Fahamu joined Solidarity with African Women’s Rights (SOAWR), a collation of 28 women’s and international organisations, in 2004 to promote the ratification of the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Fahamu offered the pages of Pambazuka News and technological support to the coalition to raise public awareness about the protocol across the continent and to help women bring pressure on their governments to adopt the protocol. Within 15 months, the campaign had succeeded: 15 countries had ratified the protocol, enabling it to come into force across Africa.
Therese Nyondiko of FEMNET speaks to young students about the campaign
Pambazuka News has been widely used by civil society organisations in campaigns for women’s rights, in particular to promote the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, through Fahamu’s involvement with Solidarity with African Women’s Rights (SOAWR), a coalition of 21 women’s and international organisations.
The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, a comprehensive legal framework to guarantee African women’s rights, is a supplement to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. The protocol advances a broad range of human rights for African women in creative, substantive and detailed language. For the first time in international law, the reproductive rights of women to medical abortion when pregnancy results from rape or incest, or when the continuation of the pregnancy endangers the health or life of the mother, are explicitly set out. In another first, the protocol specifically calls for the legal prohibition of female genital mutilation.
Fahamu joined SOAWR in May 2004 and offered the pages of Pambazuka News and technological support to the coalition to raise public awareness about the protocol. Several special issues of Pambazuka News were published and used as advocacy tools, including one for the inaugural pan-African parliament in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Printed copies of the special issues were also distributed to parliamentarians, ambassadors and presidents attending African Union summits.
Fahamu set up a website for the coalition to raise awareness of the protocol. It also developed the facility for people to register their support for the protocol using mobile phone text messaging (SMS). In addition, an SMS alert service was established, which enabled users to sign up for free SMS alerts about the progress of the campaign. Nearly 1,000 requests for subscription to this service were received over a six-month period.
In the space of less than a year the number of countries that ratified the protocol increased from one in May 2004 to the requisite 15 in 2005, enabling the protocol to come into force in November 2005. In subsequent evaluations, Pambazuka News was identified as a key contributor to the success of this advocacy initiative.
Fahamu continues to work with the SOAWR coalition to popularise the rights enshrined in the protocol and to help governments ensure these rights are upheld by national legal systems. As part of this campaign, Fahamu published, in English and French, a book that grew out of a conference in Addis Ababa jointly convened by the African Union Women, Gender and Development Directorate and SOAWR: Breathing life into the African Union Protocol on Women’s Rights/Vulgarisation du protocole de l’union Africaine sur les droits des femmes en Afrique.
Fahamu also has a programme of work on the development of radio and other media initiatives in association with the African Women's Development and Communication Network and FAMEDEV. Read more about this.