Author: African Women's Development Fund

When a friend suggested to Blessing Dickson, 17 years then that she accompanies her to an educational session at the offices of Girls Power Initiative (GPI) she was very reluctant. Not only was the meeting place a bus ride away, which she could not afford but also she really did not understand the essence of an after school educational session.

But the persistence of her friend and the encouragement of her brother led to her first attendance at the Girls’ Power Initiative educational session for young women after almost a year of persuasion, and since then she has never looked back. Blessing who is presently in the second year of the GPI programme is now a strong advocate of the Girls’ Power Initiative young women’s programme and has been convincing other friends to join the programme.

The GPI young women’s programme seeks to equip girls aged from 10 to 18 with human rights, and comprehensive sexuality education. The GPI young women’s programme is structured in such a way that everybody feels comfortable and safe. The entry level, level 1 is divided into 4 different groups based on age. The first group “shining stars” is for ages 10 and 11; second group “precious group” is for those 12 and 13 years old. The third group named “Silver” is for girls 14 and 15 years while the fourth group is for the older entrees aged 16 years and named “Pearls”.

To maintain the comfort of girls and young women within similar age groups the second level of the programme is divided into the older and younger girls. The younger girls are grouped together in the “Alpha” class while the older girls get into the “Bosoms” class. At the final level, which is level girl there is the “Damsels” who are younger and the “Seeders” who are the older group. The different classifications within the same level is to ensure that people feel free and are able to connect to and with people within their age group. The classification also ensures privacy and confidentiality. It takes 3 years to graduate from the GPI and an examination is taken at the end of each year before one is promoted to the next class. After the 3 years the graduate joins the GPI Alumni Association (GAA).

A wide range of topics are covered weekly including issues around women’s sexual health and rights; skills building activities including income generation skills, building of self esteem, imbibing a sense of responsibility and ability to think critically about issues. The girls are also taught to be firm in their convictions and to be able to withstand all the pressures of being a teenager.

GPI provides transportation to and from from the venue of the programme,, this ensures that the unavailability of a bus fare does not hinder any of the girls from attending the weekly classes/meetings.

Blessing who is now 19 years says, “Before joining GPI I could not stick to decisions, I was always wavering in my decisions and resolves but GPI taught me to stick to my decisions and to have a sense of responsibilities”. According to Blessing, the GPI lessons has helped her to shun all sexual activities as well as other negative social behaviours that teenagers usually indulge in. She has also learnt to respect the diversity of culture and tradition as well as to make responsible choices. She now can speak firmly but politely, is very assertive and has a high sense of self esteem.

Blessing is presently working as a fashion designer whilst saving money to continue her education. One of the key lessons Blessing has taken away from her training at GPI is the ability to readily apologise when she is in the wrong. This has brought about a lot of peace and tranquility within her relationships at home and amongst her friends.

She finds a lot of peace and comfort in the GPI family for she is able to confide in her facilitators especially in relation to issues around her sexual health, something she is unable to do with her mother. “The facilitators are friendly, they are like mothers to me. They listen to me, when I have problems even at home I tell them and they counsel me and support me and this makes me strong”.

GPI has helped Blessing to unearth her creative talents in poetry and song writing. She has presently written 4 songs that the GPI has adopted for the girls. Without the GPI most of these talents would have died within her. Blessing is planning to go to the medical school or to become a medical lab scientist, she plans on enrolling in a tertiary institution in 2011.

The GPI counseling programme is structured to involve parents and to engage with teachers when the need arises. Parents know that GPI is a safe space for their children, they have witnessed the changes that has occurred within their children and the diverse strength that has been displayed by daughters who have benefitted from the GPI programme. Teachers sometimes consult the notes of beneficiaries of GPI during lessons on sexual and reproductive health. Students approach students of the GPI programme for counseling, encouragement and support.

With the ever increasing numbers of girls attending the young women’s programme at the GPI there is the need to have a bigger facility that can comfortably accommodate all these girls. For this reason, AWDF is supporting the building of a new complex for the GPI.

By: Beatrice Boake-Yiadom

Grants Manager, AWDF

[tp lang=”en” not_in=”fr”]PRESS RELEASE

 

30 June 2010

 

Contact: Charlotte Bunch, 732-642-5271 or cbunch@ig.org, Bani Dugal, 646-404-4210 or bdugal@bic.org, Rachel Harris, 301-535-9702 or rachel@wedo.org

 

UN Women Born: Civil Society Celebrates Creation of Gender Equality Entity After Four Years of Advocacy

The Gender Equality Architecture Reform (GEAR) Campaign celebrates the United Nations General Assembly resolution, agreed to on 30 June and to be formally adopted by the General Assembly on Friday, 2 July, to establish “UN Women”—the new gender equality entity at the UN. This move has been sought by women’s organizations and other civil society organizations around the world since the UN established a System-Wide Coherence Panel for UN Reform in 2006. Charlotte Bunch of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, a founding member of the GEAR Campaign, stated, “We have high expectations for this new agency to be a solid foundation for advancing the human rights of women as central to global policy efforts to reduce poverty and move toward greater realization of peace and democracy in the world. The coalition of women’s groups and other social justice, human rights and development organizations that played a pivotal role in this effort will now turn its efforts toward ensuring that the new body has the human and financial resources necessary to succeed.”

Particularly notable in the resolution are the paragraphs regarding the importance of civil society participation in the new entity. The body must have increased operational presence at the country level including engagement with women’s groups and other civil society organizations invested in gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The GEAR Campaign’s global, regional, and national networks will be contacting UN representatives at all levels to work with the transition process and the new Under Secretary-General, once appointed, to ensure they are connected with organizations on the ground ready to provide their expertise and support.

As the new entity is developed, GEAR supporters will continue to advocate for four major elements critical to its implementation:

• Meaningful, systematic and diverse civil society participation at all levels
• Strong, country-level operational capacity and universal coverage
• Ambitious funding with stable and predictable resources aimed at reaching $1 billion within a few

Years

• Strong leadership at the top with an Under Secretary-General who combines a global vision with gender equality expertise on the ground

“We know that this is only the beginning,” stated Rachel Harris of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). “We must continue to ensure that we are building a United Nations that really works for all women on the ground. Implementation requires active engagement of all stakeholders to get the entity up and running successfully.”

 

Background

 

The GEAR Campaign is a network of over 300 women’s, human rights and social justice groups around the world that have been working for four years to gain UN Member State and UN Secretariat approval for creation of a larger more coherent coordinated UN agency that can advance further the UN’s mandate of working for gender equality as a crucial component of development, human rights, humanitarian concerns, peace and security.

The new Gender Equality Entity to be headed by an Under-Secretary General, will consolidate the four existing UN bodies on women, increase operational capacity at the country level and have gain increased funding for work on women’s empowerment and advancement. The UN currently has four separate entities dedicated to women’s issues which will be combined in the new entity: the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW), and the Office of the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI). Bringing these together and coordinating their work more with gender mainstreaming throughout the UN system should the UN and governments to deliver more effectively on their obligations and many commitments to advance gender equality, women’s empowerment and women’s human rights.

For more information please go to the GEAR Campaign website – www.gearcampaign.org – or contact the GEAR Campaign at: gearcampaign@gmail.com[/tp]

[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”]COMMUNIQUÉ DE PRESSE

 

30 Juin 2010

 

Contact: Charlotte Bunch, 732-642-5271 or cbunch@ig.org, Bani Dugal, 646-404-4210 or bdugal@bic.org, Rachel Harris, 301-535-9702 ou rachel@wedo.org

 

UN Women Born: la société civile célèbre Création de l’égalité des sexes Entité après quatre années de plaidoyer

La campagne Gender Equality Architecture Reform(GEAR) célèbre la résolution de l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies, accepté le 30 Juin et formellement adopté par l’Assemblée générale le vendredi 2 Juillet, d’établir «ONU Femmes» -Le nouveau __gVirt_NP_NN_NNPS<__ entité pour l’égalité des sexes au l’ONU. Ce mouvement a été recherché par les organisations de femmes et autres organisations de la société civile à travers le monde depuis l’ONU a établi un Comité sur la Cohérence échelle du système pour la réforme des Nations Unies en 2006. Charlotte Bunch du Centre pour le leadership mondial (CWGL) des femmes à l’Université Rutgers, une fondation membre de la Campagne GEAR, a déclaré: «Nous avons de grandes attentes pour cette nouvelle agence pour être une base solide pour faire avancer les droits des femmes en tant que centre des efforts de politique mondiale pour réduire la pauvreté et de progresser vers une plus grande réalisation de la paix et de la démocratie dans le monde . La coalition de groupes de femmes et d’autres de la justice sociale, les droits humains et les organisations de développement qui ont joué un rôle central dans cet effort va maintenant tourner ses efforts vers veillant à ce que le nouvel organisme dispose des ressources humaines et financières nécessaires pour réussir “.

Particulièrement notable dans la résolution sont les paragraphes concernant l’importance de la participation de la société civile dans la nouvelle entité. Le corps doit avoir une présence accrue opérationnel au niveau des pays, y compris l’engagement avec les groupes de femmes et d’autres organisations de la société civile ont investi dans l’égalité des sexes et l’autonomisation des femmes.

Et les réseaux mondiaux, régionaux, nationaux de la campagne GEAR communiqueront avec les représentants des Nations Unies à tous les niveaux à travailler avec le processus de transition et le nouveau Sous-Secrétaire général, une fois nommé, pour assurer qu’ils sont connectés avec les organisations sur le terrain prêts à fournir leur expertise et de soutien.

Comme la nouvelle entité est développé, les partisans GEAR vont continuer à plaider en faveur de quatre grands éléments essentiels à sa mise en œuvre:

• Participation de la société civile significative, systématique et diversifiée à tous les niveaux
• Forte, la capacité opérationnelle au niveau des pays et la couverture universelle
• Financement ambitieux avec des ressources stables et prévisibles visant à parvenir à $ 1,000,000,000 dans un peu

Années

• Un leadership fort au sommet avec un Sous-Secrétaire général qui combine une vision globale avec une expertise d’égalité des sexes sur le terrain »Nous savons que cela est seulement le début», a déclaré Rachel Harris de l’Environnement et du développement Organisation des femmes (WEDO). “Nous devons continuer à veiller à ce que nous construisons une Organisation des Nations Unies qui fonctionne vraiment pour toutes les femmes sur le terrain. La mise en œuvre exige un engagement actif de tous les acteurs pour obtenir l’entité et en cours d’exécution avec succès “.

Contexte

 

La campagne GEAR est un réseau de plus de 300 femmes, les droits humains et les groupes de justice sociale à travers le monde qui ont travaillé pendant quatre ans pour obtenir l’approbation Secrétariat d’Etat membre de l’ONU et de l’ONU pour la création d’une agence des Nations Unies coordonné plus grande et plus cohérente qui peut progresser Le mandat de l’ONU de travailler pour l’égalité des sexes comme une composante essentielle du développement, les droits humains, les préoccupations humanitaires, la paix et la sécurité.

La nouvelle entité à l’égalité des sexes sera dirigé par un sous-secrétaire général, permettra de consolider les quatre organismes existants des Nations Unies sur les femmes, augmenter la capacité opérationnelle au niveau des pays et ont un gain augmenté le financement pour le travail sur l’autonomisation et la promotion de la femme. L’ONU dispose actuellement de quatre entités distinctes consacrées aux problèmes des femmes qui seront combinés dans la nouvelle entité: le Fonds des Nations Unies pour la femme (UNIFEM), la Division de la promotion de la femme (DAW), l’international de recherche et de formation pour la promotion de la femme (INSTRAW) et le Bureau du Conseiller spécial du Secrétaire général des Nations Unies sur les questions de genre et promotion de la femme (OSAGI). Réunir ces deux approches et de coordonner leur travail avec plus d’égalité entre les sexes dans l’ensemble du système des Nations Unies devraient l’ONU et aux gouvernements de fournir plus efficacement sur leurs obligations et d’engagements pour faire progresser l’égalité des sexes, l’autonomisation des femmes et les droits humains des femmes.

Pour plus d’informations s’il vous plaît visitez le site Web de la campagne GEAR – www.gearcampaign.org – ou communiquez avec la Campagne GEAR à: gearcampaign@gmail.com[/tp]

Read more here: Compendium of Key Human Rights Documents for African Women

Saiadatu Bala Ahmed is a 22-year-old married woman from Adamawa State in Northern Nigeria. Saiada as she is usually called has had her life transformed after watching the Vagina monologues play (‘V’- monologues) in Lagos.

Saiada lives with her husband and 2 year old daughter in Apapa, a suburb of Lagos State. She is a member of The Ajegunle Community Project (ACP) a grantee organisation of AWDF. ACP seeks to reduce social inequalities among grassroots women and the girl-child. Saiada got married at the age of 17 years under duress and had to forfeit writing the West African Examinations because her father could no longer pay for her education. Her prospective husband promised to send her to school to complete her education after the marriage, alas this promise was a fallacy as her marriage turned out to be as abusive as any woman could imagine! Any reference to the promise to continue her education intensified the violence against her. Saiada was beaten, wrongly accused of adultery, thrown out of home, raped, denied her human rights and was even divorced once (according to her culture a wife is divorced four times before the marriage is finally dissolved). Saiada’s husband sacked her from her marital home when she was four months pregnant because a male neighbor was staring at her (her husband said he doubted he had made her pregnant). Saiada’s daily life was a nightmare, one of apprehension and violence! Certainly this could not be allowed to go on forever!

The turning point for Saiada was in 2006 when she was invited by the late founder of Ajegunle Community Foundation to join other young women to watch the “V-Monologues” play in Lagos. The “V- Monologue” resonates Saiada’s life story. “Every stage of the play was about me and my life, l felt so sad and l just told myself that this is it, these violations of my human rights must stop now. The play just gave me courage, confidence and strength, and l just discovered my voice and myself. I was ready to demand and take my rights from my husband no matter what, l was just ready” Saiada said. Such profound words indeed! Saiada had to be careful though; she was not just dealing with an abusive husband but also an obsessed one. She started off by posting posters with messages of violence against women on the walls of their room at places where he would never miss to notice. Messages such as “Do not allow any man to turn your body into a punching bag, it is your right to protect it”. “Against her will is against the law”. These messages continued for awhile but they almost also landed her into trouble with her husband. But this never deterred Saiada. She was determined and stood her ground, threatening to report her husband to the police if he beats her and saying she will use the marks on her body as evidence against him. The spark of audacity and determination in her eyes and actions sent a strong warning message to her husband to be careful with her, “this is the new Saiada Bala who is now well informed about her rights” she said. In order to gain his ‘masculine ego’ back, he asked her to stop attending the meetings at ACP but she refused and insisted she will continue to attend. He asked her to leave his house but she refused and reminded him that she was his wife and had to be divorced four times! He threatened to marry a second women but she told him she will simply move out and move on with her life. He used all sort of ploys to get her into a submissive demeanor but Saiada was now too well informed to be manipulated. He finally gave up!

Today, Saiada has completed a computer school with sponsorship from her husband and she is getting ready to go back to school to study diploma in sociology. “My husband is becoming a changed person now, thankfully the violence has stopped” she said. Saiada also has political aspirations and will like to go into mainstream politics one day. This is an awesome young lady with huge potentials that should be nurtured. She is highly recommended to attend the African women’s leadership institute and African feminist Forum.

“The Vagina Monologues, “V-monologues: The Nigerian Story” is a remake of the American version. The American version, written by Eve Ensler, was a catalogue of various monologues told by various women. A recurring theme throughout the piece is the vagina as a tool of female empowerment, and the ultimate embodiment of individuality. However, the Nigerian version is a bit different. The play is aimed at raising awareness about various aspects of violence women and girls face in Nigeria.

The Vagina Monologues came to Nigeria for the first time in 2006 through Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) a grantee of AWDF. It has since evolved into a Nigerian version (The V-Monologues) infused with issues peculiar to the Nigerian cultural challenges with the use of Nigerian language and music.

Nafi Chinery

Capacity Building Officer (AWDF)

[tp lang=”en” not_in=”fr”]Learn more about AWDF’s support from the Dutch MDG Fund: MDG 3 BROCHURE[/tp]

[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”]Apprenez-en plus sur le soutient d’AWDF au Dutch MDG Fund: MDG 3 BROCHURE[/tp]

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah (Programme Officer, AWDF) and Thelma Owusu Boakye (Programme Assistant, AWDF) held a number of vox pops with some of the participants at the African Women in Film Forum, 16th-17th June 2010, Lagos, Nigeria.

Below are a selection of Audio Files from the film forum. Your feedback, comments and thoughts are appreciated:

Film Forum – Tunde Kelani

Film Forum – Bunmi Oyinsan

A selection of pictures from the Film Forum can be found on AWDF’s Flickr page

Abena Busia’s paper which set the context for the Film Forum, ‘ Women and the Dynamics of Representation: Of Cooking, Cars and Culture‘ can be viewed on the AWDF Blog and AWDF Facebook Page

The display of youthful exuberance, intelligence, confidence and beauty attracted me to this young lady sitting in the mist of older ladies and who occasionally would chip in useful information about the organisation’s activities at a meeting with some staff members of Heal the Land Initiative, a grantee of AWDF at Akwa Ibom state in Nigeria. Ms. Peace Augustines is the third of six children born to Mr & Mrs Augustine from Abia States in Nigeria. Peace as she is affectionately called is 21 years old and lost both parents in 2002 to HIV&AIDs.

Soon after the death of her parents and at a young age of 16, Peace begun to feel the impact of HIV &AIDS as it perpetuates the cycle of poverty. As an orphan from a poor home she and her siblings were thrown out of their parent’s home, she abandoned her education and each one of them had to take care of themselves. The issue of survival becomes very critical here! Peace was lucky enough to have moved into her grandmother’s house, at least there shelter was assured, but then she had to assume a new role as head of the household at the expense of her education. Peace quickly found her survival strategy to raise income for her household’s upkeep; street hawking of pure water in the busy streets of Abia State was her new income generation activity. It was during one of her hawking activities that she was spotted by Ms. Doris Ugwu, the Executive Director of Heal the Land Initiative who also knew about her parents death. Doris, knowing this young lady decided to give her a chance to live a better life. Doris is HIV&AIDS positive and the first to publicly announce her status in Akwa Ibom. Understanding the impact of the disease on families and children especially, Doris decided to seek permission from Peace’s grandmother to allow her to sponsor Peace’s education whilst she continued to live with her grandmother to sit her West African Examination Council (WAEC) papers.

In 2008, Peace moved to live with Doris in Akwa Ibom State. She has written the joint matriculation examination board and will soon be writing her aptitude test to guarantee her a place in the university. Peace is a very ambitious young lady; she is looking forward to going to the University of Oyo to read psychology. She also dreams of being a philosopher, Peace believes she possesses a wealth of knowledge which she would like to pass on to other people to shape their lives for the better.

Peace has increased her knowledge on HIV&AIDs through her personal life and also through her engagement with HEAL the Land Initiative where she volunteers her time when she is not in school. Obviously Peace has had huge challenges in life, from her childhood to date; experiencing the suffering and death of her parents and its repercussion on her growing up. She said to me “It doesn’t matter what you go through in life you just don’t have to give up. I have learnt to improve on my knowledge, be vigilant and not to be taken advantages of by boys or men and to trust in God”.

• She has learnt never to stigmatise anyone no matter his or her situation.
• She has learnt to give back, and so she also wants to rescue other children from the street.
• She has built her confidence level; to her living positively is not the end of one’s life and she want to support others to live positively.
• She has learnt that maturity is not in age but in mind and character because that is the powerful tool one needs to win the community over.
• She has learnt to make friends she can influence positively and vice versa.

Unfortunately, not many children are or will be as lucky as Peace to be rescued off the street and given a decent life and an education. There are many more children who are continuously exposed to the hazards of ‘streetism’. It is therefore important that as development workers, women’s activists and donor organizations we begin to rethink the factors which fuel the spread of HIV such as gender inequality, conflict, migration, poverty, exclusion and the denial of basic rights as factors that cut right across the development agenda. Approximately 99% of those infected by HIV&AIDS live in developing countries and 12 million girls and boys are orphaned as a result of HIV&AIDS. HIV&AIDS is now one of the most powerful barriers to achieving the 2015 development targets in Africa, where it is now the leading cause of death.

Peace is a peer educator in schools and her community but how effective can she be if her actions and those of organisations like Heal the Land Initiative are not supported by decision and policy maker and all of us?

P.S: Peace is not positive

Nafi Chinery

Capacity Building Officer

AWDF

We are here because of Nollywood. For some this is a reason for celebration, to others it is rather cause for anxiety. However, that such debate even rages is a sign that Nollywood has become an institution to reckon with. And being an institution brings with it responsibilities. Nollywood can no longer be indulged as the “Johnny-come-lately” bad boy of movie making; recently recognized as the third largest moving making business in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood; this means it grosses more money than industries of older standing such as England and Italy, thus it is an industry that can no longer be treated as a child passing through its terrible twos. At the very least it is an industry that has gained its first degree, and we expect more of college graduates than we do of those still struggling through High School.

In many ways, a part of this success can be attributed to the question of technology. Nollywood is an industry that basically skipped the film stage, and went first to video, then was truly liberated by digital. As with music making, the symbiotic relationship between technology and creativity must be acknowledged. This even affects what I can call the social relations of film –making; as for instance that location work predominates over studio work, and as is common with Black independent film makers in Europe and the United States, producers and directors and actors work constantly with each other in stable communities which resemble early Hollywood contract studio system, but without either the studios or the contracts, which has proved a way of promoting and supporting each other in their growth as artists.

The issues to be addressed by this film forum on “women and the dynamics of representation” have been of concern for those who think about such things as “representation” for centuries. But let me begin first with the word “dynamics”, a term that suggests forces that produce change or motion. Nollywood is indeed a force, the existence of such a mass of films, now available, and watched in every corner of the globe, has indeed produced change, it is the nature of that change with respect to women that we are here to deliberate on – we are concerned here with what the force of the dynamo means for those of us embodied to walk this earth as women, and at this forum we are as concerned about women in film as women on film. That is the dynamics of representation ultimately have as urgent force when thinking of women in the film industry behind the scenes as the more self evident sense of women projected on the screen, which is where I will begin.

How women are presented to audiences in a number of media has been of concern for a number of women and women’s movements around the world. As human beings we all become concerned about how we are seen by others, how we are re-presented to the world, especially by others who do not count themselves as one of our number. And when we do not see ourselves reflected, or reflected as we would like, the need for redress, to challenge the discrepancies between how we see ourselves and how you know ourselves to be seen, becomes a powerful driving force, and not just for women. It is of no small consideration, for it has led around the world to powerful social movements- as we know centuries of being seen as “niggers”, being denigrated, which in its Latin root literally means to blacken or “niggerfy” and being classified as social inferiors with attendant social consequences and legal restrictions led to revolutions from the American South to South Africa.

I remind us therefore that the context for this forum rests firmly in the arena of a very broad historical context where issues concerning “the image of Africa” meet those concerning “the image of women”, black women in particular, though in this regard because of the former- the image of Africa- women of African descent have not always even been seen as a subset of “women” in general but of somehow a species apart from female humanity.

Out there in the world the image of Africa, and the women in it or who have historically come from it is not positive. There is not time to rehearse these images here neither do I at this juncture wish to launch into a history of the genealogy of these images about which I can teach whole graduate courses. So forgive me if I simply resort to the shorthand terms we use to conjure up a wealth of images and the ideas associated with them. After centuries, at least in the western world we are still the dark continent, today refined to become more politically correct by speak more euphemistically of underdevelopment, necessary aid, culture bound etc. our people are still somehow lesser, less intelligent, less capable, less whatever. When it comes to our women the situation gets more aggravating…

Yet why does this anxiety about historical images matter? Surely we tell ourselves the marketing of such images is over, or since we have become independent we have control of our own representation so what does the colonial past matter? It matters for two reasons, the first is that the success of Nollywood means that what we do is avidly received in those very places that has created and marketed these negative images, and they have not gone away. The second is indeed that the major audience is ourselves, whether at home or abroad, so what are we telling ourselves and the rest of the world about ourselves? Are we countering or feeding this legacy of hostile images of ourselves?

The Nollywood film industry, willingly or unwittingly, carries on its shoulders the hopes and expectations of a people. Perhaps the situation can be compared to the burdens placed on the shoulders of African-American writers in the middle of the twentieth century who had to grapple with the interface between artistic freedom and social expectations. Was Richard Wright justified in creating a monster like Bigger Thomas to prove his ideological point that desperate social circumstances beyond one’s control produce desperate people, or did he merely validate the negative stereotype that all young Black men are brutes and rapists? A generation later when Alice Walker gave us Celie in The Color Purple was she showing how no matter what the degradations, women’s sisterhood and solidarity could lead to personal emancipation, or was she, justly accused of merely adding further fuel to the fire engulfing the besieged masculinity of Black men.

It is not insignificant that the furor over the Color Purple blazed more furiously, leading to demonstrations against the actors and the picketing of the Oscars, when it was turned into a successful film by Steven Spielberg. It is not necessary to say, especially in a forum such as this, that in terms of contemporary entertainment, film is arguably the most popular art form of narrative communication around the world today. Something that causes a spark when published in print can turn into a forest fire when presented on the screen. Controversial as the novel The Last Temptation of Christ was when published in 1960 by Nikolas Kazantzakis, that uproar paled when compared to the fury unleashed when it was made into a film directed by Martin Scorsese which reached a much wider general audience in 1988. It can also work the other way; I am sure J.K. Rowling the writer of the Harry Potter series of children’s books today goes to the bank quite happy that she need never write another word in life if she doesn’t choose to!

Nollywood faces the same agonies and choices as all the other ‘woods’ have faced. The point I am emphasizing is that the question of the responsibility for images is not peculiar to Nigeria or to film-makers, but is the concern of all artists; however that responsibility becomes magnified when the medium is an influential and popular one, such as film is.

If I can digress for a moment, looking at Nollywood films from the perspective of someone who has spent her life wrestling with the question of the “image of Africa” in the western world, I must say that for me one of the huge benefits of the success of this film industry, regardless of the quality of the stories being told, is finally we have a huge body of works which show what the exteriors and interiors of modern Africa look like. Most of these films are shot on location and convey the grittiness of the streets, and has made them familiar. There is a texture to the look of Lagos or Accra that is refreshing to see, especially after living with the notion that there is no modernity in Accra, that we have no capital cities that can rival those of the west. The first time I showed a slide of Abidjan to a class of students they all but though I was lying.

But to return to the other point that I was trying to make; that of the variability and unpredictability of audience. Kazantzakis was careful not to betray the end results of the biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth- he did not in the end succumb to the temptations of the flesh. Nonetheless, there were Christians who considered the very idea of the temptation of Jesus The Christ tantamount to blasphemy. However even when not dealing with theologically sensitive subjects, the concerns raised by images projected upon us or any individual or group we identify with, we carry with us. Thus a forum such as this must raise acute questions regarding the impact of the production and proliferation of the images that concern us here; the images we produce and promote ourselves and send out into the world. We are concerned here with film and with women in film in every aspect. How do we tell our stories? Who is to tell them? Who has access to the storytelling apparatus that film embodies?

It is always a heated debate whether artists are creators or reflectors of the society that support their work. There can be no doubt that we can learn a lot about a people through what we read and see about a society. Still, sorting through the manifold impressions and emotions that art evokes can be complex in a number of ways. One film about a drug addict could be seen as an exploration of a social problem. A number of films in which drug addicts routinely appear, or are referred to, spoken about, drop in casually or are otherwise a part of the fabric of the life being portrayed, can leave the impression that this is a society where drug addiction is endemic if not epidemic, is an integral part of everyday life not to say a social problem.

Thus we also need to take account of what I can call the multiplier effect. We must respect the integrity of every individual story, but we must also be concerned with the multiplier effect of a number of individual stories conveying similar things which then multiply to become a collective story. When this happens it must give us pause for thought. For example, my mother had four sons. My four brothers have each of them married between 1978 and 1984 that is they have all be married for between twenty five and thirty years giving our mother, cumulatively an excess of one hundred years of being a mother-in-law before she passed away. And in all that century, I do not remember any violent disagreements, of her calling or being called a shrew by my sisters-in-law, any necessary escapes by them to avoid her witchcraft or any attempt by her to undermine their marriages because they were unsuitable harridans who on top of everything could not even cook a decent meal! And wonderful as I know my mother to have been, I do not believe she was the only mother of sons in the whole of West Africa who appreciated the complexities of married life, appreciated that her sons had made the best choices they could and the women they married were doing the best they could to lead their lives with integrity and raise their children in unanimity and was thus prepared to leave all three couples to it! (But perhaps you will all tell that is because they had at least provided her with a dozen grandchildren and therefore could be exempted from the general box of unpleasant spells that mother in laws cast!) I think you get the point. This multiplier effect can be most instructive for good or ill.

With respect to representing contemporary African women to a larger audience, Nollywood has had sometimes deservedly, a lot of hits. But the critiques arise out of respect for its successes, if no one watched the films; it would not matter quite so much. (I have been told that the largest market outside Nigeria is not Ghana, or even London, but Canada). Wherever it is, Nollywood has put African film making on the map in spectacular ways, and has with incredible alacrity its products have become widespread enough to bear a discussion on the implications of its communicative power.

To illustrate: it is reviewing a number of films in preparation for this forum that made me sub-title these remarks “Of Cooking, Cars, and Gendered Culture”, though in truth that is a paper that yet remains to be written. Let me explain: although in everyday parlance when we speak of “culture” people’s minds go to Zulu spears, Ndebele beads, Igbo masquerades or Asante kente cloth depending on which part of the continent we are focused on, we should recognize that the real essence of culture is not so much the things we see, but the things we take for granted; not the song and dance routines we third world peoples put on for tourists to admire as proof positive we do even have culture, but the things we believe and hold fast to because they structure the sense of meaning in our lives. The things mentioned above are important to their peoples, but not primarily for the chic market value they have now come to have. And there are other, non-marketable things that are so ingrained in us we scarcely notice; like the different ways in which we greet each other – bowing to our elders, shaking hands from the left and so on, these are the deep strata cultural things seldom articulated that reflect our sense of our selves as people.

Watching these films I became aware of two striking motifs, both of them reflections of our society, one ancient, and the other more contemporary. It was very noticeable the extent to which food remains an index of gender relations and in particular a woman’s moral standing. And I do not mean only the idea of the rural woman’s sweat in her determination to grow crops to feed her children. The films also reflect what appears to be our abiding social truth that in heterosexual relationships whether or not you have a good thing going in a woman is how well she feeds you. Urban or rural, professional, unemployed, or a homemaker, no matter what, feeding is an index of a woman’s moral worth. I have seen only one instance of which feeding a woman with the labour of his own hands (as opposed to in a chic restaurant) was indicative of a man’s seriousness in a relationship. We can, and perhaps should have a conversation about what the automatic and assumed acceptance of this means for us in the early twentieth century, but the point I want to make here, is anyone watching these films, en masse, will learn quite correctly that, rightly or wrongly, in West African cultures at least into the first decade of the twentieth-first century, the cooking, and sharing of food remained a major index of cultural significance. As students and critics of popular culture this can be important to note.

What of the cars? These were as noticeable as the plates of badly or well cooked food but they seemed to have a different resonance. Where the matter of food seems an almost unquestioned sign of womanhood, to be taken for granted as it were, the cars were not an unconscious signifier. Rather they were, in film after film singled out by the camera, frequently lovingly caressed by it, not as a taken for granted aspect of character, but as a potent symbol of a man’s (frequently rising) power. A woman is expected to be able to cook, what is noteworthy, to her detriment, is when she can not. The ability is the status quo. In contrast men are not assumed to have cars, so every car rebounds to their worth and value on an ever increasing scale according to the value of the car. So fixed a sign of potent masculinity has the car become that in one film it was also used as the index of the extent to which the men who drove them were held in regard or pampered by the sugar mamas who kept them happy. Interestingly in that film, though they acted as a sign of her buying power, they reflected socially to his glory. In this particular film, the women’s access to cars was indicative of their corruption. Furthermore, by providing the men with them, they provided them with the instruments with which those gigolos could then play the fool by using them to impress women other than the ones who had purchased them. I will return to this issue shortly, the point I am making here, is that for good or ill these films give us clues to world view and culture of the societies which support them, whether by indicating fixed assumptions – as in the case of women and cooking- or signifying a symbol of flux and change- as in men and cars.

This is why the plethora of “saints, whores, nags and witches” raises such concern. The sessions of this forum tell the story of the complexity of the issues we face. In the films made by us, we must acknowledge we have made great strides in the images we present of ourselves in our stories, but we still have a great way to go. After the struggle waged by e.g. African American women in Hollywood to even be allowed to represent beauty and glamour, not to speak of sexuality, we are ahead of the game, but still need to ask, to what end? On that side of the Atlantic they had to struggle to be regarded as a social acceptable body beautiful. Over here, we have no problem with the concept of an African woman’s body as beautiful, our actresses are manifestly attractive and flaunt it on screen, though we do have to ask sometimes to what end this glorification of the body, especially in a context where the validation of woman’s sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage is still seen as a potential source of problems.

We do have plenty of storylines which reflect our lives as they are lived. Sort of. That is we do have films depicting young people in love, and young people having sex, and the women are not necessarily required to be virgins. Yet if we study carefully the development of the storylines, a number of issues arise. So often, even when supposedly college girls with no time for studying, they have time to pursue men and seduce them with their wealth, cars and bodies; yes, when unmarried women own cars it is seldom to any good end, it is a sign of women who do not know boundaries, of women who transgress.

The choice of the tongue in cheek title of the session for writers is unfortunately not so tongue in cheek. Much of the ire against the Nollywood industry has come precisely because these are the dominant images that we grapple with. I often wish, when I visit yet another office showing “African Magic” movies of wicked wives and greedy mistresses 24/7 one more time, I could issue a blanket decree banning it from the airwaves. I do not want to see anymore women actually turning into snakes before our eyes, or metamorphosing into blood suckers for the sake of gold truly believing that that is the sole objective of life.

Yet as an artist, I also recognize that this gut reaction borders on policing. Where do we draw the line between demanding socially responsible art and policing the artist, and besides, can we police morality or demand, as opposed to desire, socially responsible art forms; and again, as I asked before, must our art be required to be what we consider positive, for then when does it become propaganda, why not be content with reflecting what is, however discomforting that may be?

In short, what is the purpose of our storytelling, for make no mistake; filmmaking is simply the latest, or one of the latest forms of collective storytelling. But modern storytelling faces a complex set of situations. If you will forgive the resort to the cliché of grandmothers by the compound fireside or under the village tree, what happens when the audience is no longer a cohesive clan with shared history and antecedents and a relatively shared common set of goals, but has translated into the “global village” of both kinsmen and spies.

Human stories, whether mythic tales or proverbs and riddles have always served, in every society, the purpose of enabling, and even empowering societies to make sense of the world around them. When they encompass the grand issues of human existence, what is the source of life, or the nature of the divine, they exist in the realm of sacred myth, but as we know, even good local stand up comedians can help us comprehend the messiness, and seemingly intractable problems of human living. A cartoon about a destooled chief can be more powerful than volumes of ink spend on condemning his behaviour.

And on the subject of chiefs and village grandmothers, what indeed do we do with our past and its legacies and continuities? What do we do with those stories, those forms of living, those ways of being? And certainly one of the issues indeed facing us as modern people is making clear to ourselves and others, that there is no rupture between “then” and “now”. Some years ago I used an illustration for this point which I would like to repeat here: A few years ago I was invited to Rochester institute of Technology to conduct a faculty development workshop. So whilst there, I took the opportunity of visiting the Eastman Kodak museum. I was fortunate that it was the year of the centenary of the Brownie, and amongst the many events celebrating that little camera, which was the first camera of almost everyone I know, was a glorious display of every brownie ever made, displayed in chronological order. We could all mark our age group by the camera we first knew. What was very striking was that if you looked at only the first and the last in the series, the two cameras had nothing in common. Yet seen on display with the dozens of intervening cameras also displayed, the differences between each were only small and incremental, at times barely perceptible, and the links between the cameras at their different stages, irrefutable. It might be fruitful to think of that vexed word tradition in that manner. With each manifestation of a “traditional” ceremony, what is produced is its own variant, dependent on its own time, space and ritual acts and immediate needs. Nothing remains static … this is the health of ritual. [Each re-enactment] in form and performance carries the echo of that remembered form which each performance both recalls and gives the lie to. So, for example, to commemorate deaths in exiles, instead of sitting in open spaces outside the family home, we hire church halls, and do the things that need to be done, improvising from necessity to create something new we dress in the language of tradition, sometimes amazing and bemusing our neighbors because of the sudden influx of people, particular colour, public ceremony and noise that Ghanaian funerals generate, which seem incomprehensible unless you understand the culture of mourning. The danger is the extent to which we are all capable of genesis amnesia, forgetting the cameras in between. So how do we deal with tradition and change, how do we film those translations of traditional mores into contemporary life and modes of existence, how do we make the invisible, visible? This is not a simple task.

Derek Walcott once admonished “if the old gods were dying in the mouths of the old they died of their own volition”. What do we do about “old gods” who are not necessarily old; their mores, strictures and worship are still an integral part of our daily lives. In particular how do we deal with them in the face of the fundamentalisms of every kind that have swept through our world in the latter part of the twentieth century? I am a Christian myself. Yet at the same time I can not, in all honesty, help but baulk at the ways in which fundamentalist faith is presented and/or deployed, sometimes almost as a deus-ex-machina, suddenly appearing at the end of a complex and intricate set of plot lines to make all things right by the easy solution of sprinkling a little scripture on top, when nothing at all in parts one two and three on the film has in any way given grounds for such a possibility as acceptable. So many of our films lack a satisfying sense of an ending.

We are dealing here, amongst other things, also with the quality of writing, not to say, of re-writing! If I may be forgiven, I would like here to quote Steven Spielberg. A year after the Academy of Motion pictures effectively turned its back on him, by nominating the Color Purple for 13 Oscars, and awarding it not a single one, he was given the Irving Thalberg award for his consistently high quality of motion picture production. He started his acceptance speech by talking about how he was a movie junkie, and then continued: That the whole idea of movie magic is that interweave of powerful image and dialogue and performance and music that can never be separated, and when it’s working right, can never be duplicated or ever forgotten. I’ve grown up—most of my life has been spent in the dark watching movies. Movies have been the literature of my life. The literature of Irving Thalberg’s generation was books and plays. They read the great words of great minds. And I think in our romance with technology and our excitement at exploring all the possibilities of film and video, I think we’ve partially lost something that we now have to reclaim. I think it’s time to renew our romance with the word. I’m as culpable as anyone in having exalted the image at the expense of the word. But only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.

I confess, when I heard those words, literature teacher that I am, I stood alone in my living room and cheered. That short statement reminds us of a number of things that are crucially important here; that film is a collective art form dependent on co-operation; that it is an art form dependent on technologies of great possibility; and that in the end, it all begins with the writing.

Yet one other question we face is this very question of language: in which language do we make our films? Again this discussion goes far beyond the concerns of the film industry. In this respect, the film makes have a real edge over the writers, as proportionally there are far more films made in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Akan or Ga etc than there are either books written, or films made in English.

This is important because I believe it helps account for the massive popularity of film as a medium, regardless of the challenges of the democracy of its art form. Yet in this regard there are also challenges regarding the quality and integrity of translations and sub-titles.

Yet no matter the language in which we write, we must deal with the stories we tell. Of these issues I would like to refer now not so much to the question of writing, but to the question first, of the language in which we write. Again this discussion goes far beyond the concerns of the film industry. This forum has been occasioned by a general concern about the way in which women are presented and the stories told about them. And there seems to be a kind of social malaise that has difficulty juggling the ideal and the real; at times we seem to have difficulty actually dealing with who we are, though perhaps the films do reflect a general social inability to deal with the world in which we live when it comes to the changing roles of women in society.

To illustrate with an anecdote from a class assignment: last year, in an undergraduate class on rights ethics and the rule of law, I gave an assignment to describe and discuss the power and authority structures in any small unit to which each student belonged, most of them chose the family unit. When they handed them in, in a class of 50 students, all but one of them who described the family launched into descriptions of the ideal patriarchal nuclear family where the father was the breadwinner and the mother stayed at home taking care of the children. But when I asked in the class, only ONE of them actually has a mother who stayed home full time as a housewife, all the others their mothers were in full or part-time employment. They were surrounded, at home and at school, by women in full-time employment, but seemed to have difficulty even articulating this, when it came up against some imagined sense of what a modern middle class family should look like, and this was a class in Accra, not in New Jersey. What place do women occupy in the cultural imagination? This may seem a trivial example, but for me, it makes me wonder about the continuum of social attitudes that ends up with women’s work being disregarded from the authority of the household to being factored into the statistics of national economies.

Yet we must acknowledge that there are changes being made. The question of a new future is the subject of our last panel, and there are some things we ask for which should not be too hard to accommodate; that the stories reflect our lives as lived a little more – for instance that female college students be seen a little more in classes and discussion courses and a little less in the beds of their lovers; that professional women be seen acting professionally in professional settings; that complex situations, including those involving conflict situations be presented without necessary demonization, and that the concerns with which we live be struggled with integrity.

Our lives, contemporary and historic, are food for story enough; we live through coups, countercoups and corruption. Beyond the drama of such incidents themselves, they take a toll on everyday life. Even in democratic peacetimes we pass through road blocks on our city streets on peaceful Sunday afternoons; we have to balance between snacks for our children or having their bus fare, we get sick, get well, loose our mothers, and we do all this without always being charged by circumstances to refer to demonic interferences. The place of women at the interface of tradition and modernity remains a vexed one. And we still have not fully grappled with what we call traditional cultures

The career of a film maker such as Tunde Kelani is evidence that it is not only women who can tackle these questions with courage. In his films women are bright, articulate, and face the dilemmas of our day, whether the legacies of ancient customs, or the consequences of contemporary social forces. Yet we must also support the growth of women in an industry which has traditionally limited their roles in front of the camera and severely restricted their roles behind it. Tough as the industry is for everyone involved in it, it is exponentially so for women who have a tougher time having access to all aspects of film making from the equipment to the financing. They are also, as some here will attest to, amongst those who are the most enterprising and risk taking in getting their work out.

I have concentrated here on fictional storytelling, but I would like here to acknowledge the work of women documentary film makers. African women living on the continent and in the Diaspora are amongst the most consistent and persistent in using that medium to challenge the ways in which are lives are framed on film. As with documentary films they are making popular films with messages targeted to general audiences for the transformation of society. The central issue remains: how hard is it to create an industry which projects the complexity of the way in which we our lives from a humane, ethical standpoint. These are the issues which confront us as women and men who support us, over the next two days.

[tp lang=”en” not_in=”fr”]The African Commission on Human and Peoples™ Rights, meeting at its 47th

Ordinary Session held in Banjul, The Gambia, from 12 to 26 May 2010

Recognising that the African Commission on Human and Peoples™ Rights has

a fundamental role to protect the most vulnerable groups in Africa against

human rights abuses;

Recognising also that a unique feature of the HIV pandemic is the

overwhelming nature of the accompanying stigma;

Nothing that in circumstances where the rule of law and human rights are

not respected as an integrated part of society, the most vulnerable groups

within that society are often denied the level of protection they require

and hence, are exposed to increased vulnerability;

Recognising that people living with HIV and those at risk are currently

one of the most vulnerable groups exposed to serious violations of human

rights in Africa.

Recalling the Resolution on the HIV/AIDS Pandemic “ Threat Against Human

Rights and Humanity (2001) calling upon African governments, State Parties

to the African Charter to allocate national resources that reflect a

determination to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS, to ensure human rights

protection of those living with HIV/AIDS against discrimination and to

take appropriate actions so that international pharmaceutical industries

make affordable and comprehensive health care available for African

governments;

Recalling commitments of the African Union Heads of State and Government

in the Tunis Declaration on AIDS and the Child in Africa (1994); Grand Bay

(Mauritius) Declaration and Plan of Action (1999); Lome Declaration on

HIV/AIDS in Africa (2000); Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and

Other Infections Diseases (2001); Maputo Declaration on HIV/AIDS,

Tuberculosis, Malaria and Other Infections Diseases (2003); Gaborone

Declaration on a Roadmap Towards Universal Access to Prevention, Treatment

and Care (2005); Continental Framework for Harmonisation of Approaches

among Member States and Integration of Policies on Human Rights and People

Infected and Affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa (2005); Brazzaville Commitment

on Scaling Up Towards Universal Access to HIV and AIDS Prevention,

Treatment, Care and Support in Africa by 2010 (2006); Abuja Call for

Accelerated Action Towards Universal Access to HIV and AIDS, Tuberculosis

and Malaria Services in Africa (2006); and Africa’s Common Position to

the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS (2006);

Noting with deep concern that of 33.4 million people living with HIV in

the world, 22.4 million are living in Sub-Saharan Africa and of 2 million

AIDS related deaths, 1.4 million occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2008;

Concerned that AIDS related deaths result in an increase number of orphans

and vulnerable children in Sub-Saharan Africa;

Concerned further that despite commitments undertaken by State Parties and

regional bodies, PLHIV and those at risk continue to face serious

violations of their basic human rights;

Deeply disturbed by the growing trend by various State Parties across

Africa towards criminalisation and mandatory testing of PLHIV which leads

to greater stigmatisation and discrimination;

DECIDES to establish a Committee on the Protection of PLHIV and Those at

Risk for a period of 2 years with the following mandate:

* To seek, request, receive, analyse and respond to reliable information

from credible sources including individuals, community-based

organisations, non-governmental organisations, specialised agencies,

inter-governmental organisations, and State Parties, on the situation and

rights of PLHIV and those at risk;

* To undertake fact-finding missions, where necessary, to investigate,

verify and make conclusions and recommendations regarding allegations of

human rights violations;

* To engage State Parties and non-state actors on their responsibilities

to respect the rights of people living with HIV and those proven to be

vulnerable to these infections;

* To engage State Parties on their responsibilities to respect, protect

and fulfil the rights of people living with HIV and those at risk;

* To recommend concrete and effective strategies to better protect the

rights of people living with HIV and those at risk;

* To integrate a gender perspective and give special attention to persons

belonging to vulnerable groups, including women, children, sex workers,

migrants, men having sex with men, intravenous drugs users and prisoners;

and

* To report regularly to the African Commission on Human and Peoples™

Rights.

Done in Banjul, The Gambia, 26th May 2010[/tp]

[tp lang=”fr” not_in=”en”]

La Commission africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples ™, réunie en sa 47e

Session ordinaire tenue à Banjul, Gambie, du 12 au 26 mai 2010

Reconnaissant que la Commission africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples ™ a

un rôle fondamental à protéger les groupes les plus vulnérables en Afrique contre la

violations des droits de l’homme;

Reconnaissant également que une caractéristique unique de la pandémie du VIH est la

la nature écrasante de la stigmatisation qui l’accompagne;

Rien que dans les circonstances où la règle de droit et les droits humains sont

pas respecté comme une partie intégrante de la société, les groupes les plus vulnérables

sein de cette société se voient souvent refuser le niveau de protection dont ils ont besoin

et, par conséquent, sont exposés à une augmentation de la vulnérabilité;

Reconnaissant que les personnes vivant avec le VIH et les personnes à risque sont actuellement

l’un des groupes les plus vulnérables exposés à des violations graves des droits de

l’homme en Afrique.

Rappelant la résolution sur le VIH / SIDA menace d’une pandémie “contre les droits de

Droits et humanité (2001) appelant les gouvernements africains, les États parties

à la Charte africaine à allouer des ressources nationales qui reflètent une

détermination à lutter contre la propagation du VIH / sida, afin de garantir les droits humains

la protection des personnes vivant avec le VIH / sida contre la discrimination et à

prendre des mesures appropriées pour que les industries pharmaceutique internationale

rendre les soins de santé abordable et complet disponible pour Afrique

les gouvernements;

Rappelant les engagements des chefs d’État et de gouvernement de l’Union africaine

dans la Déclaration de Tunis sur le sida et l’enfant en Afrique (1994); Grand Baie

Déclaration (Maurice) et le Plan d’action (1999); Déclaration de Lomé sur

VIH / SIDA en Afrique (2000); Déclaration d’Abuja sur le VIH / sida, la tuberculose et

Autres maladies Infections (2001); Déclaration de Maputo sur le VIH / sida,

La tuberculose, le paludisme et autres maladies infectieuses (2003); Gaborone

Déclaration sur une feuille de route vers l’accès universel à la prévention, au traitement

et des Soins (2005); Cadre continental pour l’harmonisation des approches

entre les États membres et de l’intégration des politiques sur les droits de l’homme et des peuples

Infectées et affectées par le VIH / SIDA en Afrique (2005); Engagement de Brazzaville

sur l’élargissement vers l’accès universel à la prévention du VIH et du sida,

Traitement, soins et soutien en Afrique en 2010 (2006); Appel d’Abuja

Une action accélérée vers l’accès universel au VIH et au sida, la tuberculose

et Services paludisme en Afrique (2006); et la position commune de l’Afrique à

la session de l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies spécial sur le sida (2006);

Notant avec une profonde préoccupation que de 33,4 millions de personnes vivant avec le VIH dans

le monde, 22,4 millions vivent en Afrique sub-saharienne et de 2 millions

Décès liés au sida, 1,4 million se sont produites en Afrique sub-saharienne en 2008;

Concerned décès liés au sida se traduisent par une augmentation du nombre d’orphelins

et enfants vulnérables en Afrique subsaharienne;

Préoccupé en outre que malgré les engagements pris par les États parties et

les organismes régionaux, les PVVIH et les personnes à risque continuent de faire face grave

les violations de leurs droits fondamentaux;

Profondément préoccupée par la tendance croissante par diverses Parties de l’Etat à travers

Afrique vers la criminalisation et le dépistage obligatoire des PVVIH qui conduit

à une plus grande stigmatisation et la discrimination;

Décide de créer un Comité pour la protection des PVVIH et les personnes à

Risque pour une période de 2 ans avec le mandat suivant:

* Pour rechercher, de demande, de recevoir, d’analyser et de répondre à des informations fiables

de sources crédibles, y compris les individus, à base communautaire

les organisations, les organisations non gouvernementales, les institutions spécialisées,

les organisations inter-gouvernementales, et les États parties, sur la situation et

droits des PVVIH et les personnes à risque;

* Pour entreprendre des missions d’enquête, le cas échéant, afin d’enquêter,

vérifier et de tirer des conclusions et des recommandations concernant les allégations de

violations des droits de l’homme;

* Pour engager les États parties et les acteurs non étatiques sur leurs responsabilités

de respecter les droits des personnes vivant avec le VIH et ceux avérés

vulnérables à ces infections;

* Pour engager les États parties sur leurs responsabilités de respecter, protéger

et réaliser les droits des personnes vivant avec le VIH et les personnes à risque;

* Pour recommander des stratégies concrètes et efficaces pour mieux protéger les

droits des personnes vivant avec le VIH et les personnes à risque;

* Pour intégrer une perspective de genre et accorder une attention particulière aux personnes

appartenant à des groupes vulnérables, notamment les femmes, les enfants, les travailleurs du sexe,

migrants, les hommes ayant des rapports sexuels avec des hommes, des drogues intraveineuses utilisateurs et les prisonniers;

et

* Pour rendre compte régulièrement à la Commission africaine des droits et ™

Droits.

Fait à Banjul, Gambie, le 26 mai 2010[/tp]

 

I arrived in Lagos on Sunday, 13^th June ahead of the first African Women in Film Forum (AWIFF), which is being convened by AWDF in conjunction with Lufodo Productions. On previous trips to Lagos I have only spent a few hours before continuing to my final destination so quite pleased that this time I will get to spend a few days in Lagos and experience the city that I have heard described as ‘New York on crack’.

Day 1: It’s a rainy Sunday in Lagos and the roads are quiet. I’m assured by the driver who picked me up from the airport that the journey from the airport to the hotel which took approximately 30 minutes (excluding stops to change money and buy airtime) would on a weekday take about 3 hours. He points out some landmarks to me including Lagos University and a market that the Lagos State Governor has cleaned up (the name starts with O, I cannot remember how its pronounced or spelt). According to the driver the State Governor has done a good job, the market is decongested and many of the traders who used to hawk on the streets have moved back to their villages because they can no longer trade on the streets. I can’t help but wonder how these traders who have been forced to move back home feel.

In the late afternoon I join Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, AWDF’s Executive Director and Professor Abena Busia, a member of the AWDF USA board who is also a resource person for the upcoming AWIFF at the launch of Tunde Kelani’s film ‘Aruba’. Tunde Kelani is a well-respected Nigerian filmmaker who has displayed sensitivity and awareness on the importance of using film as a tool for women’s empowerment. Two of his previous films, ‘The White Handkerchief’ and ‘The Narrow Path’ have been supported by AWDF as part of its Popular Culture Project. AWDF’s Executive Director, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi was the special guest invited to launch ‘Aruba’.

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah

Programme Officer

Fundraising & Communications