The Organization of African First Ladies for Development (OAFLAD) launched the #WeAreEqual Campaign on Wednesday, August 23, 2023, at a banquet ceremony held in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek.
The campaign is aimed at closing the gender gap on the African continent in line with the African Union Agenda 2063, which seeks to eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls in order for them to fully enjoy their human rights.
These rights pertain to social, economic and political rights.
Speaking at the event, Madam Monica Geingos, President of the Organization and First Lady of Namibia, stated that forty-five (45) African First Ladies have signed up to the organization, and thirty-seven are currently active.
She stressed that inequality manifests itself in every aspect of society, including health care, education, safety and security, and economic participation, and that future generations will have to deal with the consequences of inequalities that are not addressed today.
“There are so many women graduating out of universities, but the statistics are telling us they are not getting into the workforce, and when they do, they are not getting promoted… We must fix these disparities for the sake of our children and our sake as well,” Geingos said to huge applause from the audience.
She explained, according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) report on the gender gap, the world would need 135 years to completely close the gender gap between men and women.
The Vice President of Namibia, Nangolo Mbumba, delivered the keynote address at the event, which was attended by various stakeholders, including the Namibian Ombudsman, the Deputy Minister of Health and the Chinese and American Ambassadors to Namibia.
He noted that the organization, which was launched in Congo Kinshasa in June this year, brings together high-ranking government officials from the continent, the private sector, stakeholders, and partners to advance the interests of women on the African continent.
“Women and men both possess the same inherent dignity and the same rights and have the same potential to build our societies regardless of our gender. With this campaign, we want to bring home an essential truth: WE ARE EQUAL,” Mbumba declared.
The Vice President said that despite this truth, the reality faced by many women in Africa tells a different story, and Namibia is no exception.
He highlighted that no country has achieved gender parity because women and girls experience inequality in agriculture, land ownership, economic opportunities, income, politics, and other areas. He insisted that this impacts economic development. He added that although Namibia is the most gender-equal country in Africa and the eighth-most equal country in the world, more still needs to be done.
The #WeAreEqual Campaign is an initiative by African First Ladies to close the gender gap on the continent by supporting initiatives aimed at empowering women.
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso —Thomas Sankara’s trial is set to resume on Wednesday, February 2nd after a military court restored the constitution on Monday, January 31.
The trial was due to resume on Monday; however, civil representatives voiced their concern, citing the need for “judicial normalization.”
Prosper Farama, the lawyer representing Sankara’s family clarified that the legal team and civil representatives believe that the trial time frame should be reasonable though they leaned toward a trial not marred by “irregularities.”
Sankara was assassinated while attending a National Revolutionary Council meeting alongside twelve officials in an October 15, 1987 coup aged 37.
After the bloody coup that saw Sankara killed, Blaise Compaoré who is suspected to have instigated Sankara’s assassination came to power, ruling for 27 years before being deposed by a popular revolution in 2014 which led him to flee and has since remained resident in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire.
When Sankara’s trial began in October 2021 before a coup interrupted closing proceedings, twelve out of 14 defendants appeared in court including one of the top leaders of the 1987 coup, General Gilbert Diendéré. The main defendant, Blaise Compaoré, and Hyacinthe Kafando, Compaoré’s former guard commander, were absent. Most of the defendants who were present pleaded not guilty to the murder of Sankara.
The resumption of Sankara’s trial is another turn of events in Burkina Faso after former president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré was toppled on January 24, 2022, by mutinous soldiers stemming from his inability to address the people’s outcry concerning violent jihadists threatening lives and properties.
34 years on since the infamous coup, Burkina Faso is still haunted by Sankara’s ghost. He was an influential soldier and servant-leader. Sankara left an indelible mark in Afrika’s liberation struggle by not only sensitizing Burkinabe people but also raising the collective consciousness of Afrikans against French colonialism and European imperialism.
He was a revolutionary who won the hearts of Burkinabe and Afrikan people through his strides against corrupt practices, his commitment toward reforestation, food self-sufficiency, women’s rights, rural development, education, health and well-being of his people. To the dismay of the colonial regime, internal detractors and traitors, Sankara even renamed the country from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso which means “the land of upright people.”
In a continent where justice is often delayed due to both internal factors and external interference, Sankara’s family and staunch followers will hope for a just verdict that will put an end to Sankara’s protracted trial.
Cletus Awuni was on his normal rounds on the afternoon of July 1 when the alarming news came his way.
Some soldiers were on the rampage in Wa, the capital of Ghana’s Upper West Region.
They were beating up some residents of the town and putting others in positions of duress after a phone belonging to one of the soldiers had been stolen.
Cletus, the Public Relations of Officer of the region’s Coordinating Council set out to investigate the brutalities and perhaps put a stop to it.
But in a blink, he too became a victim.
“In the course trying to find out why they were brutalizing people, I got myself also assaulted,” he recalled to Ubuntu Times.
When he got to the scene, Cletus had tried to capture the incident on video.
He was in a car with his phone up ready to film the human rights abuses when some of the soldiers turned their attention to him.
“About eight of them pounced on our vehicle and opened the door and tried to pull me out and they beat me up,” he said.
The conduct of the soldiers was a surprise to Cletus.
He said this was the first time he had heard of such an occurrence in his part of the country, which is known to be relatively quiet.
“The relationship between the citizens of the region and military has been very peaceful. In fact, no one has even noticed the presence of the military in the region.”
However, when the rest of Ghana heard the news and saw images of the actions of the soldiers, this was the latest instance of a worrying trend.
The country was already on edge after a more lethal instance of human rights abuses by the military.
The Wa incident followed soldiers opening fire on some protestors two days earlier in Ejura, a town in Ghana’s Ashanti Region.
The protestors were angry over the death of an activist in the area, who is believed to have been murdered because of his criticism of the Akufo-Addo administration.
Six people sustained gunshot wounds, two of whom died having been shot in the back. One of the wounded, a 16-year-old boy, lost a leg.
The subsequent outrage prompted the formation of a commission of inquiry to probe the circumstances that led to the military deployment to a purely civilian matter.
Escalation Of A Worrying Trend
Soldiers in Ghana can be seen responding to distress calls in schools, manning checkpoints, and fighting crime like police officers, among others.
A security consultant, Col. Festus Aboagye, has been one of the voices in the desert long decrying the growing footprint of Ghana’s military in civilian affairs.
“Why bring ourselves to a point where every issue should have the military in front line deployment? It is not appropriate,” he said to Ubuntu Times earlier in the year, when soldiers were again in the news for the wrong reason.
In the case of Ejura, testimony from the commission of inquiry has revealed that there were multiple breaches of protocols and drills meaning the military intervention was unlawful.
This is in addition to clear evidence the soldiers “were not equipped or did not intend to engage in any crowd control,” observed Col. Aboagye.
These incidents remain a major threat to Ghana’s democracy as we know it, he reiterated.
“The democracy that we have is very fragile; just a veneer. It is just on the surface.”
This damaging footprint of the military in civilian affairs has gotten significantly larger in the last 12 months.
No one has answered for the deployment of soldiers into Ghana’s Parliament. Credit: Delali Adogla-Bessa / Ubuntu Times
Soldiers deployed to opposition strongholds ahead of the 2020 election were accused of being tools of voter suppression.
They were also used to police the election itself and an attempt to disperse an agitating crowd with live bullets at a polling station led to the death of two persons.
When soldiers are engaged in human rights abuses, there is generally no accountability to the public.
For instance, no attempt has been made to find and sanction the security personnel who opened fire on the crowd at the polling center leading to the two deaths.
“Up till date, not a single person has been held to account or is standing prosecution for their roles in those murders,” Mensah Thompson, the Executive Secretary of Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability, stressed to Ubuntu Times.
For him, it is a reminder that there are never any significant outcomes in terms of accountability of security agencies when they abuse power.
Even with the inquiry into the recent actions of the military in Ejura, Thompson feels there is no cause for excitement.
“What we want to see is a more robust attitude towards military brutality,” he said. “The government has been lax and this emboldening military men to engage in more brutalities.”
The lack of robustness has been reflected in the posturing of the committee probing the actions of the military in Ejura.
The committee at times appears unfocused and for people scrutinizing its work, like Col. Aboagye, the committee does not seem well prepared.
“I doubt whether the committee will establish substantive findings,” he added.
The committee has at times appeared more interested in the accounts from victim’s families and some media personnel who had limited knowledge of the events on the ground.
But the military personnel seem to have been treated with kid gloves, having questionable statements go unchallenged.
One of the officers in charge claimed the dead protesters could have been killed by friendly fire from fellow protesters but have presented no evidence to that effect.
This is in contrast to damning footage from the media showing soldiers aiming and firing on fleeing protesters.
Whilst commanding officers were invited to testify before the committee, soldiers who discharged their weapons were not even called to answer for their actions, to Col. Aboagye’s dismay.
“The people who were on the ground, the soldiers, all of them should have been called [especially] the ones who fired,” remarked the consultant.
Growing Partisan Shadow Over The Military
As alarming as the conduct of military personnel has been, fears are that it is only a symptom of the bigger problem; the flooding of security agencies with political party footsoldiers and militia.
In 2019, a law was passed to criminalize the erstwhile practice of political parties forming units sometimes described as militia or vigilante groups.
The governing New Patriotic Party and the opposition National Democratic Congress were the main culprits of what was viewed as a major threat to Ghana’s peace.
At their worst, vigilante groups were seen storming a courtroom to free prisoners or beating up police at the seat of the Presidency.
But since the law was passed, Thompson fears the security services have replaced the vigilante groups.
“Unfortunately, the government did not disband its militia but rather found a way to absorb them into the security agencies,” he noted.
The governing party has a monopoly in this regard since it controls recruitment into security agencies.
This is seen as one of the reasons accountability has been hard to come by, and why the families of victims in Ejura may not see justice.
Beyond Ejura, the list of victims of human rights abuses at the hands of security agencies is likely to grow longer and Thompson warns that partisan strings controlling Ghana’s security agencies must be cut.
“If we want to maintain the peace and order in this country, it is important that we depoliticize our security agencies.”
Immediately after the announcement of the 2007 presidential election results in Kenya, all hell broke loose across the country as neighbors turned against each other, divided along tribal lines as they defended their political inclinations.
Mary (not her real name), was living in an estate next to a slum in Nairobi when her neighbor’s friend came to her home and purported to be looking for his friend before taking advantage of the situation to pounce on and rape her.
“We fought for quite some time but eventually he overpowered me and that is when he succeeded in violating me,” she narrates.
Traumatized, Mary could not go to the hospital nor police station to report the matter as it was also unsafe for her with the violence that had just broken out. When she finally did, two days later, the officer on duty at the nearby police station put her off.
“He told me to go away as there were more serious matters to deal with at that moment,” Mary says.
The then 40-year-old mother of four had just lost her husband and her fourth-born child was hardly a year old. A few weeks later, she discovered that she had gotten pregnant from the rape. And like many other women who were victims of rape during this period, she never wanted to have the baby; she contemplated abortion and failed three times.
“I then went to the Children Services department and registered to give away the child. But in my delivery room, the nurse on duty was not aware that I was not supposed to even see the child and after I delivered, she put her next to me. When I woke up, I kid you not; I heard the sweetest sound of a child on earth! That is when I embraced, loved and protected her jealously up to now,” she says.
Her daughter is now twelve and Mary says that she’s a very adorable child who according to her is a piece of work, as she is a girl scout, a football captain, and a music leader; a wonderful, beautiful little girl.
Two years later, Mary met the man responsible for the atrocity and says that she froze. “I met him once on the road and he just looked down and walked away. He knew I had a child from the rape. That is when I realized that I had been punishing myself by hating on someone who might not even be aware of what scar he had left in my life. I decided to forgive myself and embrace my life,” she says.
Cases of sexual and gender-based violence are still rampant in Kenya, and even more with the containment measures imposed by the government to curb the spread of COVID-19. A UN situational report from October this year pointed out that 23.6 percent of Kenyans have witnessed or heard cases of domestic violence in their communities since the introduction of COVID-19 containment measures.
After post-election violence, there was hope that the government would come in and ensure the protection of the rights of sexual and gender-based violence survivors are recognized and protected, and also so that they can get meaningful reparation.
A front view of the Milimani Law Courts in Nairobi. Judge Weldon Korir delivered the ruling awarding sexual violence victims on December 10th at this court. Credit: Dominic Kirui / Ubuntu Times
In what human rights activists have termed a landmark ruling, the High Court of Kenya, on 10th December, ruled in favor of four of the eight survivors who were backed by several human rights groups.
The four women were awarded 4 million Kenyan Shillings (about $36,596) each in damages. The four, according to the High Court were either violated by police officers and the GSU personnel or had reported the incidents and to the police, got registered in the police records and the police didn’t do anything.
In his judgment, High Court Judge Weldon Korir said that the Kenyan government had failed to conduct “independent and effective investigations and prosecutions” of sexual violence during the period within which there was unrest in the country after the election results were announced.
Naitore Nyamu, a human rights advocate and head of Physicians for Human Rights’ Kenya office (one of the four institutional petitioners in the case) says that as institutional petitioners who supported the survivors go through the petition, they did not agree with that part of the court decision.
“The criteria used by the court to award the four survivors was that three of the individual petitioners had been violated by state agents (meaning the police or GSU officers), and one had registered her case with the police and no action was taken. This does not make all the other cases right,” says Naitore.
However, these were not the only survivors of sexual violence during the skirmishes. Official records from government-supported reports indicated that 900 Kenyans, both male, and female, had suffered sexual violence during the post-election violence period.
Mary says that even though her case did not see the light of day after being thrown out by the police officer when she went to report, the ruling in which her fellow victims were compensated meant a lot for the country in the future. “This will at least ensure that our efforts to have the victim’s voices heard have not been in vain,” she says.
For Naitore, the length of time that it has taken to get justice for these victims is a case of justice delayed and therefore denied.
“When such a weighty case takes long in court, it is justice denied for these survivors. However, it’s a very important case coming from a domestic national court. It’s a landmark case as it is the first of its kind whereby the state is being held to account on sexual and gender-based violations at the national level,” she says.
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