Karoline Kemp
9 July 2009
opinion
Surveying the Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR) campaign around the Protocol on Women's Rights to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, Karoline Kemp discusses the role of ICTs (information and communication technologies) in engaging civil society and facilitating the campaign. Highlighting SOAWR's ability to nurture productive relationships with African Union (AU) departments in promoting the protocol, Kemp stresses that despite the success of communication tools like Pambazuka News, the real challenge will be to promote the protocol at the grassroots level through more traditional media.
According to the Overseas Development Institute (2006), the past 15 years have seen significant changes in the contexts affecting the relationships between civil society organisations and governmental policymakers. This shift in relationships has resulted in opportunities in the policy arena for an increasing number of actors. Civil society organisations constitute some of these players, and are embracing a range of methods to assist in their new roles in order to instigate networking, information-sharing and capacity-building. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are playing a large function in this new environment, and their role in international development is growing.
In the arena of women's rights, a coalition of civil society organisations from across the African continent has capitalised on this policy-making space in an attempt to promote the Protocol on Women's Rights to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights. The Solidarity for African Women's Rights (SOAWR) group has been working at the level of the African Union (AU), with member state governments and in local communities in order to ratify, popularise and implement the protocol. Their work as a coalition of different organisations engaging with governments has an explicit strategy of using ICTs, namely Pambazuka News, the electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa. SOAWR thus provides the basis of a case study for this research due to the fact they have claimed success around the ratification and popularisation of the protocol. Their use of ICTs is a significant aspect of this success.
As of November 2005, the protocol has been ratified by the African Union. However, governments have been slow to ratify it, and those which have done so have not generally taken the initiative on their own to begin popularising or implementing this new tool. African civil society organisations - all of whom are non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who campaigned for many years around the protocol - worked alongside the African Union from the 1990s to draft and promote the adoption of the protocol. It was adopted in 2003. Civil society from across the continent came together in 2004 to form the Solidarity for African Women's Rights coalition in order to work towards the ratification, popularisation and implementation of the protocol.
SOAWR, requiring a broader strategy in order to influence not only the AU but also its member states, has needed a completely new approach in order to encourage the protocol's ratification, and also to popularise it and begin the work of its implementation. Existing in an age of information and communication technologies, where the internet dominates offices around the globe, SOAWR has had an explicit strategy of capitalising on this means of sharing information and communicating with various players.
Generally referred to as the 'Maputo Protocol', or simply 'the protocol', the African Union adopted the Protocol on Women's Rights to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights in 2003. It is the only women's rights instrument originating in Africa and represents many 'firsts' in terms of legal protection for women, including the right to abortion in the case of rape, as well as a required principle of equality between men and women in national constitutions and other legislation. In order to take force, the protocol required signatures and ratifications by 15 African governments. This occurred in November of 2005, breaking historical records with regard to the speed with which it was ratified (most continental and regional human rights instruments in Africa have taken from eight to 10 years to obtain the ratifications needed for them to enter into force, according to SOAWR).
A concerted push for the protocol's ratification, popularisation and implementation was taken up by a coalition of civil society organisations in 2004, at which point only one country (The Comoros) had signed and ratified the protocol. The SOAWR coalition was established by a small group of African civil society members and now has 29 members, which range in size from local organisations to pan-African as well as international organisations. Their goal was the universal ratification of the protocol and the subsequent popularisation and implementation necessary to make this legislation truly effective. To this end, the strategies that SOAWR lists to meet these goals include influencing public opinion in favour of the ratification, expanding its relationship with the African Union, actively engaging with mass media, making use of the internet to popularise the protocol and strengthening the leadership capability of women's organisations. The coalition's strategies have been broad, and to meet these goals, its members have produced advocacy material which has been received at both the level of national governments as well as the African Union. A key approach has involved participation in AU summits and engaging with its various departments, as well as with member state governments.
When SOAWR was first created at a meeting in Nairobi, Fahamu, as a member of the coalition, offered the use of Pambazuka News to the group. This has resulted in the creation of advocacy material, much of it used at African Union summits. These advocacy materials have included special issues of Pambazuka News dedicated specifically to information about the protocol, as well as space within Pambazuka News's African Union Monitor, which provides up-to-date information for civil society about the AU, including events, issues and debates. This, according to SOAWR members, has been especially useful at the African Union summits themselves.
This case study offers interesting findings about the relationship between participatory and political spaces. SOAWR, as a coalition, has worked to a large extent with the African Union. At this level, SOAWR was able to participate in some political processes and events, exploiting opportunities in different ways to access a variety of spaces, which were to various degrees more or less open, closed or created. SOAWR did this in a variety of different ways, and also utilised public spaces, where communication has the potential to move decision-making from a political realm to a more public one. Of course, while theoretically it may be easy to maintain divisions between closed, invited and created spaces, in reality those are less prominent. In the case of SOAWR's advocacy work at the level of the African Union, there is much overlap.
In the instance of closed spaces, where there is little space for participation, SOAWR members found that despite policies laying out regulations for civil society engagement with the African Union, the roles and responsibilities of the various bodies, institutions and even individuals themselves were difficult to understand. Dealing with the AU as a structure was in some ways then a closed space for SOAWR. To counter this, in what is perhaps a sister publication to Pambazuka News, the African Union Monitor was created in order for civil society to understand better an institution of such influence over the continent. In this way, civil society is better able to understand the institutional policy channels that impact their work, and can also add to the political discourse around the AU by publicising that it is being watched or 'monitored'. Further, even member state governments are made more aware of the institution. This is an example of a closed space being transformed into a created space by way of communication. By putting information into a public space, SOAWR is able to interact with the African Union in a manner which not only monitors but also allows for interaction between governments and civil society.
Published online, but handed out in print copy at the summits, the AU Monitor plays a complementary role to Pambazuka News, which is also distributed in hard copy at summits. Special editions of Pambazuka News profile issues related to women's rights and the protocol, and through linking current events, political situations or themes to this issue keep the protocol relevant and pertinent so that officials can be convinced to support it. This links to invited spaces, where opportunities for civil society to participate are offered by decision-makers.
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