Africa: A UN Agency for Women?

6 November 2008
opinion

Reflecting on his time as United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa (2001-2006), Stephen Lewis highlights the sustained failure to facilitate female leadership and offer effective protection for women perpetrated by UN agencies and African countries' political leaders. Drawing on examples such as the complete absence of a single woman's voice at January's DRC peace negotiations, Lewis emphasises the widespread lack of opportunity for female leadership and representation.

Just as he underlines the extent to which violations of the DRC's resources have been inextricably linked to violations of the country's women, the author argues that rape has become an essential strategy of war as a means of subduing entire communities. As a challenge to this cauldron of sexual violence, Lewis argues for the pressing need for a United Nations agency for women in order to begin to tackle issues of profound inequality, oppression, and abuse until now simply neglected.

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