Analysts have welcomed the latest in a series of agreements between the governments of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) aimed at resolving the perennial threat to regional stability posed by the armed groups in eastern DRC.

In 2006, Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) relocated its Head Office to Kampala, Uganda and is seeking a Regional Coordinator, Africa Programmes, who will oversee the Africa regional programmes. Based in Kampala, Uganda, AMwA’s Regional Coordinator, Africa Programmes will work with the Executive Director to give overall direction to the formulation, leadership, achievement and programmes on the African continent in line with the AMwA objectives and strategy. Closing date for applications is Monday 3rd December 2007.

"This thing of rape," said Colonel Edmond Ngarambe, shifting uneasily on his wooden bench high in the mountains of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, "I can't deny that happens. We are human beings. But it's not just us. The Mai Mai, the government soldiers who are not paid, the Rastas do the same thing. And some people sent by our enemies do it to cause anger against us.

The government of Niger has launched a probe into the extent of slavery in the impoverished West African country, an official said on Friday. Unofficial estimates put the number of slaves at about 800 000. "The government wants to really know if there are people living in these conditions [of slavery] or whether these are just baseless allegations," said Garba Lompo, head of the National Commission of Basic Rights.

Zimbabwean Lazarus Moyo is a 'failed' asylum seeker to the UK who got lucky. Diagnosed HIV positive a few years ago, he has been receiving free antiretroviral (ARV) treatment at a London clinic thanks to his involvement in a drug study programme. But his luck could be about to turn: the two-year study has come to an end, and with it the money from the pharmaceutical firm that had been funding his treatment.

France's tighter immigration policies are making it even harder for HIV-positive undocumented migrants to survive, despite laws allowing foreigners who are ill the right to stay in the country to seek treatment. In theory, France treats its HIV-positive immigrants well - they are entitled to free healthcare, and even those whose residence status is still being determined get free treatment after three months if they cannot afford to pay.

The MDG Dashboard presents the Millennium Development Goals indicators in a highly communicative format aimed at decision-makers and citizens interested in the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development. This free database provides 60 MDG indicators for about 200 countries and 15 years (1990-2005) based on original United Nations statistics (updated in July 2007). The developers of this tool, IISD and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, JRC, hope that these indicators will contribute to an informed debate following the MDG+5 High Level Event, the so-called Millennium Review Summit.

In 2008, the World Social Forum (WSF) will be a week of action culminating in a Global Day of Mobilisation and Action on 26 January 2008. For the first time, the WSF will be fully decentralised, meaning that every organisation and movement will carry out their own activities where they wish. The overlap with celebration the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) provides an extra opportunity for linkage to draw out central human rights struggles of today and the need for action!

This is a publication from the German Foundation for World Population (DSW) that provides tips and tricks on how to apply successfully for development grants from donor governments and organisations.

LOVA invites social science scholars to participate in this international conference by presenting their research in an individual paper or panel. We particularly encourage participants to submit audio-visuals and other alternative ways of presenting their research. Participants may register through sending individual paper or panel proposals to [email][email protected] before February 1, 2008.

Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) is pleased to announce the 5th Eastern Africa Sub-Regional African Women's Leadership Institute (AWLI) to be held from 3rd to 17th February 2008, in Mombasa, Kenya. Please also note that the deadline for receiving applications is Thursday 20th December 2007. Interested participants should contact Akina Mama wa Afrika; Head Office - [email][email protected] or UK/Europe Regional Office - [email][email protected] for more information on the application procedure.

Eight (8) Yvonne Hibbard scholarships will be awarded by the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) to attend the UN Commission on the Status of Women in 2008 - CSW 52. Deadline for submission is 19 November. Contact: [email][email protected]

The External Peer Review of the Economic Report on Africa for 2008 (ERA 2008) will take place in Addis Ababa on 18 November 2007. ERA is one of the Commission's annual flagship publications prepared by the Trade Finance and Economic Development Division (TFED) in collaboration with the African Union.

News has just come through that Angola has also deposited its instrument of ratification bringing the total to 23 countries that have ratified the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Congratulations to all involved.

Korir Sing'Oei Abraham argues that Africa’s opposition to the adoption of rights for indigenous peoples — who are often nomads or hunter gatherers — has largely been informed by misconceptions and myths. He points out that the right to self-determination sought by these marginalised groups has been recognised by the AU as being consistent with the principles of a country’s territorial integrity.

It is late July 2006. A study and information visit by the Working Group of Experts on Indigenous Populations – part of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (the commission, hereafter) – is under way in Uganda. Uganda is one of the few African countries whose constitution boasts an extensive human rights regime of civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural rights. The visit, designed to disseminate the findings of a report by the commission in 2004 on the status of indigenous peoples in Africa, and thereby to engage in constructive dialogue with government officials and civil society in Kampala, is confronted with an insurmountable obstacle. A leading member of the Ugandan delegation overseeing the visit – Rosette Nyirinkindi, the head of the African Union division in Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs – is of the view that the visit’s objectives are contrary to the spirit of the country’s constitution, which seeks to foster peaceful coexistence among Uganda’s communities. According to Nyirinkindi, a seasoned diplomat who had previously served in her country’s mission in New York, the Ugandan constitution identifies all 56 ethnic communities residing in the country as indigenous. Therefore to set apart and focus on some of these communities to the exclusion of others, as the commission report had done, was a flagrant breach of Uganda’s constitutional and policy commitment to equality and a short cut to ethnic strife.

This is the classic scenario that confronts advocacy of indigenous rights in Africa. To raise indigenous issues in the continent demands that one respond to the question of to whom precisely indigenous rights may be ascribed. This then invites myriad other inquiries, including the usefulness of this distinction in promoting human rights and the link with the question of national integrity. This article will address some of these issues, and I hope give voice to the millions of pastoralists and forest communities who self-identify as indigenous people in Africa.

The context

It is difficult to analyse the question of indigenous rights in Africa without engaging with the question of statehood, and it is impossible to address the latter without considering its dubious origins. The colonial enterprise in Africa, marked by domination and annexation of territory, was masterminded by Leopold, the Belgian monarch, and Bismarck, the German chancellor. It reached its peak in the Berlin conference of 1884, which was convened ostensibly to regulate trading relations between European powers but ended by legislating for the partition of Africa. The result was the dismemberment of the continent into 53 multi-ethnic and odd states with no basis in scientific or social rationality save that of resolving territorial disputes between the colonisers. This certainly lends credence to the fledgling movement for the unification of Africa.

Colonialism was based on the ethnocentric belief that the morals and values of the European coloniser were superior to those of the colonised African. It involved egregious racial discrimination linked to pseudo-scientific theories that were buttressed by the Christian religious zealotry of the 17th and 18th centuries. This form of social Darwinism, that placed white people at the top of the animal kingdom ‘naturally’ in charge of dominating non-European indigenous populations, found a strong philosophical justification in the works of the German philosopher Hegel, amongst others. He claimed that sub-Saharan Africa was an ancient utopia which had remained shut up within itself: ‘the land of childhood, which lying beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of night’. Its isolated character, argued Hegel, originated not merely in its tropical nature but essentially in its geographical condition. Hegel claimed that upland negroes continued to exist in a state of consciousness which he termed ‘the infancy of humanity’, hence the juridical concept of discovery that informed colonial property relations with conquered people’s territories.

The post-colonial state in Africa, emerging from this colonial artifice, reluctant to remodel itself, and having solidified the colonial boundaries through the ancient international legal principle of uti possidetis,[1] is fraught with weaknesses which have manifested themselves in serious ethnic conflicts, poor governance, wanton inequalities and chronic poverty. Indigenous rights in Africa must be assessed and asserted from this context.

Indigenous rights and people in Africa

While it is undeniable that the West ravaged and looted the entire continent through slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, the disproportionate disadvantage dispensed by these forces upon some communities in Africa is vehemently denied. Why is it so hard to appreciate that the Maasai, who lost over one million acres of grazing land in Kenya’s vast Rift Valley to the British, today constitute one of the poorest communities in the country? Does it take rocket science to appreciate that the expulsion of the Batwa from the Bwindi and Mgahinga National Parks in Uganda to pave the way for the protection of the mountain gorilla, a key tourist attraction, has led to the near-decimation of this hunter-gatherer community? Does one need to ask what contributes to the penury of the Herero in Namibia, whom the Germans butchered en masse and used as guinea pigs at the turn of the 20th century?

The worst part of the nightmare is that rather than pave the way for the reconstruction of Africa’s political and economic order, the departure of the colonialists ushered in a new set of black dominators who, taking advantage of the instruments and institutions of the colonial state, proceeded to plunder and loot the continent of its resources and completely closed the door to restitutive justice.

Contemporary public policy makers in Africa ignore the shame of colonialism and make vigorous attempts to construct a reality based on the ‘national interest’ rather than communitarian pursuits, which they consider provincial and therefore sectarian. It is this subsuming of identities, and its conflation with equality for all, that is largely responsible for the denial of indigenous rights.

Indigenous rights are considered a domain of rights which seeks to dislocate national priorities for communitarian purposes and does not fit the logic of state-centred development. That some communities have refused to align their interests with national development priorities is seen as failing to take on the responsibility and demands of progress. This view is part of a classical contention that disputes the relevance of recognising diversity in divided societies, a move that hegemonises the state. A critical analysis of indigenous rights and their beneficiaries would demonstrate the fallacy of this objection.

First, indigenous rights are grounded in the general notion of the universality of rights within a multicultural context as endorsed by the Vienna Declaration of 1993. That declaration unequivocally reaffirmed the inherent dignity and unique contribution of indigenous people to the development and plurality of society, and called for their full inclusion in the life of the state. It is therefore anathema to question the place of indigenous rights in the national discourse, for the two can comfortably coexist and support each other; the substantive inclusion of marginalised groups in national processes gives the latter broader legitimacy. By reinforcing the state where it would otherwise be absent, the promotion of indigenous rights, such as self-determined local governance and development, can lead to peace.

Second, indigenous rights must be seen as enabling substantive equality, thus spreading light to a group of people previously not reached by the transformative premise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While non-discrimination is held up as a jus cogens,[3] the fact that it is still difficult to achieve equality for all means that marginalised groups, be they women, children, minorities or indigenous groups, have to pursue strategies that go beyond formal equality to attain the promise of dignity for all people. Some have questioned how effective non-discrimination provisions are as a bulwark against the human rights deficiencies experienced by indigenous groups. Professor Kingsbury of New York University has argued, for instance, that the existing mechanisms have completely failed to deal adequately with the concerns of indigenous groups, and have merely served a symbolic and didactic purpose, hence the demand for more specific mechanisms.

Third, the collective conception of rights has often seemed to be a child of a lesser god within a human rights system that has historically pitted civil and political rights against economic, social and cultural rights. Collective rights, which are central to the struggle of indigenous people the world over, have suffered from being poorly articulated, which has prevented them from being regarded as the norm. Thanks to Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the progressive jurisprudence that has flowed from the Human Rights Committee on this article, a lot of ground has been laid for the protection of group rights to land and development, among other things. The rich array of solidarity rights provided for under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the charter, hereafter), which lend themselves well to the cause of indigenous peoples, is thanks to Keba M’Baye, the Senegalese jurist. His appreciation of the dynamics of African society inspired the document. In his 1972 monograph on the rights to development – Le Droit du Developpement comme un Droit de l’Homme – borrowing significantly from Karel Vasak, UNESCO’s director, M’Baye articulates solidarity rights to include the right to development, the right to peace, the right to an environment, the right to ownership of the common heritage of humankind, and the right to communication.

Thus, the notion of indigenous people and rights in Africa must be understood not merely in terms of a dictionary definition that emphasises people’s origins. The modern understanding of the term ‘indigenous peoples’ focuses on the lived experience of systemic marginalisation, discrimination, cultural difference and self-identification, in line with the emerging practice of the commission. The International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) and the Working Group on Indigenous Issues of the commission have argued that:…the issue of indigenous peoples revolves around the assertion that certain marginalized groups are discriminated against in particular ways because of their particular culture, mode of production and subordinate position within the state and that state legal and policy frameworks have been impotent at addressing these challenges. This is a form of discrimination which other groups within the state do not suffer from. It is legitimate for these marginalized groups to call for the protection of their rights in order to alleviate this particular form of discrimination.[4]

The notion of indigenous people in Africa also overlaps with the concept of minority rights, another problematic but less controversial term in the continent.

Africa’s opposition to the adoption of standard-setting mechanisms and norms for indigenous peoples has largely been informed by misconceptions and myths. In 2006 an assault on the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, led by Namibia and Botswana within the African group in the UN, caused the General Assembly to postpone its decision on the declaration, thereby holding in abeyance substantive recognition of indigenous rights under international law. When the African Union’s assembly of heads of state and government met in Addis Ababa a year later, they justified the position of the African group on the grounds that indigenous rights as elaborated in the declaration would affect territorial integrity. The question that baffles many is whether the Batwa in Uganda, the Endorois in Kenya or the Bushmen in Botswana have designs to create their own separate states. Is it not obvious that the right to self-determination sought by these groups is one that can empower them and lead to their recognition and enhanced participation in public affairs? The Katanga v Zaire communication of 1976, which established that a variant of self-determination that ensures the inclusion of marginalised groups within a state is consistent with the principle of territorial integrity, was reiterated nearly 20 years later in the Ogoni v Nigeria decision by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

The term ‘indigenous people’ should therefore be used in a practical way, to draw attention to and alleviate the particular form of discrimination from which communities suffer. In the African context these communities are almost always nomadic or hunter gatherers. By identifying with the term, they feel that the particularities of their suffering can be better articulated and can lend themselves to the protection of international human rights law and moral standards. The adoption of a flexible bundle of rights attributable to indigenous groups, rather than a constant struggle to achieve unanimous agreement on terminology (which has been elusive over the last two decades of discussion within the UN on indigenous rights) seems to me to offer a real possibility for appreciating indigenous peoples’ rights in Africa.

A cry from the dark: living on the fringes

Groups that self-identify as indigenous live a peripheral existence. Most governments in Africa do not have disaggregated data or indicators to monitor the social, economic and political status of indigenous people. How then can they track progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals if the poorest of the poor are not even properly recognised? A major concern is that many states will focus on the bottom line of reaching the MDGs, rather than the matter of who reaches them or how. This risk was noted in the Human Development Report of 2003.[5]

Take the Twa in Burundi, Rwanda, DRC and Uganda, for instance. Their lifestyle and the rate of deforestation has kept them moving for decades and left them vulnerable – falling through the cracks of a modern social and legal system which would normally secure tenure on both their lands and livelihood assets. Growing pressure to preserve the few remaining rainforests in the most densely populated countries of the Great Lakes region means that they find themselves excluded from their traditional habitats. The Rwandan state has for decades been tightening its control over forest areas, driven by the need for more protective conservation policies, the growth of the tourism industry and security concerns along its borders with DRC, Burundi and Uganda. The Batwa have been the most affected by these measures, which have uprooted them from their traditional lifestyle and means of earning a living. They have been unable to make a successful transition to a sedentary life and a market economy.

Most indigenous communities, including the Twa, were never compensated when expelled from the ‘protected areas’ or ‘state reserves’ they used to live in, due to their traditional marginalisation and to flawed legal and policy frameworks. As a result, their living conditions have degenerated further. Today, most Batwa lead a shockingly impoverished existence. A recent report by a UK charity called the Forest Peoples Programme predicts that the Twa are in danger of extinction unless massive and concerted action is taken to reverse their decline.

Such is the state of many other groups of indigenous people, both pastoralists and hunter gatherers, from the Barabaig in Tanzania to the Tuareg in Mali.

The road less traveled

Indigenous rights, shunned by politicians across the continent, have found solace in an unlikely quarter: the judiciary. Reputed to be incorrigibly corrupt and inefficient, judiciaries across the continent have yet to be acknowledged as bastions of justice for the weak. It is here that the struggle for recognition and respect for indigenous rights has been most vociferously waged. From Botswana to Kenya, South Africa to Uganda, courts have become the theatre for dramatising the plight of indigenous people and the sheer scale of their destitution. In Kenya, a toothless goat was produced to persuade a court of allegations of environmental genocide perpetrated against the indigenous Il Chamus community. In Botswana, hundreds of members of the Basarwa community, clad in their colourful traditional attire, endured a 200-day hearing to demonstrate that they were indeed a recognisable group, contrary to the state’s assertion. Judicial proceedings have been used with mixed results to seek land restitution for an indigenous group in South Africa, halt state displacement of the Ogiek from the Tinet forest in the Rift Valley of Kenya, procure provision of social services for the Benet in Uganda, stop a multinational mining company from procuring a land concession in the Magadi area of Kenya for soda ash production, and secure language rights in Namibia.

Disappointingly, just as in the days of Brown v Board of Education at the height of the civil rights movement in the United States, when the Supreme Court issued judgments in favour of desegregation but racist and belligerent states refused to implement them, African governments have been reluctant to embrace with open arms the decisions of their own judiciaries. The government of Botswana, for instance, side-stepped the decision of its constitutional court and refused to allow the Basarwa to return to their hunting livelihood in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. A year after the Kenyan constitutional court held that a constituency should be created for the Il Chamus in Baringo to ensure their participation in policy making, no action has been taken. A similar state of affairs prevails in Uganda, where two years after consent judgment was entered allowing the Benet rights to graze and farm the land they occupy, there has been no action by the administration to back up the court’s decision. In a continent that professes respect for the rule of law as a central tenet of its constitutional order, the failure to implement judicial decisions is a mocking indictment of Africa’s commitments to good governance and democratic ideals.

Undeterred, indigenous groups have seized on regional mechanisms to develop standard-setting precedents on indigenous rights, but their attempts have yet to bear fruit. In 2006 the Bakweri lands claim against the Cameroonian government was defeated when the commission declared the communication inadmissible. Indigenous people in Africa wait with bated breath for the commission’s decision with respect to the Endorois communication against the Kenyan government, which seeks the restitution of ancestral territory.

The media houses, belatedly, have taken their cue from these dramatic scenes and begun to highlight the folly of non-recognition of indigenous communities’ plight in Africa, enabling the African public and policy makers to consider their predicament. Mainstream civil society organisations such as ActionAid and CARE in Uganda have begun to demand state attention to indigenous rights as a means of attaining the Millennium Development Goals. The rise of organisations such as the Centre for Minority Rights Development in Kenya and the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) in South Africa, dedicated solely to the struggle for indigenous rights in Africa, is also helping give visibility to these issues.

Good news, difficult to come by, is slowly emerging. Countries such as South Africa and Cameroon have taken the bold step of commencing processes to ratify ILO Convention 169, which extends a substantive regime of rights for indigenous people, including the right to free, prior and informed consent in relation to development processes on indigenous lands.

Not yet out of the woods…

Indigenous people’s struggles for recognition of their rights must be considered within the context of building multicultural societies in Africa, where diverse identities contribute towards the well-being of the whole. Without this paradigm shift, indigenous rights will continue to be perceived negatively, as instruments of parochialism and division. Yet to achieve this shift, Africa must rise up to the challenge of its own identity. Until then, it is ‘not yet uhuru’ for indigenous groups in Africa.

* Mr. Sing’Oei is the executive Director of the Centre for Minority Rights Development (Cemiride)

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

For notes, see link below.

Roselynn Musa writes that despite the promises and the mobilisations by women from all over the continent, African women still lack adequate protection of their human rights. She argues that the root of the problem is the persistent lack of political will by governments to implement commitments to gender equality.

The 21st century marks a critical juncture in the promotion and protection of a human rights culture in Africa. As the world becomes more interdependent, regional systems of cooperation are playing an increasingly important role in the promotion and establishment of a positive international human rights order.

African states have committed themselves to various international and regional policy documents. The most significant international gender mechanisms are the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) of 1995, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the charter, hereafter), the International Conference on Population and Development’s Programme of Action (ICPD PoA), the African Union’s Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the constitutive act of the African Union. In signing up to the MDGs, 191 governments resolved to promote gender equality as a goal in its own right, but also the empowerment of women in order to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate sustainable development. NEPAD also stresses equality and enhances women’s rights through its African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). All these conventions and policy frameworks commit governments to address gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment. They are subject to periodic reviews to measure the extent to which they have been delivered.

Over the past year these reviews have generally shown that Africa has made some progress at all levels. Most countries have developed national gender machineries and policies, but the majority of their strategies have not been implemented. Despite all these promises and first-class commitments, African women are no better off than when they started. The promises have moved a shoe size further on, if at all. The stagnation in some respects and deterioration in others are worrying, particularly given the level of mobilisation of women and advocacy by women’s rights activists from all over the continent. At the root of the problem lies the persistent lack of political will on the part of African governments to implement commitments to gender equality.

This paper explores the relationship between the international and regional policy framework on women’s human rights in Africa and its actual implementation. It discusses the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (from here onwards referred to as the protocol), compares it with other instruments and highlights what makes it unique. It concludes with the challenges encountered in promoting women’s rights and recommends accelerated implementation of gender policy commitments in Africa.
The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa

The protocol seeks to address the shortcomings of the international instruments that preceded it in addressing African women’s rights. It has proven to be a much-needed improvement on the way in which the AChHPR addressed the position of women in Africa. It applies CEDAW and BPfA in an African context.

The protocol has three sections. The first sets out its rationale and refers to both regional and international commitments on women’s rights. The second outlines the rights to be upheld by the protocol, and the third covers its implementation and addresses the procedures for adopting, monitoring and amending it.

The protocol is the first instrument to be developed by Africans for women in Africa. It builds on and strengthens other regionally negotiated issues that have been detrimental to women’s human rights. It challenges cultural behaviour and traditions that often violate the fundamental rights of women in Africa. The inclusion of articles concerning widows and inheritance rights is regarded as a breakthrough, for these are issues particular to African women which are normally swept under the carpet. And it gives women a line of defence on which to base their appeals in cases where they have been unsuccessful in challenging national discriminatory laws or practices.

The entry into force of the protocol reflects a growing awareness that women are equal members of society, and that they are participants and not simply beneficiaries in the development process. Prosperity on the African continent requires the promotion and protection of the rights of all African peoples, as well as adherence to the principles of gender equality and non-discrimination.

From the above it can be seen that the African Union has plans and programmes to ensure that its member states are part of the global effort to advance the principle of gender equality in Africa.

Enforcement mechanisms

At the national level, the procedure for domestication of CEDAW and the protocol is a major challenge. While several countries have acceded to CEDAW, many have not taken the extra step to domesticate it and make it part of their national laws. What this means in effect is that its provisions cannot be directly applied in national courts. States parties do not always have the political will to implement commitments made at the international level.

The challenges faced in implementing CEDAW are a good indication of those the protocol will face, from which important lessons can be drawn. The mandate of the CEDAW Committee is to monitor its implementation by the states parties which have ratified it, and this is done through periodic reports. Unfortunately this is one area that has not been taken very seriously by states parties. Many have two or more reports outstanding, while some have submitted none. This is a major challenge to the committee’s work.

While the process of reporting is thorough, to a great extent it remains in the hands of governments; NGO participation is weak. The examination of states parties’ reports is not intended to be adversarial, but should be done in a manner that promotes constructive dialogue between the states parties and the committee.

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights is an approach of last resort when all other domestic remedies have failed to provide satisfactory results. Pending the full establishment of the African Court, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (the commission, hereafter) is seized with matters of interpretation arising from the application and interpretation of the protocol. The commission was established under Article 30 of the charter. Its primary responsibility is to promote and ensure the protection of human rights on the continent. Its four areas of mandate are: promotional activities, protective activities, the examination of state party reports and the interpretation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. It holds regular sessions twice a year in around April and November and can hold extraordinary sessions.

The commission has 11 part-time members. They are independent experts and act in their personal capacity rather than as representatives of their governments. The integration of the protocol into the implementation mechanism of the commission is consistent with the provisions of the charter itself. It will ensure that women whose rights under the protocol have been violated will have final recourse to the African Court to have their rights established and enforced. Furthermore, individuals other than the victims themselves, as well as human rights NGOs, can bring a complaint on behalf of the victims to the court.

One of the challenges facing domestication of the protocol is the multiplicity of legal systems in most African countries. While in a few countries international treaties, once ratified, automatically become part of national law, in most cases they have to be passed by an act of parliament to bring them into effect.

It is encouraging that the constitutive act of the reinvigorated African Union, which replaced the Organisation of African Unity, and the creation of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has emboldened women’s rights advocates to press for more vigorous enforcement of international and regional commitments.
Unique features of the protocol
The protocol was drawn up after many other treaties and therefore has the advantage of hindsight. It was able to draw on the best parts of earlier documents while also dealing with issues they omitted. The protocol is closely modelled on CEDAW; there are more similarities than differences between the two. The differences are mainly in those areas that concern African women and that CEDAW mentions in the abstract or not at all. The protocol names specific rights and defines violence against women. Its definition of a woman is comprehensive and includes the girl-child. It is culture-specific and therefore very valuable in challenging negative cultural practices. Unlike CEDAW, the protocol places explicit obligations on states to set aside resources to eliminate discrimination against women and to punish people or organisations that practise it.

There was initially stiff resistance to the protocol on the grounds that women in Africa do not need a separate provision, and that a clause on non-discrimination against women in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights would suffice to take care of the women’s rights issues that were omitted from it. The charter is perhaps distinct from other regional systems of human rights protection in that it has specific provisions that address the rights of women. This is apart from the commonplace provisions on the rights to equality and freedom from discrimination characteristic of most international instruments of this kind. With regard to the rights of women, the charter provides that ‘The state shall ensure the elimination of every discrimination against women and also ensure the protection of the rights of the woman and the child as stipulated in international declarations and conventions’ (Article 18 (3)).

However, this provision has been regarded as too general, giving no substance to the rights of women, thereby placing these rights in a situation that has been described as a ‘legal coma’. Addressing the rights of women alongside those of children is also criticised. While recognising that both women and children have been victims of enduring violence, it raises the question of why the latter are equated with the former. Nevertheless, the charter is seen as creating the bedrock for the protection of women’s rights in Africa. It provides a basis from which states have to account for the status of women and the protection of their rights within national legal systems. And it enjoins African states to take positive steps to ensure that their national laws and policies seek or result in the attainment of these two primary goals. Since then there have been significant developments towards a more comprehensive legal regime for the protection of women’s rights in Africa, resulting in the drafting of the protocol to the charter.

The protocol can be a tool that forces states to prioritise legislative measures to eliminate harmful traditional practices. It provides a foundation on which human rights acquire legality in the African context, and a basis for assertions that African women’s rights to equality are no longer contested. What is critical at this point is to see greater dynamism from domestic courts, the charter and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in giving meaning and precedence to the protocol.

The protocol attempts to invigorate the charter’s commitment to women’s equality by adding rights that it omitted and by clarifying governments’ obligations. Only one of the charter’s more than 60 articles makes specific reference to women. These are some of its shortcomings:

• Its failure to define explicitly discrimination against women
• Its lack of guarantees concerning the rights of women to consent to marriage and equality in marriage
• Its emphasis on traditional values and practices that have long impeded the advancement of women’s rights in Africa.

Some of the most serious violations of women’s rights in Africa take place in the private sphere of the family and are reinforced by traditional norms and cultural values. Article 17 (2) and (3) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ rights states that every individual ‘may freely take part in the cultural life of his community’, and that ‘the protection and promotion of morals and traditional values recognized by the community shall be the duty of the state’. The only specific reference to women’s rights is contained in a clause concerning the family and the upholding of tradition, thereby reproducing the tension that plagues the realisation of women’s rights in Africa. Indeed, the charter has been interpreted as protecting customary and religious laws that violate women’s rights, such as their rights to equality and non-discrimination, to life, liberty and the security of the person, and to protection from cruel and degrading treatment.

The protocol recognises women as individual human beings rather than members of communities or families. It deals with discrimination in both the public and private realms and targets both direct and indirect discrimination. It also moves equality from an abstract concept to something that states parties are expected to take concrete measures to address.

Most importantly, however, the protocol offers a real remedy for women at the regional level. It gives women victims of human rights violations somewhere to turn, providing them with practical access to bodies which will understand the implications of their experience. But this potential will only be realised if states parties ensure that they protect women’s rights in practice and work to implement the commitments they have made.

The campaign: Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR)

While acknowledging the scale of the challenges, I also want to celebrate our achievements by recognising the efforts of Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR), a coalition that has been working tirelessly to advance the cause of the protocol.

SOAWR is a regional network of 26 civil society organisations and development partners working towards the promotion and protection of women’s human rights in Africa.[1] Since its inauguration in 2004, SOAWR’s main focus has been to get those countries that have not yet ratified the protocol to do so urgently, while at the same time encouraging those that have ratified it to domesticate and implement it at the national level. SOAWR also works to persuade countries that have ratified the protocol with reservations to remove harmful reservations that would constitute a denial of some of the most important freedoms and rights of women recognised in the protocol.

SOAWR has been using all the instruments at its disposal and has capitalised on every opportunity to move the campaign forward: writing petitions, direct advocacy with national and regional leaders, mobile phone SMS service, publications in different languages, AU pre-summit civil society forums, public forums, press conferences, coloured rating cards, and so on. SOAWR is currently documenting the advocacy strategies it has used in its campaigning. This was an idea which came from a meeting of SOAWR members immediately after the pre-summit activities they organised in Accra, Ghana, in June 2007. They decided to document their efforts to provide a clearer understanding of what was being done to encourage ratification and domestication of the protocol, and to offer inspiration and a means of action to the Africa-wide movement for the endorsement and domestication of the protocol.

I hope that SOAWR will continue to create a platform for debate and dialogue on the disjuncture between international instruments and their national implementation in Africa and to identify strategies that researchers, activists, and government officials can apply to bridge that gap. Gender activists should also join their voices to civil society coalitions such as SOAWR to continue calling for the removal of the structural barriers that face women.

Obstacles and challenges

The domestication and further ratification of the protocol have been slowed by a lack of political will. Even though most countries have established national gender machineries, these are weak and lack adequate authority, capacity, human resources and funding. This is coupled with inadequate skills in gender analysis among planners and implementers, and limited gender awareness within communities.

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which is an important tool in interpreting the protocol, is not yet fully functional. Even when it is, access to it by civil society organisations, which have been the main champions of the protocol, will be limited to those countries that have signed a declaration to facilitate such action.

Women’s participation in politics and decision making remains low, and this slows down their influence on governments to carry out their obligations under the protocol. Women’s access to justice is further inhibited by illiteracy and ignorance of their rights and how to access them. Some cultural and traditional practices continue to hold back progress in realising the provisions of the protocol.

Most of the human rights instruments set a ceiling and a floor as frameworks that women can use to combat discrimination in its many forms. However, these tools in themselves are not perfect. For example, the language employed in some of them is either too complicated or too broad or both; this could create problems of interpretation, especially at the national level. They also fail to address the issue of recourse in cases of non-compliance. It has been said that they can only bark because they lack the teeth they need to bite. The consequences of non-compliance and non-enforcement need to be built into them.

Another problem is the strategy of placing reservations on some key provisions. This negates the principle of women’s rights as first and foremost being inalienable, integral and indivisible.

One other obstacle that has been identified at the national level is that few lawyers are aware of the protocol and are therefore unable to cite it in support of their arguments. Not many law students take up courses in gender and the law where these are part of the curriculum, hence their ignorance about the protocol and other women’s rights instruments.
Lessons learned

Effective implementation of international human rights standards for women has depended so far on the will of individual states. Cultural and religious practices are often used to undermine the implementation of provisions concerning women’s rights. Reliance on the good will of governments to implement international agreements has not yielded positive results. CEDAW was seen as foreign, but even though the protocol is home-grown, our governments have not treated it differently as far as implementation is concerned.

Women’s empowerment requires a higher level of involvement by women in governance and decision making. Systemic and structural barriers that prevent them from participating in decision making at all levels need to be removed.

The media can play an important role in promoting equality. Women’s press and communications initiatives and the use of technology to promote women’s activities should be supported.

The proliferation of instruments has also been cited as a possible factor hindering compliance because each one requires a different reporting and accounting procedure, thereby placing a huge burden on states. There is also inadequate dissemination of information about these instruments at the local level.

A number of African states have bound themselves to international human rights instruments, but only a few have actually taken steps to make them enforceable within their countries. It seems that our governments ratify such instruments not because of a political commitment to their content, but because of political expediency and in order to maintain a good image. The failure to domesticate these commitments remains a big problem.

The multiplicity of laws in different countries is such that most countries will have to enact new legislation to domesticate the protocol after ratification. A number of countries that have ratified the protocol, such as South Africa and Mauritius, did so with harmful reservations, signifying their unwillingness completely to abandon practices that discriminate against women. The legitimacy of entering reservations on the treaties may be questionable because of the substance of such reservations.

Mainstream international human rights standards are defined in relation to men’s experiences and are stated in terms of discrete violations of rights in the public realm, whereas most violations of women’s rights take place in the private realm. The public/private dichotomy that is so detrimental to women’s rights continues to exist.

The drafters of the protocol were very much influenced by the contents of CEDAW as well as the work of the CEDAW committee. It is therefore obvious that to ensure effective implementation of the protocol, Africa should draw on the experience of the CEDAW committee.

Conclusion

It is evident from the preceding paragraphs that the adoption of the protocol is a significant development that will ensure the full integration of women’s human rights within the overall human rights framework in Africa. The protocol will allow both the African Commission and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights to elaborate how the rights recognised under it should be guaranteed in real-life situations.

The role of international instruments and other initiatives cannot be underestimated. Broad legitimacy beyond the nation state has created some leverage to pursue the gender agenda. However we are faced with growing failure to translate these instruments into reality in the domestic context. The gap between the commitments and their implementation is becoming ever larger, raising the question: what needs to be done? We should consider both individually and collectively what we can do to ensure that implementation takes place.

There is no denying that it is very important to have these commitments on paper as markers of progress. What is more important though is using them to ensure actual change in the lives of women. We have to be careful that the gains won in Beijing are not turned back.

Recommendations

There needs to be a specialist body similar to the CEDAW committee to monitor implementation of the protocol. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, in its work to monitor the charter, has not paid enough attention to the protocol. Even though it has appointed a Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women, this office needs more human and financial resources to carry out its mandate effectively. States parties are bound by Article 26 of the protocol to report on progress in its implementation, but they are not likely to take this seriously if they are not required to report to a particular body specifically set up to monitor the protocol.

The teaching of women’s rights should be incorporated into the curriculum of law faculties as a core discipline, to ensure that lawyers leave school knowing not only national laws but also regional and international instruments that protect women’s rights.

Women’s rights organisations and coalitions such as SOAWR should be supported to monitor implementation of the protocol. They should be assisted financially to participate in commission meetings and to prepare shadow reports when country reports are being considered.

Steps should be taken to institute in full the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights without further delay.

Women should be encouraged to participate in political processes at all levels and in portfolios that have significant policy roles. Members of parliament also have an important role to play in passing legislation, initiating private members’ bills and demanding ministerial statements on obligations undertaken.

The media could also contribute by disseminating information on the progress of the protocol and its benefits to citizens so that they can demand implementation.

All the rights in the protocol are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible. Thus the violation of any one of them affects the enjoyment of all the others. Countries should be encouraged to ratify the protocol without registering reservations.

Our leaders and policy makers should resolve to change not only what is outside of them, but also what is inside them as far as attitudes to gender equality are concerned. With a redefined notion of power and equality we will be able to bring about change.

* Roselynn Musa is the Advocacy Officer at the African Women’s Development and Communications Network, (FEMNET) in Nairobi, Kenya

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

For references and notes, see link below.

Otto Saki asserts that the case of Zimbabwe has provided an excellent example of the flaws and the achievements of Africa’s own system for defending its citizens’ human rights against attacks from their own governments.

The situation in Zimbabwe has continued to degenerate and attract widespread attention.[1] The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the commission, hereafter) is an intergovernmental organisation which has been seized with several appeals about violations of human rights over freedom of expression, torture, politically motivated violence, undermining of the judiciary and independent national mechanisms and forced evictions under the guise of clean-up campaigns. There have been interventions over breaches and affronts against the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the charter, hereafter) to which Zimbabwe is a party.[2] The level, nature and extent of intervention by the commission have been argued over, particularly its mandate, how it is carried out and nature of its recommendations. States parties, including Zimbabwe, have abused or utilised what would be ordinarily institutional formulation of the commission and charter at the expense of the progressive development of African jurisprudence and institutions.

While Africa is perceived to have the worst human rights abuses, its human rights mechanisms either remain heavily inadequate or, as in most cases, are deliberately and overtly undermined by state actions. This undoubtedly makes a mockery of the efforts of those who provide their services as commissioners and as judges before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the court, herafter). The commission has gone through a remarkable phase of growth and has experienced its fair share of challenges, but it is safe to say its value as an African institution is second to none. For some states it has become a ‘source of marvel’ and for others a ‘source of pain’, but one cannot at this juncture wish the commission away.

Sessions of the commission

The work of regional and sub-regional intergovernmental human rights institutions remain very closely knitted with the work of human rights organisations, and Zimbabwe is no exception. Through the granting of observer status, organisations are recognised not only by the commission but effectively by the African Union. Currently, more than seven[3] organisations with observer status before the commission have been involved in the implementation of the charter in Zimbabwe.[4] The commission’s work on Zimbabwe gained significant momentum during its 31st session, when Zimbabwe topped the agenda during the NGO forum. As a result the government of Zimbabwe agreed to accept a fact-finding mission into its human rights record.[5] The African NGO Forum met ahead of the commission and adopted the first statement on Zimbabwe. The commission was further seized of the communication from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, making it the first substantial communication on Zimbabwe.[6]

With the commission’s decision to send a fact-finding mission, Harare became more and more aggressive in its public stance on human rights organisations and the commission itself. This marked the beginning of increased verbal attacks on the commission and the commissioners, sadly with the African Union providing little or no defence, at least publicly, of the work of the commission.[7] This made it possible for some to assume that the attacks on the commission were justified whereas in fact they were uncalled for and completely inappropriate.
Fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe
The commission conducted its first fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe from 24 to 28 June 2002.[8] Several meetings were held with government ministries, notably home affairs and justice, members of the judiciary, human rights advocates and lawyers, as well various civil society organisations.

When the report was presented to the government of Zimbabwe, unparalleled attacks and criticisms of the commission were published: The Herald, a state-controlled newspaper, wrote on 6 July 2004: ‘According to the sources, the [African Commission] report was similar to reports produced by the British-funded Amani Trust, which is well-known for its anti-Zimbabwe stance and falsifying the situation in the country.’ An editorial in The Sunday Mail on 11 July stated: ‘Reading through the [African Commission’s] report one detects the hand of a known Zimbabwean lawyer and the Amani racists.’[9]

In another related diatribe the papers bemoaned:

Pan-Africanists who want to take seriously the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and its successor, the AU, find the debate over the fraudulent report quite confusing and demoralising because of the failure of the African journalists, especially, to go beyond the shallow events in the story: that is, that the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights held some hearings and produced a fraudulent report with the assistance of the British, other donors and some racist (non-governmental organisations) NGOs. What is missing from the story is the fact that this report is the latest in a series of lies, especially about and against Zimbabwe.[10]

Several other statements were later made by government spin doctors, attacking the work of the commission.

The report of the fact-finding mission was adopted by the commission in its 17th Activity Report. The government of Zimbabwe created unprecedented havoc when the report was being adopted by the Executive Council of Ministers, and effectively the African Union.[11] Zimbabwe was allowed to provide additional responses to the report, which was eventually adopted by the African Union, along with Zimbabwe’s response, almost three years later.[12] The findings of the commission remain largely unimplemented and rights are being further undermined.[13]

Following the forced evictions of May 2005, the United Nations dispatched a special envoy on human settlement, while the African Union hurriedly sent in its Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons, Refugees and Asylum Seekers. The government of Zimbabwe would not allow the special rapporteur to carry out any field visits, arguing that proper procedures of the African Union had not been followed.[14] The African Union envoy spent a week in ‘solitary confinement’ in his hotel, an unfortunate development given the importance of regional institutions.

Communications and special mechanisms

The various mechanisms under the commission, including the special rapporteurs on human rights defenders[15] and on freedom of expression,[16] have responded to the apparent increase in attacks on human rights defenders, women activists and journalists. However, the problem with these mechanisms, as in similar systems, is the failure to provide adequate human and financial resources to follow through most of the appeals. Governments have to a large extent taken the urgent appeals seriously, and the Zimbabwe government seems to have responded to most of the appeals, though it is arguable whether the responses addressed the issues raised or merely created excuses for continued violations under the guise of maintaining law and order.

The commission conducted a hearing on Zimbabwe under Article 46 of the charter,[17] which allows the commission to use any mechanism to investigate human rights in a state party. In its usual display of disdain for any practical and critical work of the commission, the delegation from Zimbabwe refused to participate in the meeting, citing unfair practices and procedural irregularities. It is interesting to note that during the same session the delegation from Zimbabwe was distributing print editions of New African magazine and two reports produced by the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).[18] The credibility of the national police and in particular its intelligence gathering have been challenged.[19]

It is arguable that, after the communications submitted on Nigeria during the military regime, Zimbabwe currently has the largest number of communications before the commission. The subjects of the petitions range from freedom of expression, to forced evictions, the independence of national institutions such as the judiciary, extra judicial and summary killings, torture, and inadequate legislative and constitutional mechanisms.[20]

Victories before the commission

Working with the commission has been simultaneously challenging and rewarding. Of the communications submitted, at least one has been concluded in which the government of Zimbabwe was found to have violated provisions of the charter. In April 2006, the commission issued provisional measures in respect of the forced evictions, directing the government to take urgent and appropriate measures to obviate the general deterioration of the health of terminally ill individuals who due to forced evictions carried out under Operation Murambatsvina had no access to anti-retroviral treatment.[21] The government was also asked to ensure that school-age children were able to sit their final exams, and to provide shelter and medical treatment for the elderly and the sick.[22]

While the procedures of the commission badly need reform, it is critical to note the importance of its decisions on the admissibility of a communication. In no fewer than four separate incidents, the commission has ruled communications submitted from Zimbabwe as admissible. These decisions provide irrefutable evidence of the inadequacies of human rights protection in Zimbabwe; they also imply the absence of effective domestic remedies for the rights violations alleged in the communications. Such decisions are an indictment of the judiciary as well as an unequivocal indicator that the judiciary and the justice delivery system in Zimbabwe no longer guarantee enjoyment of universally recognised human rights and fundamental freedoms.[23]

In Communication 245/02, Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum/Republic of Zimbabwe, the commission made recommendations about the election- related violence of 2000 and 2002 as well as the violence orchestrated during the chaotic land reform. In a statement the NGO Forum noted that the:

Commission found the Government of Zimbabwe in violation of articles 1 and 7 of the African Charter. This means that the Government of Zimbabwe had violated the right to protection of the law and that it failed to put in place measures to ensure the enjoyment of these rights by Zimbabweans. The endorsement of the decision by the African Union is recognition by African Heads of States that there are human rights violations in Zimbabwe.

Political interference and undermining the work of the commission

With civil society and human rights organisations recording such public success, the government of Zimbabwe has begun to pay more attention to the commission. With like-minded countries that have equally poor human rights records, it attacks, undermines and ridicules the work of the commission, through subterfuge and unfounded interpretation of the rules of procedure of the African Union and the commission. Such procedural theatrics caused the delays in the publication of the report of the fact-finding mission of 2002, as well as the decision of Communication 245/05. With the latter, the government of Zimbabwe made submissions to the commission well after the completion of all inquiries and hearings. Of concern are the African Union leadership’s acquiescence and conspicuous silence;[24] to a large extent the African Union has failed to support the commission from government attacks. The non-implementation of the commission’s recommendations remains a paramount concern.

Lessons for Africa

The commission is a creation of the African Union, with a mandate to monitor, promote and protect the rights enshrined in the charter, the same charter which makes it mandatory to implement legislative and administrative mechanisms to deliver the rights in the charter. Because signing up to the charter and similar instruments are voluntary acts, limiting a nation’s sovereignty, the commission has a unique status and neither seeks to undermine national institutions such as courts, nor replace them. Zimbabwe has regressed from a country that was hailed as the symbol of progress and development to the antithesis of every principle of development, human rights adherence, promotion and protection.

The importance of supra-national institutions in enforcing universal and regional human rights standards remains critical. The weakness inherent in these institutions is an indictment of leadership in Zimbabwe – and in Africa. It remains the prerogative of every progressive citizen of Africa to safeguard these institutions from individuals who have bestowed upon themselves powers to govern, misgovern, build and destroy. Such powers, if unchecked and curtailed by invoking celebrated universal human rights standards, will lead us to bondage and slavery under our kith and kin. That day will indeed be a sad day for humanity and Africa.

* Otto Saki is a lawyer with Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights

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

For references and notes, see link below.

Bahame Tom Mukirya Nyanduga, commissioner responsible for upholding the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ rights talks to Hakima Abbas about Africa’s commitment to protecting refugees and his belief that democratic states that tolerate diversity do not experience the conflict that generates the displacement of their citizens.

Hakima Abbas (HA): Please would you give us a brief overview of the situation of refugees and displaced people in Africa?

Bahame Tom Mukirya Nyanduga (BTMN): The situation of refugees and displaced people in Africa by and large reflects the political, economic and historical landscape of the continent. Over the last five decades many African countries have experienced instability of one kind or the other.

There are those countries which attained independence through the armed struggle. Their citizens were displaced because of colonial and racist repression and in the wars of liberation that followed. Then there are those countries which experienced military and one-party rule, which invariably suppressed civil and political rights. Opposition politicians and sections of society which expressed opposition to undemocratic rule, such as student movements, trade unionists and the general population, were subject to gross human rights violations.

For a better part of the period from the early 1960s until today, the continent has experienced civil wars based on ideological, ethnic or religious differences. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda marked the worst form of violation of human rights, the intended purpose being the extermination of the Tutsi ethnic minority. We are currently experiencing conflicts in the Darfur region of Sudan, Somalia, Central Africa Republic, Chad, and the north-east part of the DRC, causing serious human rights violations. All these conflicts have created refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs).

We cannot lose sight of the factors responsible for these situations. In fact, they should be lessons on how best to avoid conflict and therefore reduce displacement. The refugee population in Africa has gone down drastically in recent years, because many conflicts have been resolved and the respective states have adopted democratic reforms and democratic constitutions and have held successful elections. I can mention Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burundi and the DRC as examples, although there are still pockets of conflict in the DRC. The displacement of people in Northern Uganda is less of a problem now because of the peace talks between the government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels. The security situation in Northern Uganda has improved so much that the government is closing some of the camps that it had established and displaced people are going back to their villages.

The same cannot be said for those countries where conflicts continue and where the numbers of IDPs continue to rise. Africa, the poorest continent of all, has the distinction of hosting the largest number of IDPs in the world, estimated at about 13 million people, or more than half the global total of 25 million people.

I must stress that these figures represent the majority of people who are displaced by conflict. There are other causes of displacement in Africa which happen regularly, such as development projects and natural disasters. Those displaced by conflict or natural disasters invariably receive humanitarian assistance, whereas those displaced by development projects receive little compensation even though their livelihoods are destroyed for good. It is high time that our governments adopted positive measures to assist all victims of displacement in order to restore their dignity and sustain development and stability.

HA: What mechanisms are in place to guarantee the rights of refugees and displaced people in Africa? Why is there a need for a regional mechanism? Are the international systems not sufficient?

BTMN: The African regional mechanism for guaranteeing the rights of refugees and IDPs is found in basic regional legal instruments and institutions. The constitutive act of the African Union reiterates the need to promote and protect respect for human rights and condemns all forms of action likely to lead to violations of human rights, such as unconstitutional access to power. The African Union has established institutions such as the African Human Rights Commission [the commission, hereafter], the African Human Rights Court, and the Peace and Security Council, all of which have mandates to protect human rights in Africa.

Speaking of refugees, we must first of all recognise the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. This was the foremost instrument which localised international refugee law in African realities. The convention was adopted at a time when Africa was experiencing the fight against colonial and racist regimes and the first wave of ethnic conflict, the two major causes of refugee outflows at that time. It expanded the definition of a refugee in Africa to include a person fleeing from external and colonial occupation and domination. It included causes other than those defined by the 1951 Geneva Convention. In other words, and in answer to the question, the regional system was established in response to particular problems and characteristics of Africa.

But secondly, and more importantly, the regional instruments do not substitute for the international system. They operate in tandem. The 1969 convention states that it complements the 1951 convention and recognises the importance of international cooperation in dealing with African refugee problems. The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights [the charter, hereafter] states specifically that it draws inspiration from international instruments.

It is in this context that the UNHCR, the United Nations agency responsible for refugees worldwide, has worked closely with affected African states to respond to refugee situations. The African Union (and the OAU before it) also works closely with the UNHCR. Through its executive council and commission (formerly the OAU Secretariat), it has established an institutional and policy framework to ensure that refugee issues are given an appropriate response.

The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights established the right to seek and receive asylum, which may be enjoyed by any individual who is persecuted. It also recognises the right to return to one’s own country. The charter established the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, which receives complaints against states and makes determination on violations of the charter, including where refugee rights are concerned. The idea of establishing these mechanisms is to develop a culture of respect and protection for all human rights, including the rights of refugees and displaced people.

The commission established the special rapporteur mechanism for refugees and IDPs in order to highlight their plight on a continuous basis and sensitise governments about the need to find durable solutions to these problems. The rights of African refugees are also recognised in other regional instruments, such as the Protocol on the Rights of Women, and the Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in Africa.

As far as IDPs are concerned, I must emphasise that the responsibility to protect them rests squarely on the state of which they are citizens. IDPs are citizens who remain on a state’s territory when they flee a part of the country which is affected by conflict, natural disaster or a development project. Every state has a responsibility under international law to protect its citizens. This responsibility does not cease when a person is displaced from their village or town. It is the duty of a state to continue to ensure the human dignity, physical security and integrity of IDPs. International humanitarian assistance, as and when it is necessary, will continue to be provided to ameliorate the living conditions of IDPs during their displacement. However, this does not relieve the state of its primary responsibility to protect and assist them, and to ensure that they are safe and can return to their habitual places of residence or are resettled once the conditions which forced them into displacement improve.

In order to entrench the rights of refugees and displaced people there must be wider dissemination of information about all these instruments, because at the root of the problem is a lack of respect for the rights of these people at the community or national level.

HA: Where is the intersection and divergence between refugee law and human rights law in Africa?

BTMN: Intersection and divergence between refugee law and human rights law is not a peculiarly African issue. The analysis I have set out above is not a distinction between refugee law and human rights law. Nor am I suggesting that Africa treats these cases differently. If anything, one must speak of intersection rather than divergence. Africa recognises that refugee law is part of human rights law. The African refugee experience introduced certain concepts which until 1969 were not known to international refugee law. This was a result of historical and political conditions peculiar to Africa, which I explained earlier, as well as the conditions in which African refugees lived. These were experiences unknown at the time the international 1951 convention was drawn up.

The restatement of a number of legal principles in the 1969 convention – such as that asylum is a humanitarian act and shall not be considered an unfriendly act, that refugee camps shall be located at a reasonable distance from the border of the home state, and that refugee involvement in subversive activities is expressly prohibited – reflected very particular African situations and concerns, where armed conflicts and civil wars were conducted by liberation movements and groups from territories in states neighbouring the home countries. The legal principles and practices which have evolved through the African refugee experience, such as the principles of voluntary repatriation and those mentioned earlier, now form part of the core principles of international refugee law.

HA: What are the challenges in guaranteeing the rights of refugees and displaced people in Africa?

BTMN: In my view, the first major challenge is intolerance of diversity and inattention to the plight of the victims. African states that recognise diversity of opinion, nationality and ethnicity do not experience the same problems as those that are preoccupied by ethnicity or eschew political pluralism. Without a proper sense of nationhood, these problems will continue to occur. African states which have embraced democratic reforms and accountable forms of political and economic governance, and recognised racial and ethnic diversity as well as plurality of political views, do not experience conflicts caused by political or economic mismanagement, nor the refugee and internally displaced situations that follow.

The second challenge is the level of poverty in all African states, and the inadequate social and economic provisions within society that this entails. This may lead to the marginalisation of some sections of the population which in desperation become involved in conflict, hence creating refugees and IDPs. Lack of resources can also lead to a failure to provide for refugees’ basic needs in the countries of asylum.

The third challenge is a lack of knowledge on the part of refugees, IDPs, and the general population about their basic legal rights, such that they cannot advocate or demand them when they become refugees and IDPs.

HA: What is your role and mandate as Special Rapporteur on Refugees and IDPs in Africa?

BTMN: My mandate is outlined in a resolution adopted by the commission in December 2004 during its 36th session held in Dakar, Senegal. It requires me to study and highlight the plight of refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people and migrants in Africa, to engage African states and governments, the African Union and the international community, and consider strategies to reduce these problems by making recommendations through the commission. It involves work with different stakeholders, as stated above, including civil society and national human rights institutions, to address and focus attention on these problems in order to try and find lasting solutions to them.

My role is therefore one of facilitator, helping bring the human rights issues and problems encountered by these specific groups of African people to the attention of their governments and the African Union. The role of special rapporteurs is very flexible. It enables them to respond to any of the aforesaid situations depending on the access they are accorded by the organisation and states responsible, with whom they must interact in order to promote awareness about the problems facing these groups and to protect their rights.

HA: How do you feel that your role as special rapporteur, and the work of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights more broadly, has affected the situation of refugees and displaced people in Africa?

BTMN: It is not for me to assess my role as special rapporteur. This I will leave to other observers. In any case it was one of the later mechanisms established by the commission, in 2004, unlike others which had been established a number of years earlier. I am the first person to hold it, so there was no experience to learn from. However, let me say that I feel that I have contributed, to a certain extent, to bringing visibility to human rights and to the issues facing refugees, IDPs and migrants in particular. My role has made it possible for these issues to be discussed at every commission session, since my reports are a regular part of the agenda.

In terms of the role and impact of the commission, it has made a number of decisions concerning complaints submitted on behalf of refugees, one of them concerning the mass refugee expulsion from Rwanda in the early 1990s. The commission found that Rwanda had violated the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights in expelling Burundian refugees. More recently it found Guinea in violation of rights in a complaint brought on behalf of refugees from Sierra Leone. The commission recommended that the two states find a solution to these violations.

The commission’s reports of activities are submitted to the AU summit every six months, which means that all states parties to the charter closely follow the activities of the special rapporteur and of the commission in general. I am confident therefore that, through our work, all our stakeholders recognise that much still needs to be done in protecting the rights of all these people.

HA: The recent debate around continental unity at the African Union saw many advocating for a borderless Africa. How would African citizenship affect the plight of refugees and internally displaced people in Africa? Is this an effective solution to the issue?

BTMN: Let me state that any answer that I will give to this question reflects my personal views, and is not an answer in my capacity as special rapporteur. This is because the larger question, or the ‘grand debate’, has not been raised for discussion within the commission, and therefore I cannot assume to speak on behalf of it.

Theoretically speaking, the answer to your question would be that a borderless Africa would precipitate an African citizenship, which means freedom of movement for all Africans from Cape to Cairo, and Dar es Salaam to Dakar, and therefore the absence of refugees. In other words, an African unity government would mean the absence of inter-state and intra-state conflicts. There could still be internally displaced people, because people are likely to be displaced from causes other than internal conflict.

The problem, in my view, is that in several countries on the continent the intolerance to diversity which I explained earlier makes it difficult for democratic values to thrive. The repression of opposition groups illustrates this point. Many African states, including the leading proponents of this debate, lack the kind of political and economic liberalism which gives rise to a divergence of political views and a culture of freedom of expression and opinion. Very few general elections are held on the continent without allegations of vote rigging, intimidation and outright disdain for the opposition.

Therefore, much as I am a believer in continental unity, I am not a proponent of unity at the expense of stability and the need for shared social, economic and political values. A rushed union without basic shared values, such as unequivocal respect for fundamental human rights, will create a worse situation. For me, the ultimate test of continental unity will be when the objectives and principles enshrined in the constitutive act of the African Union and the NEPAD programmes, including the African Peer Review Mechanism, become a reality for all 53 AU member states, and when the processes of the regional economic communities are implemented in good faith. If these minimum standards are hard to achieve, then it is my gut feeling that African unity is still far ahead of our time. If these programmes succeed, then a foundation will have been laid for sustainable continental unity.

HA: Under President Nyerere, Tanzania had an open policy on refugees and displaced people in Africa that provided for broad assimilation into Tanzanian society. This policy seemed to maintain stability in the country despite the flares of conflict that spread throughout the region. Present-day South Africa, on the other hand, has a very closed policy toward refugees and migrant workers, which the government justifies as a means to maintain national stability. How do national policies toward refugees and displaced people affect political stability, and what are the ideal policies that governments must adopt?

BTMN: The refugee policy of any state is informed not only by the obligations it has assumed under international and regional instruments but also by the material conditions obtaining in the country at the time the policy is adopted and implemented. In comparing the refugee policies pursued by President Nyerere’s government with those adopted by the later South African government we must recognise that they were informed by different conditions and epochs. Many of the refugees during President Nyerere’s time came from Southern and Central Africa. Members of liberation movements trained and went to fight for the freedom of their countries. The refugees from Central Africa did not fight their home states until the 1990s, and they did not do so from Tanzanian soil.

It must be said as well that, as a result of hosting refugees for the last five decades, the open door policy pursued by the Tanzanian government has changed. A number of factors may have accounted for such a shift. Assistance to refugees in Africa decreased in the early 1990s when the international donor community shifted its support and assistance to Eastern Europe after the collapse of the communist regimes there. Secondly, security issues associated with the conflicts in the Great Lakes region became problematic in areas where refugee camps were located, which was not the case in the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. The conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s did not significantly affect the people living in the Tanzanian border regions. The exceptions were a few cases of the Portuguese colonial army bombing Southern Tanzania. But since the 1990s, acts of banditry associated with the flow of small arms in the Great Lakes region have affected many communities close to the refugee camps and beyond. This has had a negative impact on the local people, some of whom have become proponents of anti-refugee policies.

On the other hand, after the democratisation of South Africa, its government had to contend with an influx of refugees and economic migrants. The fact that the democratic government had to deal with the inequities of the apartheid era, and make provision for the majority of its people who had lived in conditions of poverty for a century, must not be overlooked. It is my hope that as she faces the challenge of dealing with refugee issues, in particular the dire political and economic situation across her northern border, and since she is the leading economy in Africa, South Africa’s refugee policy will distinguish genuine refugees from economic migrants, while addressing these very serious concerns. The government must also undertake sensitisation campaigns to encourage tolerance by its people towards foreign citizens, particularly those from African countries beset by conflicts, such as Somali asylum seekers who are said to be subject to victimisation by unknown assailants.

Persistent conflict in refugees’ home country cannot foster political stability in their host country. The instability experienced in Northern Uganda for about 20 years was linked to its support for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which led Sudan to support the Lord’s Resistance Army. The resolution of one conflict has created conditions for the resolution of the other. The same is true of the Darfur conflict vis-à-vis those in Chad and the Central African Republic. Resolution of the Darfur conflict is likely to lead to resolution of the others, all of which have generated major refugee and IDP situations.

Tanzania and many other African states, such as Angola, Chad, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Guinea and Zambia, have borne the brunt of hosting refugees despite their poor economies and to the detriment of their land and environment. This has never been quantifiable in monetary terms, yet it has not discouraged them from fulfilling their responsibilities towards refugees.

States must respect the rights of their citizens and their obligations to protect them. Where a refugee or IDP situation arises as a result of conflict, the country’s political leadership must seek peaceful solutions rather than embark on military strategies. Experience in many conflicts in Africa, such as in Burundi, DRC, Liberia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Southern Sudan to mention but a few, shows that military solutions do not succeed. The peace and stability we have seen in these countries is because they have been underpinned by peace agreements rather than outright military victories.

HA: Some might say that given the continuing human rights violations that plague the continent, including for instance the situation in Darfur, the African human rights system is a failure. Would you agree?

BTMN: I don’t think that the answer to this question is as simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The situation in Africa is more complex than that. I outlined earlier the historical and political aspects of the human rights situation in Africa. We have to recognise that Africa has made positive gains in a number of areas. For instance, the number of democratically elected governments on the continent today, compared with 10 or 15 years ago when military or one-party regimes were the norm, is far larger. This does not mean that the level of democratic governance on the continent is perfect. But there is definitely progress in developing a culture of democracy and human rights.

I stated earlier that the African Union does not recognise undemocratic means of access to power. What does this mean? It means that Africa will not have another Idi Amin or Abacha, hence the kind of violations which were perpetrated then are not likely to recur. What happens now is that, even when there is a ‘progressive coup’ in an African state, the state is immediately sanctioned and suspended from AU activities. It has to conduct elections within a very short time to restore constitutionality. It is these kinds of measures that are restoring dignity to the system. With these developments, the remnants of undemocratic tendencies and the conflicts that we are seeing in places like Darfur or Somalia are the last kicks of dying horses. Some of them are sustained by ideology or the greed of foreign economic interests. None of them serves the interests of the people.

The human rights system in Africa reflects African realities. I mentioned one of the challenges to the guarantee of human rights in Africa being lack of resources. The institutions which have been established to protect human rights on the continent cannot be condemned as failures when we know the capacity and resource limitations. I may add another challenge: political will is necessary to make them effective. The establishment of the Peace and Security Council and its proactive involvement with the Darfur and Somali conflicts should not be underestimated. The contribution of peace monitoring troops by a number of African states to assist in the resolution of these conflicts must be recognised as part of the system for dealing with these conflicts.

My analysis does not paint a picture of a continent plagued by conflict, but of one where conflicts are on the decrease. For me, the system is in evolution, not a failure. If you look at it carefully you will see successes, however small. After all, Rome was not built in a day.

HA: In November the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights will celebrate its 20th year of existence. What do you feel has been the greatest accomplishment of the commission in this time?

BTMN: The greatest accomplishment in my view is the fact that the commission has continued to exist, increased its visibility, and carried out its mandate under very difficult circumstances. The lack of resources has not diminished the commitment of the members of the commission and its staff to continue working within the limitations imposed on them by political circumstances and budgetary constraints. Human rights issues in Africa, as is the case everywhere else, are very politically emotive. They touch on the sensitivities of states and governments.

By commenting on the various human rights concerns across Africa in the form of decisions rendered on communications, or by conducting investigations during missions and publishing resolutions on the human rights situation in a number of African states, the commission has been able to influence official policies in these countries as well as opinion throughout the continent and elsewhere about what is happening.

I believe that there is still great scope for enhancing the visibility of the commission and the accomplishment of its promotion and protection mandate, resources permitting.

HA: Moving forward, what do you think would strengthen the work and impact of the commission?

BTMN: The commission cannot carry out many of its plans because of lack of resources. More resources will ensure that it recruits the best staff for the secretariat. This also requires political will from member states and the African Union Commission, both of which are responsible for ensuring that adequate resources and competent staff are put at its disposal.

Finally, the states parties to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights must cooperate with the commission. There is no point in having a commission if it cannot point out violations of the charter, but when it does so it is labelled a tool of external interests. The yardstick to any finding of violations is the facts on the ground and how they relate to the obligations assumed by member states under the charter.

HA: How can civil society and citizens in Africa help to guarantee the rights of refugees and displaced people on the continent?

BTMN: As I stated elsewhere, dissemination of the charter as well as all other regional and international human rights instruments will enable people to know their rights. I believe that dissemination is best done by civil society because they regularly interact with people at different levels. The citizenry has a corresponding duty to learn and understand their rights and respect the rights of others. An ignorant citizenry is not good for democracy or for human rights. The introduction of human rights education must be a priority pursued by civil society and the general population. This is a long- term process which needs to be started immediately. I hope that when the culture of human rights is entrenched we shall see less and less conflict and, as a consequence, no more refugees or internally displaced people.

* Hakima Abbas is the AU Policy analyst for Fahamu Networks for Social Justice

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

On the eve of the deadline of the finalisation of the economic partnership agreement (EPA) negotiations, chaos reigns. Ministers of the East and Southern African (ESA) grouping are gathering in Brussels, Belgium, next week for negotiations with the European Union (EU). It remains to be seen whether talks will stall and be carried over to next year, or if an ‘‘EPA-lite’’ will be accepted.

In certain parts of Africa, female genital mutilation (FGM) has been linked to religion, with Muslim communities mistakenly believing that the practice is a religious requirement. But in Côte d'Ivoire, religion is also being put at the service of fighting FGM. El Hadj Kassoum Traoré, an imam at a small mosque in Belleville -- one of the poorer areas in the commercial hub of Abidjan -- sets aside time during the Friday prayer for explaining the dangers of FGM to worshippers. The weekly prayer is an obligation for able Muslim men.

Zambia and India have signed an agreement that will see India fund Zambian centres to train researchers and the public in information and communication technology (ICT) skills. Peter Daka, the Zambian minister of science and technology, and River Wallang, the Indian high commissioner to Zambia, signed the agreement in Lusaka.

Zambian first Lady Maureen Mwanawasa is encouraging women to demand safer sex from their partners, not negotiate for it. Ms Mwanawasa recently made the statement at the launch of the FC2 female condom campaign at the Lusaka City Market, handing out condoms to the public. "Negotiating for safer sex is a term that has become accepted world wide, yet, it puts a woman at the mercy of a man," Ms Mwanawasa told the Lusaka market crowd. "I do not believe that a woman should negotiate for safer sex, but demand safer sex."

A prominent international refugee organisation is calling for an end to the deportations of undocumented Zimbabweans by neighbouring countries. After a month-long fact-finding mission to the region, Refugees International (RI), a US-based non-governmental refugee advocacy group, published a bulletin, Zimbabwe Exodus, on its observations.

The impact of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa, which has nine of the world's most affected countries, needs to be reassessed as a "humanitarian emergency" on its own, enabling interventions to be made timeously, a leading AIDS researcher argues in a new paper. For this to happen, Alan Whiteside, director of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, said in the paper, co-authored by researcher Amy Whalley, the conventional understanding of a humanitarian emergency has to be rethought.

The GAD Network is seeking a Chair to provide strategic direction and vision to the network, and to offer advice and support to its development and expansion. Working closely with the Steering Group and Coordinator, the Chair leads and manages the annual cycle of the Network and Steering Group meetings to guarantee the implementation of the Network decisions and ensures that the expertise of its members are deployed effectively to the work of the network. Candidates must have a strong background in gender and development issues, experience of leadership and chairing, good strategic and analytical skills, be a good communicator, and preferably have trustee experience. Deadline: 14 November

Welcome to the world of the African Diaspora Film Festival from Nov 23 to Dec 8in numerous venues in New York. This is the 15th Annual Festival. In our reality, people from diverse races, nationalities and backgrounds come together to enjoy important cinematic works of creativity, intellectual expansion, identity, and equality. In this world there are no boundaries around people because they are embraced in a universal understanding of humanity. This is the element of commonality that weaves through this annual event of images from Africa and the African Diaspora.

The Journal of Family History will be publishing a special issue on Children in African History. Professor Martin Klein and I will be serving as guest editors for this issue. The editors are interested in a range of themes including education, crime, health, slavery, adoption, pawning and child-rearing. This list is by no means exclusive and other relevant themes are welcome. We are particularly interested in articles focusing on the colonial period. Submissions must be original and previously unpublished. Interested individuals should send an abstract (400 words) and CV as an email attachment to by January 15th, 2008 for consideration.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the government of Senegal to put an end to the "oppression" of journalists after the arrest of an editor this morning. This is the fourth arrest of a reporter or editor in the last month for allegedly offending the President or endangering national security. El Malick Seck, editor of the news website Rewmi.com, was arrested this morning at the headquarters of his company in the city of Thiès by the Division of Criminal Investigation (DIC) who is holding him in Dakar.

On 29 October 2007, the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) ordered Joy TV to immediately stop all television broadcasts until the station is issued appropriate radio and broadcasting licenses. Joy TV- a sister company to Joy Radio - has been held up in a wrangle with the country's communications regulator after it challenged the Macra Board in court, describing it as illegal.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has turned down an opposition request for an all-party meeting to discuss voter registration and demarcation of voting constituencies for next year’s polls, ZimOnline has learnt. ZEC chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramayi told the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition party that there was no justification to call a meeting of the multi-party liaison committee because the matters the opposition was raising were discussed at previous meetings.

Environmental experts hurried to the south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Thursday to test water from a river where authorities suspect 18 tonnes of radioactive minerals were dumped last week. Officials feared contamination of the river, an important source of drinking water for thousands of people in Katanga province, the vast Central African nation's mining heartland.

At least 47 migrants died trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands after drifting for more than two weeks off the west coast of Africa in two boats, police sources in Mauritania said on Tuesday. Mauritania soldiers discovered 42 bodies in the sea near the northern port city of Nouadhibou, which lies on the frontier with Western Sahara, the sources said.

Diakonia Council of Churches responds to the Supreme Court of Appeal judgement against Biowatch Diakonia Council of Churches joins in solidarity with other concerned groups and organisations in voicing its strongest possible objection to the recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Appeal, that Biowatch be held liable for costs in the case against multinational agrochemical and gene giant, Monsanto, and other responding parties including the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs. The ruling also requires that Biowatch pay the appeal costs in the appeal case which was represented pro bono by the Legal Resources Centre.

The Chairperson of the Council, Bishop Barry Wood, OMI, stated that “It is a travesty of justice when our judicial system has every opportunity to hear the voice of groups acting in the public and environmental interest, and to explore the opportunities afforded by the provisions of the litigation-friendly NEMA, and then chooses to impart financial penalties aimed at silencing these voices in favour of monopolistic corporations who can well afford such costs themselves.” Diakonia Council of Churches again reiterates its concern that these companies claim the legal right to patent life, planting genetically modified crops without adequate research, and selling them without due consideration to warning labels. Bishop Barry added that “When we talk about food, we talk about the God-given right to healthy food, sustainable crops and life-giving opportunities for self development for individuals and communities. It seems that none of these sit high on the priority lists of huge corporations hell-bent on exploring markets for financial gain, and that this is an obvious example of the legal system being used to silence those voices that are perceived as thorns in the flesh of the multinational untouchables.” The Council calls on its member churches and other faith-based organisations to join in protest against this injustice and to continue in the pursuit of our right to information, insisting on the labelling of genetically modified products and the call for a moratorium on the proliferation of biotechnology without adequate independent research and multi stakeholder participation.

Issued by Diakonia Council of Churches
Tel: 031 310 3500

Cutting-edge technology is helping Rwanda's Ministry of Health improve care for many of the nation's 190,000 HIV and AIDS-affected patients. Physicians say electronic reporting systems have changed the landscape of medical care in Rwanda.

ARTICLE 19 condemns the blatant and unjustified harassment of Journalists and Human rights activists, Faisal Elbagir, Lemiaa el-Jaily and Sabah Mohammad Adam by the government security forces. On Sunday 4 November, the three journalists were summoned to the offices of the National Security Services (NSS) in Khartoum, Sudan. The three were summoned again on Monday 5 November and were held for six hours without explanation.

The feature-length documentary A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from obstetric fistula, devastating childbirth injuries and embark on a journey to reclaim their lost dignity. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, these women are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame. The trials they endure -- and their attempts to rebuild their lives -- tell a universal story of hope, courage, and transformation.

Six years after the end of the conflict in Sierra Leone, little has been done to ensure that survivors of sexual violence receive justice, acknowledgment of their suffering, or full, meaningful and effective reparations. The unimaginable brutality of violations committed against up to a third of Sierra Leone’s mostly rural women and girls has been well documented; however the government has failed to effectively address the physical, psychological and economic impact of these crimes on the survivors.

A new survey released by UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals that more than half of all women in Lofa County, northern Liberia, reported at least one incident of sexual violence during the most recent conflict (1999-2003), while nearly 90 per cent reported at least one incident of physical violence.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the government of Senegal to put an end to "oppression" of journalists after the arrest of an editor this morning. This is the fourth arrest of a reporter or editor in the last month for allegedly offending the President or endangering national security. El Malick Seck, editor of the news website Rewmi.com was arrested this morning at the headquarters of his company in the city of Thiès by the Division of Criminal Investigation (DIC) who is holding him in Dakar.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has transferred 16 former commanders of Ituri armed groups to Kinshasa, calling it a major step in consolidating peace in the northeastern part of the country. The transfer, which took place on Saturday by a special UN flight, was the result of 18 months of intense negotiations with the de facto leaders of the three remaining Ituri Armed Groups, according to the mission, known as MONUC.

As part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), British Airways is to invest 100, 000 pounds (Sh13.5 million) to assist four rural schools of Kenya to establish Information Technology centres. The four 'slum' schools are in Nairobi's Mukuru area. In an interview, the head of Community Relations at BA, Ms Mary Barry said that Kenyan 'slum' schools were at the heart of the airline and that the IT support could not have come at a better time.

A post-mortem carried out by a police pathologist in Bulawayo on the late MDC activist Clemence Takaendesa revealed that his body showed signs of physical beating, his family claimed on Wednesday. Takaendesa, who will be buried in Gokwe on Thursday, was shot dead last week Wednesday by retired army Brigadier Benjamin Mabenge on his KweKwe farm that he grabbed in 2001.

Protesters took to the streets of Chad's capital N'Djamena on Thursday to demand that seven Europeans freed at the weekend return to face trial over an attempt to fly 103 African children to live in Europe. Some held placards criticising French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who flew in to pick up three French journalists and four Spanish air stewardesses on Sunday and has vowed to come back for another 10 Europeans facing child abduction charges.

Somali insurgents dragged the bodies of dead Ethiopian soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu on Thursday in the latest outbreak of fighting which has sent thousands fleeing the capital. Witnesses said at least three Ethiopian soldiers, who are backing the interim Somali government, were killed during fighting in the Sqa Holaha neighbourhood in northern Mogadishu.

The Spanish king's planned visit to Ceuta and Melilla has prompted Morocco to recall its ambassador to Spain over what it called a "regrettable" move. King Mohammed VI immediately recalled the ambassador on Friday, after the Spanish government formally announced that King Juan Carlos would visit the territories on Monday. Morocco considers Ceuta and Mellila Moroccan territories and has demanded Spain end its "occupation". The territories have been under Spanish control since the 15th and 17th centuries. Spain has refused to enter into any negotiations with Morocco about the two cities.

The Connect Africa Summit which took place in Kigali, Rwanda, on 29 - 30 October 2007, ended with the adoption of five goals to bridge the digital divide in Africa. The Summit, which was held under the patronage of the President of Rwanda, Mr. Paul Kagame, gathered over a thousand participants from 54 countries, including six Heads of State and Government. Forty-three countries in Africa were represented, including 23 at the Ministerial level.

For several years Port Elizabeth hosted hundreds of refugees without apparent difficulty; refugees largely went about their business, creating self-sustaining employment and living productive lives. They seemed to have integrated well, without the support that the UN refugee agency and its partners have provided to refugees in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town.

On 6 February 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would create a new military command for Africa, to be known as Africa Command or Africom. The Bush administration wants to significantly expand its security assistance program for regimes in Africa that are willing to act as surrogates, says Daniel Volman. It also reflects the growing alarm at the efforts of China to expand its energy supplies in Africa and to extend its political influence on the continent.

On 6 February 2007, President Bush announced that the United States would create a new military command for Africa, to be known as Africa Command or Africom. Throughout the Cold War and for more than a decade afterwards, the U.S. did not have a military command for Africa; instead, U.S. military activities on the African continent were conducted by three separate military commands: the European Command, which had responsibility for most of the continent; the Central Command, which oversaw Egypt and the Horn of Africa region along with the Middle East and Central Asia; and the Pacific Command, which administered military ties with Madagascar and other islands in the Indian Ocean.

Until the creation of Africom, the administration of U.S.-African military relations was conducted through three different commands. All three were primarily concerned with other regions of the world that were of great importance to the United States on their own and had only a few middle-rank staff members dedicated to Africa. This reflected the fact that Africa was chiefly viewed as a regional theater in the global Cold War, or as an adjunct to U.S.-European relations, or—as in the immediate post-Cold War period—as a region of little concern to the United States. But when the Bush administration declared that access to Africa’s oil supplies would henceforth be defined as a “strategic national interest” of the United States and proclaimed that America was engaged in a Global War on Terrorism following the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, Africa’s status in U.S. national security policy and military affairs rose dramatically.

According to Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs—the highest ranking Defense Department official with principal responsibility for Africa at the Pentagon, who has supervised U.S. military policy toward Africa for the Bush administration—Africom attained the status of a sub-unified command under the European Command on 1 October 2007, and is scheduled to be fully operational as a separate unified command no later than 1 October 2008. The process of creating the new command will be conducted by a special transition team—which will include officers from both the State Department and the Defense Department—that will carry out its work in Stuttgart, Germany, in coordination with the European Command.

Africom will not look like traditional unified commands. In particular, there is no intention, at least at present, to assign the new command control over large military units. This is in line with ongoing efforts to reduce the presence of large numbers of American troops overseas in order to consolidate or eliminate expensive bases and bring as many troops as possible back to the United States where they will be available for deployment anywhere in the world that Washington wants to send them. Since there is no way to anticipate where troops will be sent and the Pentagon has the ability to deploy sizable forces over long distances in a very short time, Washington plans to keep as many troops as possible in the United States and send them abroad only when it judges it necessary. This, however, was exactly the intention when the Clinton and Reagan administrations created the Central Command and based it in Tampa, Florida; and now the Central Command is running two major wars in southwest Asia from headquarters in Qatar.

Africom will also be composed of both military and civilian personnel, including officers from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the commander of the new command will have both a military and a civilian deputy. On 10 July 2007, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the President had nominated four-star General William E. “Kip” Ward to be the commander of Africom. General Ward, an African-American who was commissioned into the infantry in 1971, is currently serving as the deputy commander of the European Command. Previously he served as the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) in Mogadishu, Somalia during “Operation Restore Hope” in 1992-1994, commander of the NATO-led Stabilization Force in Bosnia during “Operation Joint Forge” in 2002-2003, and chief of the U.S. Office of Military Cooperation at the American Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. The novel structure of the new command reflects the fact that Africom will be charged with overseeing both traditional military activities and programs that are funded through the State Department budget (see below for details on these programs).

The Bush administration has emphasized the uniqueness of this hybrid structure as evidence that the new command has only benign purposes and that and that, in the words of Theresa Whelan, while “there are fears that Africom represents a militarization of U.S. foreign policy in Africa and that Africom will somehow become the lead U.S. Government interlocutor with Africa. This fear is unfounded.” Therefore, Bush administration officials insist that the purpose of Africom is misunderstood.

On closer examination, however, the difference between Africom and other commands—and the allegedly “unfounded” nature of its implications for the militarization of the continent—are not as real or genuine as the Bush administration officials would have us believe. Of course Washington has other interests in Africa besides making it into another front in its Global War on Terrorism, maintaining and extending access to energy supplies and other strategic raw material, and competing with China and other rising economic powers for control over the continent’s resources; these include helping Africans deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other emerging diseases, strengthening and assisting peacekeeping and conflict resolution efforts, and responding to humanitarian disasters. But it is simply disingenuous to suggest that accomplishing these three objectives is not the main reason that Washington is now devoting so much effort and attention to the continent. And of course Washington would prefer that selected friendly regimes take the lead in meeting these objects, so that the United States can avoid direct military involvement in Africa, particularly at a time when the U.S. military is so deeply committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and preparing for possible attacks on Iran. The hope that the Pentagon can build up African surrogates who can act on behalf of the United States is precisely why Washington is providing so much security assistance to these regimes and why it would like to provide even more in the future. Indeed, as argued below, this is actually one of the main reasons that Africom is being created at this time.

So why is Africom being created and why now? I would argue that the answer to this question is twofold. First, the Bush administration would like to significantly expand its security assistance programs for regimes that are willing to act as surrogates, for friendly regimes—particularly in countries with abundant oil and natural gas supplies—and for efforts to increase its options for more direct military involvement in the future; but it has had difficulty getting the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon to provide the required funding or to devoting the necessary attention and energy to accomplish these tasks. The creation of Africom will allow the administration to go to the U.S. Congress and argue that the establishment of Africom demonstrates the importance of Africa for U.S. national security and the administration’s commitment to give the continent the attention that it deserves. If Africa is so important and if the administration’s actions show that it really wants to do all sorts of good things for Africa, it hopes to be in a much stronger position to make a convincing case that the legislature must appropriate substantially greater amounts of money to fund the new command’s operations. And within the Pentagon, the establishment of Africom as a unified command under the authority of a high-ranking officer with direct access to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff will put the new command in a much stronger position to compete with other command for resources, manpower, and influence over policymaking.

Secondly, key members of the Bush administration, a small, but growing and increasingly vocal group of legislators, and influential think tanks have become more and more alarmed by the growing efforts of China to expand its access to energy supplies and other resources from Africa and to enhance its political and economic influence throughout the continent. These “alarmists” point to the considerable resources that China is devoting to the achievement of these goals and to the engagement of Chinese officials at the highest level—including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, both of who have made tours of the continent and have hosted high-level meetings in Beijing with African heads of state—as evidence of a “grand strategy” on the part of China that jeopardizes U.S. national security interests and that is aimed, ultimately, at usurping the West’s position on the continent. The creation of Africom, therefore, should be seen as one element of a broad effort to develop a “grand strategy” on the part of the United States that will counter, and eventually defeat, China’s efforts. It should also be understood as a measure that is intended to demonstrate to Beijing that Washington will match China’s actions, thus serving as a warning to the Chinese leadership that they should restrain themselves or face possible consequences to their relationship with America as well as to their interests in Africa.

So, what will Africom actually do when it becomes fully operational? Basically, it will take over the implementation of a host of military, security cooperation, and security assistance programs, which are funded through either the State Department or the Defense Department. These include the following:

Bilateral and Multilateral Joint Training Programs and Military Exercises

The United States provides military training to African military personnel through a wide variety of training and education programs. In addition, it conducts military exercises in Africa jointly with African troops and also with the troops of its European allies to provide training to others and also to train its own forces for possible deployment to Africa in the future. These include the following:

Flintlock 2005 and 2007

These are Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) exercises conducted by units of the U.S. Army Special Forces and the U.S. Army Rangers, along with contingents from other units, to provide training experience both for American troops and for the troops of African countries (small numbers of European troops are also involved in these exercises). Flintlock 2005 was held in June 2005, when more than one thousand U.S. personnel were sent to North and West Africa for counter-terrorism exercises in Algeria, Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad that involved more than three thousand local service members. In April 2007, U.S. Army Special Forces went to Niger for the first part of Flintlock 2007 and in late August 2007, some 350 American troops arrived in Mali for three weeks of Flintlock 2007 exercises with forces from Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Both Flintlock exercises were conducted as part of Operation Enduring Freedom—Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) which now links the United States with eight African countries: Mali, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. In 2004, the TSCTP was created to replace the Pan-Sahel Counter-Terrorism Initiative, which was initiated in 2002. The TSCTP also involves smaller, regular training exercises conducted by U.S. Army Special Forces throughout the region. Although changing budgetary methodology makes it difficult to be certain, it appears that the TSCTP received some $31 million in FY 2006, nearly $82 million in FY 2007, and is expected to receive approximately $100 million annually from FY 2008 through FY 2013.

Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance Program (ACOTA)

This program, which began operating in 2002, replaces the African Crisis Response Initiative launched in 1997 by the Clinton administration. In 2004, it became part of the Global Peace Operations Initiative. ACOTA is officially designed to provide training to African military forces to improve their ability to conduct peacekeeping operations, even if they take place in hostile environments. But since the training includes both defensive and offensive military operations, it also enhances the ability of participating forces to engage in police operations against unarmed civilians, counter-insurgency operations, and even conventional military operations against the military forces of other countries. By FY 2007, nineteen African countries were participating in the ACOTA program (Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia). New budgetary methodology makes it impossible to ascertain the levels of funding for ACOTA, since the program’s funding is subsumed within the budget for the Global Peace Operations Initiative.

International Military Education and Training Program (IMET)

The IMET program brings African military officers to military academies and other military educational institutions in the United States for professional training. Nearly all African countries participate in the program—including Libya for the first time in FY 2008—and in FY 2006 (the last year for which country figures are available—it trained 14,731 students from the African continent (excluding Egypt) at a cost of $14.7 million.

Foreign Military Sales Program (FMS)

This program sells U.S. military equipment to African countries; such sales are conducted by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency of the Defense Department. The U.S. government provides loans to finance the purchase of virtually all of this equipment through the Foreign Military Financing Program (FMF), but repayment of these loans by African governments is almost always waived, so that they amount to free grants. In FY 2006, sub-Saharan African countries received a total of nearly $14 million in FMF funding, and the Maghrebi countries of Morocco and Tunisia received almost another $21 million; for FY 2007, the Bush administration requested nearly $15 million for sub-Saharan Africa and $21 million for the Morocco and Tunisia; and for FY 2008, the administration requested nearly $8 million for sub-Saharan Africa and nearly $6 million for the Maghreb.

African Coastal and Border Security Program (ACBS Program)

This program provides specialized equipment (such as patrol vessels and vehicles, communications equipment, night vision devices, and electronic monitors and sensors) to African countries to improve their ability to patrol and defend their own coastal waters and borders from terrorist operations, smuggling, and other illicit activities. In some cases, airborne surveillance and intelligence training also may be provided. In FY 2006, the ACBS Program received nearly $4 million in FMF funding, and Bush administration requested $4 million in FMF funding for the program in FY 2007. No dedicated funding was requested for FY 2008, but the program may be revived in the future.

Excess Defense Articles Program (EDA)

This program is designed to conduct ad hoc transfers of surplus U.S. military equipment to foreign governments. Transfers to African recipients have included the transfer of C-130 transport planes to South Africa and Botswana, trucks to Uganda, M-16 rifles to Senegal, and coastal patrol vessels to Nigeria.

Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA)

In October 2002, the U.S. Central Command played the leading role in the creation of this joint task force that was designed to conduct naval and aerial patrols in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the eastern Indian Ocean as part of the effort to detect and counter the activities of terrorist groups in the region. Based at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, long the site of a major French military base, the CJTF-HOA is made up of approximate 1,400 U.S. military personnel—primarily sailors, Marines, and Special Forces troops—that works with a multi-national naval force composed of American naval vessels along with ships from the navies of France, Italy, and Germany, and other NATO allies. The CJTF-FOA provided intelligence to Ethiopia in support of its invasion of Somalia in January 2007 and used military facilities in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya to launch its own attacks against alleged al-Qaeda members involved in the Council of Islamic Courts in Somalia in January and June of 2007. The command authority for CJTF-HOA, currently under the U.S. Central Command, will be transferred to Africom by 2008.

Joint Task Force Aztec Silence (JTFAS)

In December 2003, the U.S. European Command created this joint task force under the commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet (Europe) to carry out counter-terrorism operations in North and West Africa and to coordinate U.S. operations with those of countries in those regions. Specifically, JTFAS was charged with conducting surveillance operations using the assets of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and to share information, along with intelligence collected by U.S. intelligence agencies, with local military forces. The primary assets employed in this effort are a squadron of U.S. Navy P-3 “Orion” based in Sigonella, Sicily. In March 2004, P-3 aircraft from this squadron and reportedly operating from the southern Algerian base at Tamanrasset were deployed to monitor and gather intelligence on the movements of Algerian Salafist guerrillas operating in Chad and to provide this intelligence to Chadian forces engaged in combat against the guerrillas.

Naval Operations in the Gulf of Guinea

Although American naval forces operating in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea and other areas along Africa’s shores are formally under the command of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, based in the Mediterranean, and other U.S. Navy commands, Africom will also help coordinate naval operations along the African coastline. As U.S. Navy Admiral Henry G. Ulrich III, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces (Europe) put it to reporters at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, in June 2007, “we hope, as they [Africom"> stand up, to fold into their intentions and their planning,” and his command “will adjust, as necessary” as Africom becomes operational. In a significant expansion of U.S. Navy operations in Africa, the U.S.S. Fort McHenry amphibious assault ship will begin a six-month deployment to the Gulf of Guinea in November 2007. The ship will carry 200-300 sailors and U.S. Coast Guard personnel and will call at ports in eleven countries (Angola, Benin, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, and Togo). Its mission will be to serve as a “floating schoolhouse” to train local forces in port and oil-platform security, search-and rescue missions, and medical and humanitarian assistance. According to Admiral Ulrich, the deployment matches up perfectly with the work of the new Africa Command. “If you look at the direction that the Africa Command has been given and the purpose of standing up the Africom, you’ll see that the (Gulf of Guinea) mission is closely aligned,” he told reporters.

Base Access Agreements for Cooperative Security Locations and Forward Operating Sites

Over the past few years, the Bush administration has negotiated base access agreements with the governments of Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Tunisia, Namibia, Sao Tome, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia. Under these agreements, the United States gains access to local military bases and other facilities so that they can be used by American forces as transit bases or as forward operating bases for combat, surveillance, and other military operations. They remain the property of the host African government and are not American bases in a legal sense, so that U.S. government officials are, technically, telling the truth when they deny that the United States has bases in these countries. To date, the United States has done little to improve the capabilities of these facilities, so that there is little or no evidence of an American military presence at these locations.

In addition to these publicly acknowledged base access agreements, the Pentagon was granted permission to deploy P-3 “Orion” aerial surveillance aircraft at the airfield at Tamanrasset in southern Algeria under an agreement reportedly signed in during Algerian President Aldelaziz Bouteflika’s visit to Washington in July 2003. The Brown and Root-Condor, a joint venture between a subsidiary of the American company, Halliburton, and the Algerian state-owned oil company, Sonatrach, is currently under contract to enlarge military air bases at Tamanrasset and at Bou Saada. In December 2006, Salafist forces used an improvised mine and small arms to attack a convoy of Brown and Root-Condor employees who were returning to their hotel in the Algerian town of Bouchaaoui, killing an Algerian driver and wounding nine workers, including four Britons and one American.

Over the course of the next eighteen months, there is one major issue related to the new command that remains to be resolved: whether and where in Africa will Africom establish a regional headquarters. A series of consultations with the governments of a number of African countries—including Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Kenya—following the announcement of Africom found than none of them were willing to commit to hosting the new command. As a result, the Pentagon has been forced to reconsider its plans and in June 2007 Ryan Henry, the Principal Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy told reporters that the Bush administration now intended to establish what he called “a distributed command” that would be “networked” in several countries in different regions of the continent. Under questioning before the Senate Africa Subcommittee on 1 August 2007, Assistant Secretary Whelan said that Liberia, Botswana, Senegal, and Djibouti were among the countries that had expressed support for Africom—although only Liberia has publicly expressed a willingness to play host to Africom personnel—which clearly suggests that these countries are likely to accommodate elements of Africom’s headquarters staff when they eventually establish a presence on the continent sometime after October 2008.

* This article is a revised and shortened version of an article that will be published in the next issue of The Review of African Political Economy

* Daniel Volman is the director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC, and the author of numerous articles on US security policy and African security issues. He can be contacted at the following email address: dvolman at igc dot org

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

You are invited to endorse and register for a Trade Unions Conference for African Liberation being co-ordinated by ALISC Network and SOAS Friends of Africa on Saturday 10 November from 10 am to 5pm at Vernon Square Building near King’s Cross, Room V111, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Vernon Square Campus, Vernon Square, London WC1 (near Kings Cross)