Hello From Ethiopia
October 10, 2004
Muadi Mukenge
Hi everybody!
Greetings from Ethiopia! Hopefully this time the computer won't eat my message -- I wrote a beautiful update last Thursday that disappeared when I hit send.
Addis is such a huge city! We've had the chance to see different areas,
and it just stretches on. Next time we hope to be able to visit other
regions with famous historical sites. We'll get out of the city
tomorrow when we go on a site visit two hours away with Progynist, one
of our grantees.
It's been quite an interesting week here attending the NGO Forum of the
UNECA Conference on Women. It's wonderful to hear viewpoints from
dynamic women from all over Africa who are especially active on policy
initiatives to advance Women's rights. The sub-regional reports all
seem to highlight key concerns related to legal reform and women's
political participation; the opportunity to secure substantive
commitments to women's empowerment from the African Union, ECOWAS,
World Bank and other governmental and intergovernmental bodies and
initiatives; the need to better articulate the impact of globalization
on African women; the opportunity to use the Protocol on the Rights of
Women and other human rights instruments as tools to make further gains
for women; and the neglected area of women's bodily integrity and its
relation to reproductive rights, HIV and the use of rape as a weapon of
war. As Caitlin told you, there was an important acknowledgement of the
need to be inclusive of lesbian rights as women's rights within the
movement, stemming from the tragic death of an activist in Sierra Leone
last week.
We all split up to attend various breakout sessions, and I attended one
on best practices in women's rights which featured presentations on how
groups brought about ground-breaking changes in Family Law and Personal
Law in Benin and Morocco, penal codes related to trafficking in Nigeria
and others. There's so much to discuss and of course the main challenge
has been that there's not enough time for each issue. On another panel
on the state of the women's movement in Africa, the panel addressed
questions such as whether the policy networks and regional convenings
really represent the needs of the average African woman, whether there
is cohesiveness in the women's movement across the continent, and what
can be done more effectively to have more impact.
I'm finally able to put faces to names, we've met advisors and grantees
such as Ayeesha Iman, Bisi and the rest of the AWDF staff, Shamillah
from AWID, Thelma from WANEP, the EDs from the various WILDAFs, Abantu
for Development and other regional networks. We had a good meeting with
the Africa PO at Mama Cash, Deborah, as well as a member of their
Advisory Council, Bertha French. I'm enjoying the networking. Women
from all over the continent are here and it's great to see all the
energy coming from women's groups continent wide. This trip is
certainly a great investment to build our contacts for the Africa
program and to build our understanding of what strategies are working.
We had a very good meeting on the Now or Never Fund with about 20
people from 10-12 grantee groups. We got input both for regular
grant-making as well as the NNF. The most pressing issues seemed to be
NGO capacity building and institutional strengthening, prioritizing
women in conflict zones, and women's participation in governance as key
to bringing about meaningful change in women's status. This morning
Bisi added HIV/AIDS in regions that don't have epidemic rates yet but
where we can see a crisis looming if nothing is done on a significant
scale.
Yesterday we met a staff member of the Network of Ethiopian Women's
Associations and it's a contact that will definitely open up links to
numerous women's groups in this country. We've lined up additional
meetings from that contact so we'll be busy right up to the time we
leave on Tuesday. Our colleagues have been very gracious and have taken
us shopping and to incredible restaurants with traditional dance
performances.
So that's it for now! We'll let you know how the site visits go.
Cheers!
Muadi
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