Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Ruth Butaumocho
19 October 2004
Addis Ababa — A KENYAN feminist, Ryan Nirokwe, sat in the corner of the well-lit Conference Room 5 in the Africa Hall, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, watching elegantly dressed women from several African countries walk in to attend a caucus meeting on "women empowerment".
As they trooped in a few minutes before the caucus meeting started, she could recognise several faces she had seen five years ago in Ethiopia at a similar forum.
Then, they were in the Ethiopian capital for the sixth African regional conference to mark five years after the first Beijing conference held in 1994 in China.
Although they had not achieved much in terms of asserting their position since the last meeting, the women walked with renewed conviction that this time they would come up with solutions to the challenges facing women across the continent.
Like many delegates who had come to attend the seventh regional African conference on Beijing, Ryan was hoping that the delegates representing their respective countries would have success stories to tell of how the gender movement had gained momentum in the last few years.
Better still, she was also hoping that the women would share success stories on the political mileage that they have gained, notwithstanding any sizeable achievements that they had realised in advancing the gender dimension in every section of society.
It later turned out that this was not to be as presentations by several delegates clearly indicated that the women*s movement was yet to make any meaningful impact on the continent.
More than 300 representatives of non-governmental organisations from most African countries were gathered in Addis Ababa, last week to take stock of progress in African women*s lives since the Beijing summit on women*s affairs 10 years ago.
While the meeting opened with pomp and fanfare, delegates to this two-day "African Women*s NGO Forum on Beijing +10" agreed that the forums had not achieved much over the last 10 years, but have just become mere "talk shows", for women across the continent.
Although the women have been converging every year at similar symposiums with the hope that they would one-day wake up to a genderised society, this has not been the case.
Theirs had been an uphill task of mainstreaming gender concerns into all aspects of development work, and to move actively to redress persistent gender disparities.
For starters, 10 years after the Beijing Platform for Action was launched in China, women*s quest for empowerment has been bogged down by several constraints, among them the lack of political will as evident from the weakness of existing gender machinery and the yawning gaps between policy and practice in several countries.
The absence of gender from budgeting processes, the ad hoc budget allocations made towards gender, the failure to address women*s unpaid work and the absence of women from peace processes are some of the constraints that have stagnated the women*s movement.
The persistent absence of regional co-ordination mechanisms was making it difficult for the women*s movement to galvanise a systematic assessment of progress so far made.
All these hurdles have seen more and more women bowing out of the race and that has further weakened the initial enthusiasm that saw the birth of the Beijing Platform for Action.
The value of the formal negotiations, however, is increasingly being questioned, because the agreed issues are not binding on governments.
When women met in Beijing 10 years ago, they came up with several resolutions, which they assumed would trickle down through the women empowerment system to the regional and national gender machinery that was in place.
However, this is not what is happening on the ground.
Little reference is being made to the agreed issues and areas of concern raised at the 1994 Beijing conference by several governments in Africa. Some of the issues raised included inequality in the sharing of power, insufficient mechanisms, human rights violations, stereotyping in the media and eradication of poverty.
Only a few countries, among them Zimbabwe, Somalia, Burundi and Malawi, have been able to synthesise the Beijing resolutions and come up with inclusive gender policies.
"It has been a battle, but we still have a long way to go," admitted Ms Marren Akatsa, of the Eastern African Sub-regional Strategic Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI).
She noted that while there were several other reasons for the slow advancement of women, the lack of a regional approach in dealing with gender issues was a serious setback to women*s aspirations.
Of concern to the women*s movement, said Ms Akatsa, was the lack of clear policies within government as to whether they were willing to go that extra mile to provide resources and political commitment towards women*s advancement.
"Member countries are failing to implement action plans that would have been agreed at forums like this one owing to lack of resources," she said.
This has resulted in the collapse of women*s movements in some countries.
What is even more disturbing about the lack of progression for women in several African countries is that they continue to be bombarded with a myriad of social and economic problems where they are required to provide a back-up system.
This is so because they are the backbone of their families and make up the economic foundation of rural communities.
Women*s very existence is threatened by the twin problems of famine and Aids, since they are at the forefront in the fight against the pandemic through provision of home-based care and augmenting food security.
While conceding that the women*s movement was failing to get support from African governments, participants noted that it was set to suffer another huge blow if the issue of HIV and Aids among women was not adequately addressed.
"While we try and look for ways of convincing our governments to allocate resources and be committed to the empowerment of women, we need to find a solution on how we can deal with HIV and Aids versus women.
"As the women*s movement, what we need is a human rights-based approach in the fight against the Aids pandemic.
"Pilot studies carried out by several organisations have revealed that that lack of respect for human rights is one of the major causes in the spread of the virus. When individuals cease to respect the sexuality of others, then we have a problem," said Ms Matrine Chuulu, the acting regional co-ordinator for Women and Law in Southern Africa (WILSA).
More often than not, women were on the receiving end in the fight against Aids as most of them were not in a position to negotiate for safe sex. They were often left with limited choices, but to comply with demands from their partners, even if they were aware that their partners carried the virus that causes Aids.
She said although several governments in Africa were aware of this problem, not many were willing to come up with legislation to protect the rights of women in the face of the pandemic.
Zimbabwe is one of the few countries in the region which have come up with several pieces of legislation that protect women*s rights in sexual issues.
One such legislation that will go a long way in protecting women against the wilful transmission of HIV and Aids and is the Sexual Offences Act, which makes it a criminal offence for one to knowingly infect the other person.
As the delegates to the forum made their recommendations, the message was clear that they had not achieved much.
Women still have a long way to go before they can talk about any tangible gains towards the eradication of poverty among women, inequalities in economic structures and the abuse of the girl-child, among other critical areas.
A similar forum was convened in 1999 in Addis Ababa, as part of the Sixth African Regional Conference on Women, to mark five years after the Beijing conference.
The just-ended Addis Ababa forum was also aimed at involving a wide range of stakeholders in a review of similar forums and assess whether women were making any progress to improve their status.
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