L. Muthoni Wanyeki
5 October 2005
opinion
Nairobi — Although I am sure the fact escaped most of us, last Thursday was the African Union's officially designated Pan-African Women's Day.
Kenyan women's organisations lobbying around the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa had been promised that on pan-African women's day, we would finally ratify the Protocol.
Again, I am sure that fact escaped most of us. We are, apparently, altogether too engrossed in arguments as to whether or not the Attorney-General's draft Constitution will address our equality rights concerns.
In my opinion, it will not.
Fifteen ratifications are required for the Protocol to enter into force. With 13 ratifications deposited so far, there are only two more to go.
IN ADDITION to the 13 African states that have ratified the Protocol and deposited their ratifications with the AU in Addis Ababa, Guinea has already ratified the Protocol, but delayed depositing its ratification due to changes in its Cabinet.
Thus, if Kenya ratified the Protocol last week and deposits its ratification, African women will have a new human rights instrument to use to guarantee our equality rights in every area of our lives.
At last year's AU Summit, African heads of state and government committed to ensuring the Protocol would enter into force by the end of last year, with universal ratification by the end of this year. But, despite having missed the deadline, we still have cause to celebrate.
THE SPEED towards entry into force of this Protocol is unprecedented. The African Charter, which the Protocol is a part of, took about a decade. This tells us that, despite the still-too-many human-rights violations in African, we are changing.
The resistance of African states to respecting their citizens' dignity and worth, if clearly not over, is at least no longer openly tolerated. The pressure among peers is now upwards rather than downwards - situations like that in Darfur notwithstanding.
And the Protocol is a human rights instrument specifically for African women - spelling out clearly what the African Charter's general human rights provisions mean in relation to our own lives and throwing out arguments seeking to diminish those human rights on the basis of flawed cultural and religious interpretations and practice.
This is a victory, of those (albeit few) African states that have determined to set the upward tone and a victory for the African women's movement that lobbied so consistently and vigorously for the birth of the Protocol.
THIS IS not to imply, however, that the war has been won once it enters into force. Fifteen ratifications from a continent comprising over 50 African states are not sufficient. Universal ratification remains the goal.
And, for those African states that have ratified the Protocol, the challenge is the domestication of the Protocol.
This will be easier for African states following civil law systems - francophone and lusophone African states - where international and regional human-rights laws are considered part of national legislation once ratification occurs, enabling their judiciaries to make immediate use of provisions contained therein.
It will be harder for African states following common-law systems - like us here in East Africa - where we will have to work to harmonise national legislation with the Protocol's provisions.
L. Muthoni Wanyeki is the Executive Director of the African Women's Development and Communication Network (Femnet)
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