Rising patriarchal resistance in Africa against gender equality and health rights
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Shobha Shukla - CNS
Contd from previous issue
It has deployed the language of African authen- ticity while importing an agenda that serves American conservative Christia- nity. It speaks of protecting the African family while removing protections from families that do not conform to its narrow definition.
Global repercussions
Dr Pam Rajput, former Chairperson of Government of India's High-Level Committee on the Status of Women, warns that this anti-rights pushback is not only regressive, but also contagious. It is not an issue for Africa alone. "The question is what it means for the future of women's rights everywhere. Rollback of rights in one region can become a precedent elsewhere."
How do we counter the anti-rights pushes and advance gender equality and right to health?
Human rights and gender justice activists unanimously call for fighting tooth and nail to defeat the draft Charter and to uphold the Maputo Protocol of 2003, which is a legally binding human rights treaty that commits to ending gender-based discrimination across Africa and was ratified by 46 of the 55 African Union member countries. It is one of the most widely accepted and most progressive human rights instruments on the African continent.
It prohibits discrimination against women and gender diverse peoples; guarantees rights to health, including sexual and reproductive health; guarantees the right to dignity, and protection from all forms of violence; and calls for elimination of harmful practices, including female genital mutilation and forced marriages.
Nkansa argues that "Maputo Protocol is significant not only because of its legal protections, but because it demonstrates that gender equality and women's rights are not external concepts that were imposed on Africa, but they are principles that African Govts themselves negotiated and adopted. African women activists, policy-makers, legal experts, Govts played a central role in shaping the Protocol."
For Mokgoroane, "We must insist with every tool available to us - legal, political, moral - that gender equality and the right to health are not negotiable and not reversible. They are constitutional. They are human rights and they are ours." Rajput calls for adding all global voices in favour of the Maputo Protocol and against the proposed draft African Charter. “We must resist collectively and the feminist solidarity must be global. Human dignity and human rights are not divisible by geography. They cannot be selectively applied or culturally with- drawn at the will of some people.
Contd from previous issue
It has deployed the language of African authen- ticity while importing an agenda that serves American conservative Christia- nity. It speaks of protecting the African family while removing protections from families that do not conform to its narrow definition.
Global repercussions
Dr Pam Rajput, former Chairperson of Government of India's High-Level Committee on the Status of Women, warns that this anti-rights pushback is not only regressive, but also contagious. It is not an issue for Africa alone. "The question is what it means for the future of women's rights everywhere. Rollback of rights in one region can become a precedent elsewhere."
How do we counter the anti-rights pushes and advance gender equality and right to health?
Human rights and gender justice activists unanimously call for fighting tooth and nail to defeat the draft Charter and to uphold the Maputo Protocol of 2003, which is a legally binding human rights treaty that commits to ending gender-based discrimination across Africa and was ratified by 46 of the 55 African Union member countries. It is one of the most widely accepted and most progressive human rights instruments on the African continent.
It prohibits discrimination against women and gender diverse peoples; guarantees rights to health, including sexual and reproductive health; guarantees the right to dignity, and protection from all forms of violence; and calls for elimination of harmful practices, including female genital mutilation and forced marriages.
Nkansa argues that "Maputo Protocol is significant not only because of its legal protections, but because it demonstrates that gender equality and women's rights are not external concepts that were imposed on Africa, but they are principles that African Govts themselves negotiated and adopted. African women activists, policy-makers, legal experts, Govts played a central role in shaping the Protocol."
For Mokgoroane, "We must insist with every tool available to us - legal, political, moral - that gender equality and the right to health are not negotiable and not reversible. They are constitutional. They are human rights and they are ours." Rajput calls for adding all global voices in favour of the Maputo Protocol and against the proposed draft African Charter. “We must resist collectively and the feminist solidarity must be global. Human dignity and human rights are not divisible by geography. They cannot be selectively applied or culturally with- drawn at the will of some people.