Source: Think Africa Press

Widows for Peace through Democracy (WPD) work towards raising awareness of the complex issues surrounding widowhood in developing countries and ensure that widows have a voice at peace negotiation tables.

We believe that there can be no real reduction in poverty, no sustainable peace, no justice, no true equality or development in Africa - or elsewhere - until the complex issues and challenges of widowhood are prioritised on national agendas. As a root cause of poverty, widowhood issues are key to achieving all eight Millennium Development Goals and cut across all twelve action areas of the Beijing Platform for Action BPA.

Widows’ voices must be heard, their needs addressed and their key roles as sole supporters of families properly acknowledged and supported. Widows are growing in numbers every day due to armed conflict, the AIDS pandemic, violence, harmful traditional practices and natural disasters: as a result there are many child widows as well as young mothers alongside the traditional, widowed grandmother.

There have been a range of international conventions and resolutions relating to women’s rights which have been ratified, as well as the enactment of domestic laws reflecting these international standards. However African governments have been slow to address the status of widows; to protect them from violence, ensure their access to justice and enjoyment of their fundamental human rights.

In many ethnic groups widows’ lives are determined by local interpretations of customary and traditional law, and these tend to be highly discriminatory of widows. In many ethnic groups widows and their daughters suffer intense vilification and are regarded as the “evil eye” bringing bad luck. Furthermore, coercive mourning and burial rites are often not merely degrading but actually life-threatening, such with ritual cleansing (sexual intercourse with designated male relatives), which can spread the AIDS virus and result in unwanted pregnancies. Tanzania and Ghana have added to their penal laws articles criminalising “harmful burial rites”, but few if any prosecutions have taken place and it is unclear who is to define what traditions are harmful and which are neutral or benign.

The gap “between lip and cup” is wide in relation to actual implementation or enforcement of new laws, for example, inheritance and land rights. Articles 21 and 22 of the Annexe on Women’s Rights to the African Charter of People’s Rights prohibits the common custom of “chasing-off” a widow from her husband’s home, and “property-grabbing” from widows. However the International Federation of Women Lawyers report that 80% of their cases in West, Southern and East Africa concern widows’ property disputes with their husband’s relatives. In Darfur, many of the women in refugee camps are widows who are the last to be resettled for they have no rights to land and no one to rebuild their homes in their abandoned war torn villages.

In countries afflicted by conflict, the numbers of widows and wives of the displaced have hugely increased. NGOs estimate that more than 50% of women in eastern Congo are widows. In Rwanda, high numbers of the genocide widows were also rape victims - nearly two decades after the genocide these surviving widows, many infected with the AIDS virus, live in extreme poverty and fear, and with only the most minimal access to adequate health care. Often these widows are rape victims put in internally displaced persons' refugee camps. They require medical services,counselling as well as livelihood support and legal aid. In Zambia and Tanzania, refugee widows from Uganda, Angola and Congo -often of mixed ethnicity parentage and marriage and without settlement visas - struggle to survive through prostitution and live in terror of violence from all sides of the ethnic divides. Widows’ experiences, needs and roles are clearly relevant to the implementation of the UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820.

Widows need to have a voice in peace negotiations when new laws and constitutions are drawn up. Widows for Peace believe we need to see widows’ issues prioritised in the drafts of National Action Plans (NAP) for peace building, in the DRC, Burundi, Sudan, Liberia, and Angola. A widow requires considerable courage to challenge the patriarchal system as culture and deep-seated traditions are often stronger than any modern legislation.  Magistrates and village chiefs may be biased infavour of the husband’s family members and a widow’s independent behaviour could provoke physical violence, the loss of her children, charges of witchcraft and even murder.

CEDAW (the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, ratified by the majority of African Member States) should be used vigorously by lawyers to promote the status of widows and protect them from discrimination. Under CEDAW, widows should be free to remarry or refuse marriage; to inherit, dispose of property and land; take employment and obtain credit. In addition, state parties are required to use all available means to modify negative social attitudes. Regrettably, even when the Convention has been accommodated in statute law, it is rare for a widow to win her case.

In February 2010, WPD was invited by CEDAW to Geneva to present its dossier providing evidence of widespread and systematic breaches of the Convention articles in relation to widowhood. WPD is now requesting CEDAW consider making a General Recommendation to UN Member States that they address the status of widows within the terms of the Convention. It is also working with women-focused NGOs in Tanzania on a project to provide evidence of discrimination experienced by Tanzania’s widows which will be submitted to the Committee for them to institute an inquiry.

The 55th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) opens this week, and Widows of Peace along with thousands of women from other NGOs across the world will gather in New York for this meeting of governments. WPD and its partners are asking the UN to:

• Commission a special report on widowhood in armed conflict
• Appoint a UN Special Rapporteur on Widowhood
• Endorse a Resolution on Widowhood requiring governments to address this neglected issue.
• Support the WPD Model Widows’ Charter

We hope to influence the Commission's conclusions on gender issues regarding education and employment opportunities, which are vital in order for widows to be free of violence and exploitation, house, feed and educate their children, care for other dependents and fully participate in society.

WPD will also be meeting the head of the newly established UN Women department, Michelle Bachelet, to ask that field programmes under this new entity include a component that focuses on widows. We are also asking our NGO partners to write country shadow reports to CEDAW reporting on widowhood discrimination in their countries, and to lobby their governments to endorse the WPD Model Widows Charter and legislate to comply with it.

This Charter and the Dossier on Widowhood Discrimination under CEDAW can be found on the Widows for Peace through Democracy website.

Source: Think Africa Press

This year saw the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD). First celebrated by Italy in 1911, it is now recognised as a public holiday in various countries around the world. In Africa, it is being used as an opportunity to strengthen cross-country bonds and rally support for gender issues. The significance of this year’s anniversary was felt worldwide, with the celebrations being mentioned on radio shows and discussed on Twitter and Facebook. Not only did Google have the International Women’s Day Logo displayed on its home page, it also had an interactive map showing where events, linked with the 'Join Me on the Bridge' campaign, were taking place around the world.

Approximately 464 separate events took place on bridges in 70 different countries on March 8, 2011 as women’s campaign groups unified globally. These events saw protests, speeches and celebrations take place and gave women the chance to speak out about their struggles, suffering and violence in countries where this had been difficult - if not impossible - before. The effective and powerful work of international women’s rights organisation Women for Women International (WfWI) was one of the key factors that led to the global success the event. Despite the organisation's primary focus on helping women in Afghanistan, they now collaborate extensively with African countries, particularly Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), helping women cope with the effects of warfare, disease and poverty.

Think Africa Press spoke with Kate Nustedt, the UK Executive Director of Women for Women International, about the 'Join Me on the Bridge' campaign. She explained how the campaign began at a small bridge which connects Rwanda and the DRC, where the two WfWI country directors were discussing the importance of women in the future of their two countries. This had been a place of mass exodus during the Rwandan genocide and was a meeting point for women from the surrounding area who decided to come together during the conflict “to stand up for peace and to end violence against women”.

Working with the local women, WfWI staff explored ways in which together they could bring peace and a positive future to an area that had been ravaged by violence and conflict. They present the meeting of women on the bridge between these two countries as symbolic of the strength of unified women and seek to replicate this action on bridges around the world to promote the statement that 'Stronger Women Build Bridges of Peace'. The global response to the campaign surprised the organisation. In its first year there were over 120 events worldwide (despite there being WfWI offices in only 10 countries), all of which brought attention to the widespread sexual violence and rape that women suffer as a tool of war in various regions.

This year the 'Join Me on the Bridge' campaign gained momentum in Africa and around the world. Events were hosted by women’s organisations in Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, the DRC, Somalia and Liberia, each highlighting the violence that women are suffering due to past and current conflicts. Women’s groups came together to stand in solidarity on bridges in Sydney, New York and London as well as many smaller cities such as Bristol and Inverness.

At the heart of this campaign is the drive to speak out about the ways in which women become collateral damage of politics and conflicts. It unifies women across diverse nations in Africa, the Middle Eastern, Asia, Europe and America, and is a campaign that represents the energy behind a spontaneous global feminist movement. But the beauty of 'Join Me on the Bridge' is how it connects the local with the global, making important campaign steps at grassroots level and having these recognised internationally, particularly with the use of Google’s web technology.

The global nature of this campaign is vital to the future of the movement. As Kate Nustedt reminds us, international solidarity with the African National Congress was fundamental to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and comparisons can be made with this global feminist movement today. However, perhaps the success of the anti-apartheid movement was partly due to its focus on one region, while gender issues are not region-specific and vary widely depending on the locale. This poses a particularly difficult political challenge for the global feminist movement.

In the past, there has been tension between Western ideas of feminism and women’s movements in Africa. Perhaps this is due to differing notions of freedom, empowerment and equality or even diverging end goals. Whatever the tensions have been, they have produced new forms of feminist thought, such as third-world feminism and postcolonial feminism that began in the 1960s with writers like Chandra Mohanty. Considering this, to what extent can feminism really be a unified global movement? Can the ambitions of feminism and women in the West really be unanimous with the objectives of women’s movements in Africa?

Perhaps for this international campaign it does not really matter. 'Join Me on the Bridge' does not claim that all women are in the same boat, or all women are set against the world. It is a symbolic platform for women’s voices to be heard both locally and globally and a means of showing disadvantaged, socially excluded women that they are not alone in their suffering. It has also provided a physical platform on which women of different backgrounds can safely meet each other and have their voices heard, despite wider violent conflicts. Nustedt uses the example of northern Nigeria where, despite religious conflicts, 'Join Me on the Bridge' and WfWI have seen co-oporation between Muslim and Christian women. This global women’s movement is all-embracing, engaging women of all nations, backgrounds and histories in the campaign for peace and equality.

But the significance of these events extends beyond issues of gender equality. The women’s movement offers solutions and hope for many social and economic problems. Campaigns like this are incredibly important for promoting positive steps towards better healthcare, education and racial equality. For those standing on bridges in Sydney, New York or London this should not just be seen as a symbolic act of sympathy for women in Africa or the Middle East. The global women’s movement does more than recognise women in Sudan, Rwanda, the DRC (or Afghanistan and Bosnia) as victims of war. The global women's movement is valuing women in Africa - and elsewhere - as being the most important tool for global equality and progress.