. It is fundamentally important that Scotland have a branch as it is not possible for Scottish WILPF members to travel in and out of the country for meetings or events. Furthermore, with such close ties to the Scottish parliament and prestigious universities, Edinburgh (as Scotland’s capital) have a flourish of events, which WILPF can participate in, throughout the year.

Janet and others discussed the unique opportunities that they have with the Scottish Parliament, and Helen has sent through this you tube video as an example.

MSPs have joined together in song to say that it is Crunch Time for Trident. They were filmed in the Scottish Parliament to promote the Sing Out for Peace march and rally in Glasgow on Saturday 20 June.
Rob Gibson (SNP), Cathy Peattie (Labour) and Robin Harper (Green) sang the new song, Crunch Time for Trident, written by Ian Davison for the event. They are introduced by Mike Pringle (Lib Dem).
The video is on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC2WAerrp1Q

Well done Scotland, and WILPF women to have the enthusiasm to re-establish the Scottish branch. It was a great success.

WILPF turns 94

25 April 2009

Reported by Talyn Rahman

Despite the actual birthday falling on 28^th April, YWILPF UK and London WILPF organised a party in celebration for WILPF’s 94^th birthday. A local pub close to the main UK office was decorated by violet WILPF balloons, banners and campaign materials to kick start the celebration with a certain theme in mind. LONDONWILPF had organised a magnificent cake and guests (as hoped) wore the suffragette colours of violent, green and white. YWILPF collaborated the party organising with LONDONWILPF, whereby we had invited former WILPF President Diane Brace to say a few words before the cake-cutting.

WILPF women made contributions on Jane Addams, Emily Balch, Rosika Schwimmer, Crystal Macmillan, Edith Ballentine, and our very own Richenda Barbour, who has been with WILPF UK for over 20 years. The party was a great success with a mixed crowd. We were joined by a total of 25 people, including male friends and guests from the Democratic Republic of Congo (as seen in the photo). We had a total of four new WILPFers, with new members attending the event.

WILPF 2009 AGM

WILPF AGM: Gender Budgeting
Saturday 14th March

Report by Talyn Rahman

The WILPF UK AGM was presented by Vice Presidents Amy Barrow and Katherine Ronderos. Marion Boker, a consultant for Human Rights and Gender Issues from Germany, was invited to share a special presentation entitled “What Price for Peace: Gender Budgeting for Gender Equality.”

Summary of AGM

Members of WILPF celebrated the success of the Voices of African Women seminars, having networked with women from different countries. WILPF enabled women from Diaspora to engage with politicians in the UK and strengthen grassroot campaigns for the movement of African women in conflict. Having our campaigns assistant Sasha Jesperson on board has enabled WILPF to expand campaigning opportunities on a broader level. It was great to see interns and younger members on the executive committee, which should hopefully attract young women to join the organisation as active members. The ‘serious’ part of the AGM ended nicely with a musical rendition from Raised Voices, who are a political street choir.
Women of WILPF joined in with the singing about Palestine: “Free Palestine. What have they done? Take down the wall. Give back the land.”

Keynote Presentation

Marion Boker’s presentation about gender budgeting was quite a new angle, which neither I nor WILPF have much experience about. Boker stated that society needs social spending for health, better workplace, child care and education, as opposed to expenditure for war. Today, we have tools and enshrined rights to see that the government implement this. Finances for women’s needs are marginalised. In 2003, 0.04% of total European Commission Aid supported women-specific projects and programs, which clearly suggests that there is less for women and more for war. Failed budgetary on women is NOT an old metaphor. Figures for social spending have been constant from 1988 to present day, with only a small increase in 2002. Women have been fixed in traditional gender roles, such as looking after children and elderly – which of course earns women no money.

According to Boker, CEDAW are strongest on gender budgeting and are campaigning for this. The financial crisis is naturally offering new challenges which need to integrate around gender budgeting. Boker affirmed that the G7/G20 should be open for women and gender experts to implement an early warning system to crises and gender budget analysis for a more rounded conclusion. Violence against women, gender pay gap, unemployment and other situations are all increasing in stages of crisis and will continue to grow unless voices in parliament about these problems are heard.

A report in February 06 2009 from CEDAW in Geneva reported that:
“The UN Committee is concerned by the impact of the financial crisis on the rights of women and girls.”

This presentation has made WILPF consider gender budgeting and analysis into our general campaign and logistics.

Workshops

After the presentation, 3 workshops, which members of WILPF are working on, were present. The working groups below can be joined by anyone who is interested. Please contact the WLPF office or myself (about the VAW group) for more information: office@ukwilpf.org.uk

* Women, Peace and Security
* Global Economic Justice
* Violence Against Women

As WILPFs co-coordinator of the Violence Against Women working group, I co-facilitated the workshop with Katherine Ronderos. We were fortunate to have two very special Sara Elizabeth Avilez Tome and Maria Amalia Reyes Cartagena from Honduras, to share their experience of violence. These women were in the UK for 2 weeks to raise awareness of gender violence in Honduras. Katherine led the discussion in Spanish, followed by English translations.

Before the interview with the women, a DVD was shown to highlight Sara Elizabeth’s experience, presented by 21st Century. Every 20 days, women are victims of physical abuse or killed by loved ones. Domestic violence is at an unprecedented level in Honduras and due to the level of cases, the police are being trained to think with a 'gender perspective' in order to handle the number of complaints. Furthermore, women are recruited into the police for thorough research and attention to these cases, as sexual violence was seen as a taboo.
Honduras has a population of 7 million people. Since 2007, 10000 cases of domestic violence were reported, which increased by 3.8% in 2008 but these numbers only reflect those who have reported it. Although the Honduran government have outlawed violence against women in 2007, the law is only now being implemented.

Response from the government has been limited and domestic violence is the last stage of action before women are assassinated by their spouse. Sara Elizabeth is working with women and NGOs to identify forms of violence and encourage other women to speak up about their experience before things can get worse.
The topic of patriarchy sparked fresh conversation. Participants suggested that new education need to be in place to teach children at a young age on how to treat people, eradicating old patriarchal attitudes. Sara Elizabeth and Maria agreed that the attitude of men wanting to be ‘more superior’ were spurred by old patriarchal influences and is still one of the biggest factors in Honduras. Women need to understand that these treatments and behaviour is not ‘normal’, and need support, education and awareness.

Sara Elizabeth and Maria are in partnership with CORN to strengthen community support at grassroot level in providing emotional support. Legal promoters provide training about legal instrument to report cases and support for long term processes. They hope to help women break the circle of violence based on economic dependency on their partner by starting micro-business projects like beauty courses, t-shirt making, tailouring etc. Current financial crisis makes it difficult to compete with imported products, which brings them back to their violent partners, however this is the beginning of a growing project, that can hopefully be encouraged by NGOs, and the government.

Nick Clegg’s ‘Protect the Human’

Wednesday 10^th December 2008

Reported by Talyn Rahman

“Protect the Human” was organised by Amnesty International, to mark the 60^th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Nick Clegg MP, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, was the events key-note speaker, followed by a conversation with Adam Boulton from Sky News.

As the British Obama, Nick Clegg had touched upon all the issues which I believed were important. He emphasised how important it is for politicians to work closer with grassroot campaigners in bringing about real change in society, and how he would like to lead the country from a bottom-up approach.

Clegg’s keynote began his speech talking about how the international landscape is testing the values of the UNDR: freedom, tolerance and, justice. Developed democracies are failing to meet those challenges across the world and in the UK. He believes the government cannot be proud on Human Rights Day as Britain is no longer part of the solution, but part of the problem. Millions of people still suffer abuse and cruelty and the growth of poverty, violence and repression is rapid.

“The world today is full of unprecedented threats and dangers,” Clegg confessed. He mentioned the spread of disease and the environmental crisis, and how the line is being blurred between military and civilian war. He stressed with great disappointment that western democracies are failing to restrain unwarranted aggression and this failure is the lack of political will.

Clegg had praised Obama for breaking barriers with America’s old enemies, ending the abuse of Bush’s administration and not hiding from America’s past. By combining this viewpoint, he believes that America will be able to move forward, leading the world to a better future, therefore making Obama a great role model for other politicians.

To the relief of British nationals, Clegg disagrees with the idea of carrying forced ID cards, which will make worse problems for asylum seekers and waste taxpayer money.
“So no ID cards,” he said, “Not for anyone. Not - as the Conservatives would have it - for foreign nationals but not British citizens.”

He touched upon the problem of refugees, forced marriages and women’s rights, as well as answering questions to the lack of human rights so clearly demonstrated by China and the Olympics. I shook his hands for wanting to form relationships with NGOs and strengthening their campaigns. I hope that working closer with a leader like Nick Clegg, NGOs will have greater power to engage with key decision-makers to allow change to happen. I hope that Nick Clegg is able to reach out to a wider audience and is able to persuade less-liberal minded people to engage with his politics and see him through to the next election.