The abduction and torture of a Ugandan HIV/AIDS activist who faces trial for holding a peaceful protest reveals the danger to those who challenge the government’s policies, Human Rights Watch, and the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders have said. The three human rights organizations (the Observatory is a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture and the International Federation of Human Rights), called on the Ugandan authorities to investigate the abduction and torture and sanction those responsible.

The Kenyan government should account for dozens of missing people detained during the security operation in Mt. Elgon, Human Rights Watch said in a report. Human Rights Watch also called on Kenya to support independent investigations into torture and war crimes committed by security forces, and urged donors, including London and Washington, to review military aid to Kenya.

While each phase of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) contains challenges, the most delicate and urgent component is disarmament. Written by Peter Swarbrick, this operational manual aims to educate donors, managers and practitioners about some of the most important obstacles to successful DDR operations. Using examples from the DDR programme in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the manual identifies common problems and practical solutions that can be applied to a variety of apparently dissimilar disarmament processes.

South African judge Navanethem Pillay has been nominated as the new UN high commissioner for human rights. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has informed the General Assembly of his choice for the nomination. The General Assembly will now be asked to approve the choice of Ms Pillay, who is currently an appeals judge at the International Criminal Court.

Large increases in biofuels production in the United States and Europe are the main reason behind the steep rise in global food prices, a top World Bank economist said in research just published. World Bank economist Don Mitchell concluded that biofuels and related low grain inventories, speculative activity, and food export bans pushed prices up by 70 percent to 75 percent.

The decision by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granting consultative status to two groups that work on sexual orientation and gender identity is a victory in the ongoing struggle for inclusion at the UN, a coalition of six human rights organizations said today. The two groups approved on July 21 and 22, 2008 are COC Netherlands and the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals of Spain (FELGTB), national organizations representing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the Netherlands and Spain.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has sounded the alarm about the impact of escalating violence on young people in Somalia, where just last week seven children died in battles between anti-government forces and Ethiopian troops based in the capital, Mogadishu.

Sierra Leonean police have adopted new policy guidelines on sexual abuse and exploitation that have been drafted by United Nations officials as part of their efforts to reduce the widespread levels of violence against women and girls in the West African country.

Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua said on Thursday the biggest problem in Africa's most populous nation was poor leadership and rounded on public servants who abused their positions of power to gain personal wealth. Even among follow Africans, Nigeria is seen as the home of the "big man" mentality, where "Ogas" -- bosses in pidgin -- bark commands at all and sundry and travel in convoys with blaring sirens through the chaotic traffic.

South Africa has the largest HIV epidemic in the world with an estimated 5,7-million people living with HIV in 2007. This is according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS’ (UNAIDS) 2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic released yesterday (SUBS: TUES), which reports that almost 33-million people are currently living with HIV/AIDS worldwide with 25-million people having died of HIV-related causes since the beginning of the epidemic.

The telecommunications sector is becoming a new gold rush where large white-owned companies pocket the wealth and leave nothing for the masses, says the chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa). The lowest rungs of society would be alienated if the regulator did not actively demand a greater role for black people in the industry, said chairman Paris Mashile. That is why Icasa would insist new licences for scarce spectrum went to companies that were 51% black-owned.

Under a new law in Tunisia, prisons are required to provide separate facilities for pregnant or nursing inmates. The new law also reduces the length of time a child can stay with their incarcerated mother from three years to one.

ITCH is a South-African born, internationally relevant online/offline magazine that publishes verbal and visual creative work. Work published includes non-fiction (book reviews, essays, polemic), narrative and poetry, as well as visual work in any medium. Submissions can include audio files (e.g., poetry recitals) and video (short films, animations, etc.).

Over the past week the UNHCR operation in Guinea embarked on a campaign informing Sierra Leonean refugees on the upcoming cessation of their refugee status and its implications. The UN refugee agency announced last month that as of the end of the year, Siera Leoneons who fled their country during civil war in the early 1990's will no longer be considered refugees since the root causes of the refugee problem in Sierra Leone no longer exist.

In the West African nation of Burkina Faso, millions of trees are planted every year to reverse desertification. However the growing socio-economic needs of local populations pose a constant threat to these efforts. "People have built homes, marketplaces, places of worship, full cities within our national reserves," said Salifou Sawadogo, Burkina Faso's minister of the environment in an interview with IPS.

Peace agreements form a crucial element of strategies to bring security from outside: they involve third-party mediators during the negotiation stage and often peacekeeping troops to guarantee the agreement at an implementation stage. This paper reviews parts of the academic debate on power sharing and war termination, touching on some key findings by the main researchers working on the topic.

Around 30 journalists demonstrated outside the main lawcourt building in Nouakchott to protest against the way two detained colleagues - Nema Mohamed Omar and Mohamed Abdelatif of the Al Houriya newspaper - are being treated to demand that they be brought before a criminal court. With their hands and ankles manacled, Oumar and Abdelatif were brought before an investigating judge half an hour after the protest.

Reporters Without Borders has written to the head of the Lesotho Communications Authority asking him to reverse his decision to close privately-owned radio Harvest FM for three months.

A ruling by the Abuja Federal High Court has ordered the Nigerian government to halt the transfer of the disputed oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon pending the determination of a case against the move. The ruling will strike a blow to an agreement on the transfer of the peninsula to Cameroon on 14 August this year. Until the International Court of Justice ruled in favour of Cameroon, the two sides had had several clashes over the area's ownership.

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Wednesday he hoped talks aimed at resolving the country's political crisis would give President Robert Mugabe an "honourable exit". Mugabe's Zanu PF party began power-sharing talks with the opposition in South Africa last week, but doubts have surfaced over progress after they were adjourned on Tuesday.

Experts fear presidential elections scheduled for November may be destabilised following the withdrawal of the opposition African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) from the national unity government on 25 July.

Prison conditions in Benin are so deplorable that they were, alongside police brutality, one of two reasons that compelled the international human rights watchdog Amnesty International to list the country in its annual State of the World's Human Rights report for the first time in 2008. Prisons suffer from overcrowding, cases of unjustified detention, a lack of trained prison staff and lack of adequate food, according to the report.

Doctors in Burkina Faso say fistula is being under-reported, and are launching a new project to offer free surgery to some of the affected women. According to the government’s statistics, there were just 54 cases of fistula in Burkina Faso in 2007. But Aboubakar Coulibaly, a doctor in the national health system, said “Cases are being under-reported.”

This new investigative report exposes another hidden aspect of export-driven resource extraction in the DRC and the neighbouring Republic of the Congo. Internal company documents obtained by Greenpeace International show how the German owned, Swiss-based logging multinational Danzer Group, one of the largest players in the Congo logging sector, is using an elaborate profit-laundering system designed to move income out of Africa and into offshore bank accounts, thereby appearing to evade tax payments in the countries in which its companies operate.

AMwA is announcing a Vacancy - Regional Coordinator, UK/Europe to be based at our UK/Europe Office in London, United Kingdom. Based in London, United Kingdom, AMwA’s Regional Coordinator, UK/Europe will work with the Executive Director to facilitate the identification, planning, development, implementation, leadership, achievement and spearheading of policy advocacy and programme initiatives relevant to African women, within the UK and Europe, in line with AMwA’s mission and objectives.

A multi-billion dollar oil deal between China and the west African state of Niger has been denounced by unions and transparency campaigners. Civil rights groups in Niger are calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the $5bn (£2.5bn) contract and for scrutiny of how funds will be spent.

Aid agencies working in a climate of heightened insecurity in Somalia have been forced to come up with inventive ways to keep their HIV programmes, and their staff, alive following the recent kidnappings of several foreign and local aid workers.

On the eve of the Pan African Conference on Sexual and Gender Based violence that ACORD and seven other like minded partners [1] deemed necessary in order to re-mobilize energies on ending impunity on SGBV, I would like to engage with the subject through a slightly different lens. The question of violence against women has been a constant pre-occupation of mine; professionally, academically and in the personal space. Perhaps my re-engagement with it was more vivid during the recent post election crisis in Kenya not because the experience unparalleled other contexts but because this was my home and as a woman this became a real fear for me in ways that it never had been before. I would like to concern myself with the young people; those popularly referred to as youth whose Africa’s future is said to rest with.

On the 25th of May 2008, a number of like minded organizations [2] came together in Nairobi to commemorate Africa liberation day. I was requested to contribute to the discussions through a speech on Africa’s liberation and youth. It serves to reason that on this day (and thereafter), a day that we are aptly reminded crystallized the youthful nature of our continent, given that most of our independence leaders were in their thirties, we should take time to problematise this category called youth and what hope or vision it holds for this continent.

I find ‘youth’ a particularly difficult subject to engage with, despite the fact that the UN officially considers me to fall within this category. This difficulty arises due to the transitional nature of the term youth and its very constituency. Further, the connotations of youth particularly in my context (Kenya) are unsavory to say the least. The term youth has for a very long time been used to refer to unruly groups of young men, mobilized by politicians to bully, steal and harass their opponents often in the run up to elections. These outfits then morph into vigilante groups, who in the absence of quick money and a job description linked to elections find alternative ways to exist and this comes in the form of thuggery.

In considering the wars in the Central African Republic (CAR), Darfur, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the use of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is widespread, this paper seeks to accomplish two tasks. The first task is descriptive: to give an overview of the manner in which the International Criminal Court (ICC) has responded to SGBV in the three countries. The second task is a modest attempt to analyze why SGBV continues to be inadequately addressed. Here, the paper considers the practical challenges that are inherent in transitional justice as a tool, particularly in its preference of some harms and narratives over others.

The paper also considers the conceptual challenges that come with understanding SGBV itself, in particular the implications of a focus on sexual violence over other forms of violence, and that of a focus on women over other feminized identities. The paper concludes with the suggestion of some useful debates for the consideration of scholars and practitioners, including the possibilities of a consideration of rape as torture, and the ramifications of focusing on criminal outcomes of political crises, to the neglect of necessary political solutions. In sum, the paper offers that transitional justice can only make a modest contribution to addressing SGBV, and that complex political crises underlying and causing violence must not be left on the wayside as we advocate around the criminal symptoms.

TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE RESPONSES TO SEXUAL AND GENDER BASED VIOLENCE

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (CAR)

Between October 2002 and March 2003, CAR President Ange-Félix Patassé invited the forces of Jean-Pierre Bemba, the Commander in Chief of Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC) to fight a rebel movement led by François Bozizé, the former Chief of Staff of the CAR army. In February 2003, FIDH referred the case to the ICC, following an extensive field mission to the conflict-affected areas where they found widespread rape, particularly from the forces of Bemba [1].

A key feature of in the CAR conflict was the high reported number of victims of rape. Under the presidency of Bozizé, who won the war, the highest court in the CAR determined that they would not be able to address the rape cases. In December 2004, the CAR government made a state referral to the ICC. According to the OTP, CAR became “the first time the Prosecutor ... open[ed] an investigation in which allegations of sexual crimes far outnumber alleged killings [2].

It is now fashionable in academic and activist circles to speak of transitional justice in normative, inflexible terms that suggest a utopian certainty. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the outset, we need to understand that transitional justice concepts are experimental – good experiments to be sure – but that they do not offer us tested panacea because they are essentially works in progress. This is not meant to diminish the utility of the concepts or to throw cold water on them as a beachhead for recovering societies with a legacy of traumatic conflict. Rather, it is to recognize their limitation so that we do not stampede to the temple only to find it empty of the goddess of truth. What is more useful for us to do is to imagine transitional notions as one incomplete vehicle through which we can understand and start the recovery of a tormented society. If we keep this perspective, then we are more likely to achieve a more realistic result.

In the last two decades, the concept of transitional justice has come to represent the midwife for a democratic, rule of law state [1]. The script for the construction of such a phase is now regarded as an indispensable building block for sound constitutionalism, peace-building, and national reconciliation in post-conflict societies or societies emerging out of abusive, authoritarian, and fractured periods [2]. In fact, policy-makers and statesmen now increasingly realize that a human rights state that internalizes human rights norms cannot be created unless the political society concretely addresses the grievances of the past. There is no future without a past, and the future is largely a result of the past. Unless we construct a future based on the lessons of the past, we are bound to repeat our own mistakes and retard the development of our society.

The term transitional justice captures two critical notions. First, it acknowledges the temporary measures that must be taken to build confidence in the construction of the post-despotic society. Secondly, by its own definition, transitional justice rejects a winner-take-all approach as a beachhead to the future. In other words, transitional justice calls for deep concessions on either side of the divide. No one party or faction can be fully satisfied. Unyielding, none concessionary demands can only foil the truce that is essential for national reconstruction. But equally important is the realization that transitional justice rejects impunity for the most hideous offenders. To shield egregious perpetrators would only encourage a culture of unaccountability for past abuses. Hence a balance must be struck between justice for the victims and retribution against offenders [3].

The vast majority of states lack the requisite political will to effect transformative transitions. That is why most political transitions are either still born or aborted affairs. For Africa, this calls for soul-searching at all levels of society – within the political class, among the intelligentsia, in civil society, and the general public. In other words, Africans must ask themselves: Is transitional justice a necessity for us if we are to create a democratic polity? If so, what vehicles should we construct to effect transitional justice, and what mandate shall we give such vehicles? But even as we ask these questions, we must remain mindful about the cost of abandoning transitional justice measures. The reason for this is simple: We cannot exorcise the ghosts of the past without confronting them. The past will always be with us.

Even if we accept as a basic premise – which we do – that transitional justice processes and institutions are desirable and indispensable, we would be derelict not to interrogate the internal contradictions of the project. I say so because the human rights project, which encompasses transitional justice, is an incomplete doctrine that is afflicted by gaping holes [4]. One of the blind spots of the human rights movement was for a long time women’s rights. There is no doubt that international law – which includes human rights – as a discipline has historically been inattentive to women’s rights. In fact, Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin, leading feminist scholars, have accused international law of its male, patriarchal construction [5]. For a long time, at least until the 1995 Beijing UN Conference on Women, women’s rights were a backwater in human rights, in spite of the existence of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Only in the last decade have we seen serious attempts to remove women rights from the ghetto of the rights discourse.

This is our challenge at this conference, and in the human rights movement, particularly in the context of transitional justice in Africa. How do we demarginalize women’s rights questions in the construction of transitional justice vehicles? In particular, how do civil society, academics, states, funding organizations, and intergovernmental organizations address – in serious ways – the problems of sexual and gender violence in transitional justice contexts? We know from the historical record that sexual and gender violence is arguably the most predominant abomination in civil conflicts and wars. Yet we also know that this egregious form of violence is either never reported, or rarely attracts the attention of the media. Even more distressing is the fact that gender and sexual violence is almost never calibrated in transitional justice processes, and is usually an afterthought when it is. This has been true in many of the transitional justice processes that have been put in place in the last two decades, although that is beginning to change.

In Africa, as indeed in other parts of the world, women are the pillar on which the fabric of society is built in the home and outside of it. In a very real sense, both the public and private squares are made possible by women, although in the former their invisibility is obscene. This invisibility pertains to the official public square in terms of public power defined as official positions within the state, civil society, and the market. Paradoxically, the invisibility extends to women victims and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in the public square during civil conflicts and wars. The challenge for Africans is to develop both conceptual tools and strategies – at the political and intellectual levels – to smash the walls of invisibility and exclusion so that sexual and gender-based violence can be exposed to the sunlight of the public domain. Without this first critical step transitional justice mechanisms will continue to exclude sexual and gender-based violence.

VEHICLES FOR TRANSTIONAL JUSTICE

Transitional justice measures can be effected through a number of avenues. While truth commissions or similar vehicles stand out, there are many other possibilities. For instance, one could think of institutional reformist measures that are legislative, judicial, political, economic, social, administrative, educational, sectoral, or a combination of some, or all of the above. To complicate the picture, civil society – broadly defined – could also initiate its own transitional justice measures, including peoples’ commissions or mock tribunals. However, in spite of this wide array of possibilities, the truth commission has since the 1980s been regarded as the most effective tool for coalescing the agenda of transitional justice [6]. Even so, cognizance must be taken of the fact that the truth commission has performed its political and social functions with mixed results. The reason for this has not been with the instrument of the truth commission per se. Rather, the varying degrees of success of the truth commission have been in the particular conception and construction of each specific truth commission. In most instances, the truth commission was deeply compromised by former regime elements. In others, the emergent ruling elites were either too timid or hypocritical in their understanding of transitional justice. Most importantly, however, is the reality that most truth commissions have focused on a narrow, limited agenda that did not have the potential to transform society or provide the possibility of social justice.

But truth commissions are not the only vehicle for realizing transitional justice. There is a rich tableau of devices that have the possibility of creating a bridge between an unforgiving past and a hopeful future. Regimes can opt for sectoral reforms that, when put together, amount to an aggressive transitional justice agenda. One can imagine judicial reforms – such as purging corrupt and incompetent judges; aggressively prosecuting perpetrators of past abuses; writing a democratic constitution; repealing repressive legislation; and reforming law enforcement agencies – as a credible transitional justice approach. While all these measures are critical and necessary to reconstruct and heal society, they should not preclude a truth commission, the only omnibus instrument that has the potential to create a cathartic experience for the whole society. To center women’s rights in a transitional justice project, one can imagine the repeal or enactment of laws that make the female gender visible in the legal system. These would include, but not be limited, to laws that sanction without pity sexual and gender-based violence. Or one could think of educational initiatives that develop a gender consciousness in the judicial system such that sexual and gender violence is not an afterthought or absent from the minds of judges.

In this paper, I argue that African states need both truth commissions in certain cases, and the specific, targeted sectoral reforms in other cases to overcome the deep distortions and legacy of despotism and social hatreds that afflict their bodies politic. But I want to argue – rather emphatically – that Africa should avoid the traps of most transitional justice programs that have focused on the so-called human rights violations alone while leaving completely untouched the equally important arena of economic crimes, which are intrinsically connected to sexual and gender based violence.

In fact, I would argue that economic powerlessness – which is connected to political powerlessness – lies at the root of sexual and gender based violence. I regret to say that this blindness of targeting civil and political rights violations while completely overlooking economic, social, and cultural rights is one of the major drawbacks of the human rights corpus. In my view, such an approach cannot address the real causes of powerlessness – which ought to animate the human rights agenda [7]. We must remember that rights are fights over resources, and not abstract struggles taking place in the outer orbit without going to the fundamentals of the human condition. That is why no credible transitional justice program can fail to address the difficult, but necessary, subject of economic powerlessness for women.

In any case, as a matter of logic and conception, it is nonsensical to imagine the human rights corpus as a bifurcated dogma of two unrelated and completely independent categories of entitlements. There can be no watertight distinctions between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights, on the other. Every right, no matter its ideological categorization, has at its core aspects of both sets of rights. To reduce the argument to the level of absurdity, we may want to ask: Can a person really eat the right to vote? Conversely, how can the right to food be guaranteed if citizens do not have the franchise to elect a responsible and accountable government? The right of women to own land and to control it and other economic resources is central to combating the kind of powerlessness that leads to sexual and gender-based violence. Human powerlessness and human dignity does not know these categories. That is why it would be spurious for us to address one set of rights violations, and not the other [8].

RECONCEIVING WOMEN AND GENDER

In virtually all societies around the world – even in the liberal industrial democracies of the West – women still labor under an avalanche of disadvantages. The patriarchy, a system of social ordering that has historically placed the male as the superior of the female, is the conceptual justification for the insubordination of women to men. Hetero-patriarchy, hetero-normativity, and phallocentrism – or male-centeredness, to be simple – describe a world view in which the male occupies a hallowed place in human civilization. Pseudo-scientific, religious, cultural, moral, and biological attempts to justify this gender hierarchy have held sway over millennia [9]. As a result, discrimination and privation has been the lot of the majority of the world’s women. Not even formal equality and abstract autonomy, the two key tenets of liberalism, have sufficed to combat the deep seat of gender bias and misogyny. Africa’s patriarchal cultures mirror others elsewhere in the world, although they are exacerbated by the continent’s underdevelopment and its grinding impoverishment in an unforgiving global economy. Nevertheless, progress on limiting the cancer of the patriarchy and ultimately eliminating it in Africa is both a conceptual and material task.

But this is a task that is easier said than done. Social transformation is an arduous task. But taking a cue from CEDAW, we can identify several starting points. One cannot overemphasize the importance of early learning in the home. Children initially learn through mimicry and the modeling of those within the home. To raise new men – and women – it is absolutely essential that what is learned at home in the early stages of life is not misogynistic. Keep in mind that both men and women can teach misogyny. This is the first line of defense against the patriarchy. It is important that parents, if they are more than one, model the right behavior in the home for children. This early consciousness about the sharing of labor in the home, the relationships between the genders in the family, and the absence of pre-conditioned male dominated hierarchies within the home is likely to create more gender sensitive progeny. But this begs the question. Where do parents get gender and political awareness that allows them to transmit those values to their offspring? This, I believe, is fundamentally an obligation of the state to create an educational system that forges a citizenship that is averse to misogyny. This requires a curriculum and an instructional faculty in primary and secondary schools that is designed to transform the individual. Waiting to develop a different citizen after these stages is an often futile exercise. NGOs and intergovernmental organizations such as UNESCO and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights can play important roles in curriculum conception and teacher training in gender and human rights. There is new scholarship on masculinities that opens a dialogue on how to create a better man devoid of the hatred of women [10]. In my view, changing worldviews at the earliest stages of human development will be key to reformulating our understanding of sexual and gender-based violence.

But this alone will not suffice. The society as a whole needs to undergo a catharsis about women as human beings, and not objects of sex or work. Societal stereotypes which are based on myths of misogyny need to be combated at various levels. For example, there is no reason why women’s rights work is seen as the preserve – or responsibility – of women’s rights organizations. In Kenya, for instance, FIDA and the League of Kenya Women Voters have been tagged as the groups invested with this mandate. Many other human rights organizations have marginal programs on women’s rights. Even when so so-called mainstreaming of women’s rights was all the rage, nothing fundamentally different happened. It was a song for donors without a political commitment. What we realize today is that women’s rights have to be explicitly part of the agenda of every civil society organization. But beyond that, the state in all its iterations must address women’s rights. This means the full inclusion of women in its political, economic, judicial, and bureaucratic structures so that they are not aliens in decision-making where laws and public policies are determined. In other words, the entirety of society must be engendered.

Finally, it is not possible to reconceive women without unpacking the myth from fact about sexuality, gender-based violence, and womanhood in a cultural, legal, social, and political context. In most cultures, including African ones, the woman is viewed primarily as a sexual object for the pleasure of the man. It is not an extreme view to state that many cultures see women as akin to property for possession by men. In such cultures, women’s bodies and their sexualities are not the preserve of the individual, but of the community and the man. In Uganda, for instance, these dehumanized conceptions of women result in rape, defilement, and various brutalities against girls and women [11]. In other cultures, even the concept of rape may not exist within marriage, or outside of it, and sexual assaults and other forms of gender-based violence are blamed on the victim. How does society re-educate men – and sanction them when they deviate – to understand that women’s bodies are not chattel? Many laws on the books either condone sexual stereotypes, men’s control over women’s bodies, or proscribe the ability of women to control their own sexuality. To transform these deep-seated and utterly backward universes will require new constitutional and legal orders, a judiciary and state with the political will to stand up for women, and inclusion of women at all levels of social and political engagement.

UNPACKING SEXUAL AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE

In the history of civil conflict and wars, the most vulnerable populations are usually women, girls, and the elderly. However, only women and girls are targeted for their gender. In the most recent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Darfur in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even in Kenya after the disputed elections in 2007, women and girls have borne the brunt of the atrocities. This is often the case even though women and girls are rarely direct participants in the conflicts, or the bearers of arms. Since women are regarded as property in many cultures, violating them is seen as a diminution of the men who “own” them. That is how women and girls become weapons of war and for which men fight over. This view of the woman as the appendage of the man has deep rooted bases in religion and traditional notions of nationalism. Imagine, for instance, the biblical story of the woman as having been created out of a single rib of a man!

Antiquated notions of masculinity and nationalism still hold sway in forging misogyny. In the case of the former Yugoslavia, for example, Serbians sexually violated Bosnian Muslim women with a view to committing genocide. In one particularly chilling incident, Serbs carried out a massive rape of as many as 20,000 Bosnian Muslim women [12]. Todd Salzman characterized the violations as “an assault against the female gender, violating her body and its reproductive capabilities as a weapon of war [13].” He traced the genesis of these atrocities to a Serbian culture that usurps the female body and reduces the woman to “her reproductive capacities in order to fulfill the overall objective of Serbian nationalism by producing more citizens to populate the nation [14].” According to him, this view of the female body is deeply rooted in Serbian culture, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and Serbian official policies. This view of the woman is analogous to some African cultures in which men who are HIV positive defile virgin girls to “cure” themselves. Obviously, infecting the girls is unimportant to them, as long as it “cures” the men.

Sexual and gender-based violence in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and now in Darfur is a sadistic impulse on the part of the perpetrator, and is intended to psychologically “kill” the victim. Frequently, the sexual predator actually physically kills the victim. This certainly was the case in Rwanda, as demonstrated in the famous Akayesu case before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [15]. In that case, it was clear that Hutu attackers targeted Tutsi women and their bodies as an instrument of genocide. The same has been largely true of the atrocities of the Janjaweed in Darfur. However, what has been so disturbing is that public outrage and international opinion still fails to understand the gender dimensions of genocide – that women are targeted at several levels as a racial or ethnic identity in addition to the fact of their gender. This failure to center gender in the understanding of sexual violence erases women from the face of genocide and treats them as non-existent. As a result, responses to women as such are few, if any. This means that women who survive sexual and gender-based violence have no place to turn for their traumas. Their communities often regard them as “damaged” and official transitional justice institutions have generally had little to offer.

LEGAL, POLITICAL, AND STRATEGIC RESPONSES

It is clear a full frontal approach to the problem of sexual and gender-based violence is indispensable to understanding and addressing the problem in whatever transitional justice vehicle is chosen by a country. A number of responses should be contemplated because of the multifaceted nature of the problem. For instance, criminal sanctions against perpetrators are necessary, even in the context of a truth commission. Thus adjudicatory responses form one of the core vehicles. We should keep in mind that adjudication has several purposes – these can be punitive, deterrent, compensatory, or correcting a historical wrong. They can also be civilizational. Some of these focus on the perpetrator, others on the victim or survivor. But others can and should be rehabilitative – that is, seeking to heal the traumas of victims and survivors as well as their families. Here, one of the purposes is to ease the reintegration of the survivors and their families back into society. Sometimes truth telling and public acknowledgement will play a role in this process.

Whatever strategies are employed, it is essential to have a legal and policy framework for addressing these societal deficits. It is clear to us that the law – itself a product of the patriarchy in virtually all states – is woefully underdeveloped in dealing with sexual and gender-based violence. This is doubly the case in the wake of civil conflicts and wars where the fabric of society has been badly damaged or even decimated. Imagine that in peacetime it is virtually impossible to get most societies to deal honestly with sexual and gender-based violence. This is true whether such abuses take place with the home or outside of it in the workplace or other locales. The machinery of the state and law enforcement have never been eager in any society to interrupt the lives of perpetrators. This means that civil society must work extremely hard and remain vigilant to make sure that the requisite laws are passed and that enforcement authorities do their job.

The law has not been a great friend to women. Take for example, the international criminal law in this area. Both the statutes of the Yugoslav and Rwanda tribunals did not exactly center sexual offenses in their frameworks, although they recognized rape as an egregious offense. That is why the Akayesu opinion, which is a path-breaking ruling in terms of making international law, is so important. It recognized for the first time in such a tribunal the seriousness of rape and other sexual offenses in the context of conflict and war as an element of genocide and crimes against humanity. Why it took so long for an international tribunal to make such a critical finding is ample demonstration of the blindness of international law to gender. This is a blindness that is directly lifted from municipal laws. It is this lacuna that has to be filled at the jurisprudential level if sexual violence is to be addressed seriously.

One of the major challenges for any transitional justice vehicle is finding the facts about sexual and gender based violence. Often, the victims may not report such abuses, even to truth commissions. This was the case with the South African truth commission. Women either refuse to come forward, or minimize their own suffering, when they do. As Priscilla Hayner has written:

Even with a flexible mandate and the intention of fairly gathering information about all patterns of abuse, a commission [truth] may well fail to document certain widely experienced abuses. Perhaps the most commonly underreported abuses are those suffered by women, especially sexual abuse and rape. Many commissions have received far less testimony about sexual abuse than in the numbers or proportion that they suspected took place [16].

This is both a political, cultural, and legal problem. Societies in transition need to de-stigmatize sexual and gender-based violence so that women can come forward to report such atrocities. A number of approaches, such as testimonies given without revealing the identity of the victim may yield better results in more conservative societies. In other cases, women statement-takers may be more successful than their male counterparts in getting information out of survivors. Whatever the case, it is important that transitional justice mechanisms be victim-centered in sexual and gender-based violence situations. Otherwise, women and girls will stay away because they will feel either as a means to an end they do not understand or endorse, or as pawns in a larger political game. There is no substitute for making sure that reparatory measures are put in place to assist victims and to raise public consciousness of the problem. This is true no matter what transitional justice vehicle is adopted. Ultimately states and societies in transitional justice contexts need to arrive at a high national consensus or convergence on the importance of tackling sexual and gender-based violence otherwise nothing much will happen.

CONCLUSION

The invisibility of sexual and gender-based violence in society in general, and transitional justice contexts in particular, is intrinsically bound up with the invisibility and marginalization of women in public life. Until societies decide that women are as important as men – and that human dignity means dignity for all genders – the failure to take seriously and address sexual and gender based violence will persist. Unfortunately, this means that the fundamental reforms that societies emerging out of conflict or war need will not be thoroughgoing. A society’s progress can be measured by the way it treats women. That’s because the patriarchy – the source of most subordination – thrives on the exploitation of the female gender. If transitional justice is to become a bridge to the society of the future, it will have to center the rights of women in its agenda.

*Makau Mutua is Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at Buffalo Law School, the State University of New York.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Notes:

Salome (not her real name) slowly stands up to tell her story after about five other women had spoken. In a clear gentle voice she begins to narrate her own experience that leaves one confused, hurting and the feeling to immediately act.

“My name is Salome. My home is 70 kms away from here in place called Ritchuru. I used to live there in my parent home until things changed for me about 3 years ago. One day when I was coming to Goma town to sell some wares I met about three soldiers on the way to the market. I knew two of them but without saying a word to me they began raping me repeated and then left me for dead. I was rescued by some good Samaritans and taken to the hospital at Heal Africa. There I received treatment and later decided to report these men to the police. These men were arrested and I was told we would go to court.

I travelled back to my village in Ritchuru but when I came back after about two weeks the first people I saw in the market place were these soldiers who were walking very confidently and looked like they did not have any problems. I go t so scared and quickly ran away so that I would go somewhere safe. Do you know why? Because I felt they were even going to do worse things.

After this happened me I began asking myself several questions which I could not answer because a few years before then I saw my own mother being raped. She later died of HIV/AIDS. I have also recently discovered that I am HIV/AIDS positive.

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) and the World Editors Forum (WEF) this week wrote to Robert Mugabe calling on him to repeal to immediately a punitive "luxury" tax on newspapers that are imported into Zimbabwe. The WAN and WEF said the punitive tax regime was preventing independent newspapers such as The Zimbabwean from reaching their audience.

The tax was imposed in early June in the run-up to the widely condemned presidential election won by Mugabe after his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai quit the race in the face of escalating violence against his supporters. The tax aimed at newspapers printed in South Africa such as The Zimbabwean, the Mail and Guardian, and the Sunday Times and is targeted to limit the circulation of the publications.

“Restricting access to information by punitive taxation constitutes a clear breach of the right to freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by numerous international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” the Paris-based WAN and WEF, which represent 18,000 newspapers world-wide, said in a letter to Mugabe.

The two organizations called on Mugabe to remove the illegal luxury tax on foreign publications and to end state intimidation of the independent media. The tax has already led to the suspension of The Zimbabwean on Sunday and the reduction in print run of The Zimbabwean from 200,000 copies a week to 60,000 – greatly diminishing access to information on the part of the majority of Zimbabweans.

In June alone The Zimbabwean was forced to pay SAR500,000 (£37,000) in punitive duties.

Wilf Mbanga

The Zimbabwean

"What does this mean? Quite simply that the African child sees writing a book as something he or she can never achieve." Mukoma Wa Ngugi's on the stifled opportunities for African children to be literarily creative struck a cord. Creative imagination is not a chance occurrence; it is nurtured from the cradle.

This has wide-ranging ramifications for educational role-players and parents.In order to instill the impetus for reading and creative writing in our children, African governments have to invest in well-equiped libraries, community reading centers, literary competitions, book clubs, and more. This takes a lot of political good-will, and the wisdom to perceive the long-term benefits of childhood literacy. A reading nation is a productive nation. We cannot continue to put literacy on the back burner and persist in the self-delusion that one day our children will be able to compete with their peers on the ideas-oriented market at par.

A wise man once said that "if you want to hide something from a black person, all you need to do is put inside a book. He will never find it because he abhors reading." Insulting as this adage may sound, there is a grain of truth in it! How many parents in Africa invest in books for leisure reading? I spent seven years in primary school without reading a single novel! This had nothing to do with lethargy on my part toward reading. It was simply due to the fact that there were no books at school or at home for me to read.

As we speak today, there are K-12 schools in Africa without libraries. Most of our college and university libraries are window-dressings! I taught high school kids for five years in the Northern Province in South Africa, where classes are still being held under trees in some villages for lack of classrooms! Yet our politicans continue to play tango with the future of our children by misappropriating public funds and doing stupid things like taking safari trips to Europe and America in the company of their concubines. This mentality has to change.

The onus is on educated Africans at home and in the Diaspora to play the leading role. And let's not forget, writers are political animals. Our lives are tainted on a daily basis with decisions, sane and insane, taken by politicians. On this count, therefore, the African writer cannot afford to be apolitical.

, Mukoma. Delicately nuanced. I might have put words differently but couldn't agree more.

"I understand that there are South Africans here tonight - some of whom have been involved in the long struggle for freedom there. In our struggle for freedom and justice in the United States, which has also been so long and arduous, we feel a powerful sense of identification with those in the far more deadly struggle for freedom in South Africa. We know how Africans there, and their friends of other races, strove for half a century to win their freedom by non-violent methods. We have honoured Chief Lutuli for his leadership, and we know how this non-violence was only met by increasing violence from the state, increasing repression, culminating in the shootings of Sharpeville and all that has happened since…Today great leaders - Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe - are among many hundreds wasting away in Robben Island prison.

-Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (London 1964)

In the eyes of the African Diaspora Nelson Mandela came to represent an image that was “larger than life.” In his years of prominence Mandela represented the deep historical voices of Black Nationalism and the Pan African dreams of a cross Atlantic Ocean connection. Nelson Mandela was a voice for a world wide struggle for African liberation and a global movement that would by 1990 secure his release from the prisons of South Africa.

The roots of the Pan African connection extend well beyond the beginnings of the Pan African Congresses of the early 20th century. These early efforts would be continued in the organizing of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Harlem Renaissance, the Council on African Affairs, and the birth of the Civil Rights movement. As the African American movement increased its challenges to racism and exclusion the voices of Black Nationalism were fueled with the three visits of Malcolm X to Africa, the leadership of Kwame Ture, the Black Power Movement, the Black Panther Party, and the consistent presence of Queen Mother Moore.

Malcolm X emphasized the urgency of a Pan Africanist struggle when he presented his last major speech of 1965 “The Last Message”- one week before his assassination. In that speech Malcolm highlighted the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and spoke clearly on the complicity of the United States and Western powers in the events in South Africa. A few years earlier the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had declared in its founding manifesto that “we identify ourselves with the Africa struggle as a concern for all mankind. “ If there was one African leader that represented that Pan African struggle in the latter part of the 20th century, it was indeed Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

African Americans in the Diaspora knew well of Kwame Nkrumah, the Mau Mau in Kenya, Ahmed Ben Bella in Algeria, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Samora Machel in Mozambique, and Amilcar Cabral in Portuguese Guinea. Mandela’s legacy for African Americans was that he was one part of a growing awareness of southern African and the entire African continent. The same zeal that African American communities and their supporters brought to the anti apartheid struggle was manifested in support of SWAPO, FRELIMO, ZANU, ZAPU, and the PAIGC. It was however, South African that was seen as the almost invincible levee that ensured white privilege and colonialism throughout the “Motherland.” At times we chose to debate our allegiances to either the PAC, the ANC, ZANU or ZAPU. At the end of the day our goal was to ensure that there was a victory for African people on the African continent.

It was a remarkable nation wide movement with Nelson Mandela as the “stamp” that reached into churches, labor unions, universities, organizations, and grassroots communities. When we sponsored anti apartheid benefits , and raised high the demand of freeing Nelson Mandela it was in many senses about finishing some parts of a Civil Rights Movements that had been left semi done.

Perhaps it is too early to make a thorough analysis of Nelson Mandela and his transition from liberation fighter to president to diplomat. The liberation that we all fought for of the African continent is not yet in its final stages-either in Africa or abroad. It is not however too early to realize that African liberation and self determination will require much more than timely rhetoric. Its mandatory that Pan Africanists remain engaged with Africa and the struggles throughout the Diaspora with the same principles that we utilized to ensure the release of Nelson Mandela.

Happy 90th Birthday!

*Walter Turner is host of Africa Today, KPFA Radio (www.kpfa.org), co- author of "Africa Libertation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000" and Chairperson of the Social Sciences Department, College of Marin.

**Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Mandela is, in some ways the perfect embodiment of post colonial Africa, a continent blessed with so many possibilities but consistently producing so much disappointment. The African dream of liberation has become a long nightmare. As Mandela turns 90 the country he helped found some 14 years ago is in a mighty mess. Its hatred of black people has reached the apex with the mass slaughtering and displacement of black Africans (apparently a good 20 or more of the more than 60 dead are South Africans). Post 1994, has been much celebrated for the benefits it bestowed upon a few, silence has befallen the fate of the black majority which has been bequeathed a bestial existence.

Mandela’s 85th birth day was a Coca Cola affair. The multinational corporation was given full rights to throw a party for our founding father. Coke milked his name dry, everything was branded, serviettes to programme - the whole affair was televised live. This forced a friend to remark that we need another “Free Nelson Mandela Campaign." At 90 Mandela must be allowed his well deserved rest. But it’s hard to think of this likable man of the 20th century Africa outside politics. He is resistance, Robben Island, freedom, magnanimity, compromise and hope for many, but what is his real legacy?

A few years ago Chinweizu wondered loudly about the icon of liberation who voluntarily builds his house as a replica of the prison house he was kept him during the last days towards his release. Who build a prison for a house? Our Mandela is a symbol, like his country, of things shiny and good and things horrendous.

Prof Wole Soyinka was moved to comment on the “soulless truly horrendous” sculpture of Mandela which presides over the Mandela Square in Sandton our Mecca of consumption, which lives cheek by jowl with the sprawling Alexandra township. Sandton feeds on the blood of Alexandra, the place from which the recent spade of Negrophobic attacks emanates. Cornel West, firstly praised Mandela as a the Socratic spirit of “going against the grain” then on reflection from the distance of the USA he warned against the “Santa Clausification of Mandela - Big smile, domesticated, tamed, defanged with toys in a bag."

At 90 Mandela is all these things, but more, he is the African dream that never became. His 90th bash will be held in London, what the official website says is his second home, images of Toussaint Louverture perishing in the loving embrace of his friend Napoleon Bonaparte flashes by. Now we wait for Barak Obama to conclude a circle started in 1994 in South Africa, White Supremacy today needs a little melanin too. Black suicide is endemic, 1803 it was Haiti, 1994 South Africa, and maybe 2008 December the USA. Happy 90 Tata!

*Andile Mngxitama is a Johannesburg based land rights activist and member of the We write editorial collective.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

9th July, 2008
The Office of the President
Cause Way
Harare
Zimbabwe

Your Excellency,

RE: WE STAND UP FOR DEMOCRACY IN ZIMBABWE

The African Women Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), a Pan- African Network working for the promotion and protection of the rights of women and children in the Africa Region is greatly disturbed by the unfolding events in this great African country Zimbabwe.

We note with concern the continued suffering of women and children in this country who have been victimized for no apparent reason or cause. Ironically their alleged crime is that they or their male relatives have participated in the democratic process of their country and expressed their choice of leadership for their country!!! The sham runoff election for presidency held on the 27th of June was marred with pre- and post election violence which has led to untold suffering for the people of Zimbabwe, loss of life (for example over 220 people linked with the opposition have died since March 2008), destruction of property and forced displacement of people majority of whom are women and children and in the process many have become victims of sexual abuse and other forms of violations of their body integrity.

Mr. Mugabe, you have a great history as one of the freedom fighters of Zimbabwe and you will always be acknowledged and remembered for the great contribution and sacrifice you personally made to bring freedom to all the people of Zimbabwe. We acknowledge the complexity of the situation in Zimbabwe. However, we believe that your continued unlawful stay in power as the President of Zimbabwe is not benefiting the majority of men and women of your country. Women and children of comrades in the opposition have been deliberately attacked, many have been forced out of their homes and fled the country, and others are currently in safe custody with embassies of foreign countries that still exist in your country. This is a real shame and a total mockery of democracy. We strongly believe that your autocratic leadership is a total disgrace to the people of Zimbabwe and the whole of Africa.

FEMNET joins the Presidents of Africa countries and other civil society organizations in Africa to condemn in the strongest terms the undemocratic elections that took place in Zimbabwe on the 27th of June 2008. Your political conduct is unacceptable and shameful to the entire continent of Africa.

We therefore call upon you Mr. Mugabe to do the following:

- To lead a process not exceeding six months, that will result into a peaceful hand over of power to new leaders that have credibility in the eyes of the people of Zimbabwe, the African people and the international community;

- To ensure that an environment of peace, free from intimidation and political violence is guaranteed by the Government of Zimbabwe for all people both supporters of the ruling party and those in opposition. This is an essential prerequisite for the peaceful process of transfer of power and authority to the new leaders of Zimbabwe. It is a constitutional right for citizens to have protection of their rights to personal security and not to be subjected to any form of abuse, torture, or inhuman treatment;

- To respect the rights of the people of Zimbabwe to associate and form political parties as part of the democratic process and to choose their leaders. These rights are guaranteed in Article 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 10 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights to which Zimbabwe is a party. The Constitution of Zimbabwe also guarantees these rights in Article 20 and 21.

- To ensure that women and children of Zimbabwe are protected from unscrupulous elements in society that are taking advantage of the unrest and uncertainty and are abusing and disregarding their rights and freedoms.

- To work towards a legacy of facilitating a peaceful transfer of power to new leaders in Zimbabwe by the end of 2008.

Note that in solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe especially the women and children of this great country, the women of Africa through FEMNET:

- Urge the African Union and its member states and also SADC countries to prevail upon you Mr. Mugabe to hand over power peacefully by December 2008 in order to transform the electoral and political crisis in your country into an opportunity for the development of a sustainable democracy.

- Demand for the immediate cessation of all acts of political violence and intimidation and all those engaging in acts of political violence, especially militia and youth groups supported by your party in power should be dealt with expeditiously in accordance with the law. We urge all political parties of Zimbabwe to exercise restraint and desist from employing intimidation and violent tactics.

- Call upon your Government to guarantee the safety and freedom of all people in Zimbabwe, especially women and children, irrespective of their political beliefs and choices.

- Are committed to stand with the women of Zimbabwe in and outside the country at this very precarious moment. We shall continue speaking out with courage against the undemocratic behaviour exhibited by different parties involved in this crisis.

- Will continue to strongly pressurize other leaders in the region to stand up against Mr. Mugabe and for democracy in Africa.

Democracy shall prevail.

*Norah Matovu Winyi is the executive director of FEMNET. This letter was written on behalf of the women’ rights movement in Africa.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

In 1980 the Zimbabwean “povo” (people) celebrated a victory over settler colonialism and Western imperialism. We celebrated with them. For us, this was a step closer to Namibian sovereignty, even though the overwhelming victory of ZANU was time-wise a detour on our long road to Independence. The unexpected result had taught Western imperialism a lesson. It shattered its manic assumptions that one could orchestrate and manipulate an election, even if the people are allowed to cast a secret vote at the ballot. Without major intimidation the “povo” used the weapon of an electoral process, by voting for the cock (the symbol for Mugabe’s ZANU), and not the archbishop (Abel Muzorewa, who was considered the blue eyed boy of the West). The people knew what they wanted: a government of their own choice, which they had reasons to believe would represent their interests.

Almost three decades later, 18 years into Namibian Independence, we have to face the sobering realities: Mugabe and his loyal clique in ZANU/PF messed it up. By the end of the 1990s they had lost the “povo.” While they blamed Western imperialism for this, it was in the first place their own elitist neocolonial project, which betrayed the liberation gospel and thereby the people. From the start, the new rulers were not shy of ruthlessly violent practices. Remember the genocidal mass violence in Matabeleland shortly after Independence (“Gukuhurundi”). Tens of thousand innocent people were tortured, maimed, raped, mutilated and slaughtered between 1983 and 1985 by the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade. Only because being Ndebele they were considered guilty of being in support of Josuah Nkomo’s ZAPU, a competing liberation movement finally coerced into the ZANU/PF alliance. With a few exceptions (notably the Catholic church inside Zimbabwe), those who knew remained silent and thereby endorsed if not encouraged the perpetrators to further cultivate their dehumanizing version of “chimurenga” against the people.