Chi Mgbako2013-06-19T00:44:01-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=chi-mgbakoCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Chi MgbakoGood old fashioned elbow grease.African Voices of Legal Empowermenttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24433052013-01-10T13:00:43-05:002013-03-12T05:12:02-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/
Since that fateful night, Chimwemwe has joined a quiet revolution of community paralegals acting as frontline justice defenders throughout Africa. Chimwemwe now works for the Paralegal Advisory Service Institute, which has flooded Malawi's criminal justice system with paralegals who monitor police interrogations of suspects, educate detainees on their legal rights, file bail applications on behalf of arbitrarily detained prisoners, and are increasingly recognized as allies by state institutions. "If my father was alive he would have witnessed a lot of change," Chimwemwe notes with pride.
Many African countries face a dearth of lawyers, leaving poorer individuals to navigate the winding road to justice alone. Community paralegals, non-lawyers armed with legal knowledge and a sophisticated understanding of the mechanics of state institutions, use mediation, organizing, education, and advocacy to help individuals and communities demand and realize their rights. Community paralegals in Africa emerged as early as the 1950s in South Africa, helping black South Africans attempt escape from apartheid's legal black hole. Since then, paralegalism as a method of legal empowerment has spread like a brushfire throughout Africa.
By addressing ordinary peoples' daily justice needs, community paralegals are proving that justice can be a lived reality in African people's lives. They handle cases involving such issues as domestic violence, child abandonment, property disputes, improper power wielded by justice officials, and corruption in government services. They also engage systems of legal dualism in which the State's formal laws and the community's traditional laws operate simultaneously.
Chimwemwe's story was just one of many captured during an extraordinary July 2012 gathering in Kampala, Uganda of African paralegal program representatives from over twenty countries. The gathering was organized by the global legal empowerment organization Namati (where I serve on the Board of Directors) and resulted in a formal call upon African governments to increase access to justice by acknowledging and strengthening the presence of community paralegals.
Daniel Sesay of the Namati team in Sierra Leone was another voice of legal empowerment highlighted during this unique gathering. Following the brutal Sierra Leonean civil war that claimed 50,000 lives between 1991 and 2002, Daniel worked for the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission and learned how the systemic lack of access to justice can lead to societal trauma. "A good number of those [ex-combatants] we interviewed told us they took up arms [during the civil war] because of the injustices they suffered at the hands of traditional leaders and court officers," Daniel explains.
Daniel was also drawn to paralegal work because of the gender injustices he witnessed in his native community where women are marginalized legally in part because most traditional justice adjudicators are male chiefs. Indeed, one of the most promising aspects of the growth of the African paralegal movement is its staunch dedication to women's legal empowerment.
Judith Ochanda, a trained paralegal of the Nyando Human Rights Advocacy and Development Network in Kenya, reflected on a specific case that highlights how paralegals make women's rights a reality on the continent. Judith spoke of a woman named "Ajia" whose husband had been a successful sugarcane farmer with a plantation that spanned many acres. When her husband died, Ajia's in-laws took over the farm, a common practice in Kenya and other parts of Africa that leaves many widows poverty-stricken. Instead of rectifying this injustice, the male chief in Ajia's village abused his traditional authority by encouraging officials to freeze Ajia's bank account, sealing her off from the farm's proceeds.
Judith's organization intervened in the case and appealed to a higher administrative official in the village who ensured that Ajia's bank account was unfrozen. Ajia has since used proceeds from the farm to start her own business and put her children through school. Reflecting on this case, and others like it, Judith notes that: "Paralegal work has been very important to women in our community because...whenever they come to the justice center, we are there [for them]."
The unprecedented gathering of Chimwemwe, Daniel, Judith and 50 other representatives from African legal empowerment organizations resulted in the Kampala Declaration on Community Paralegals. The Declaration calls on African governments to acknowledge the importance of paralegals in legal empowerment efforts, invest in the scale up of paralegal services, and guarantee paralegal independence from state interference.
The spread of community paralegals in Africa is a homegrown, breathtaking effort. Increased government recognition of the essential role that paralegals play in resolving disputes and increasing unhindered community access to state institutions will strengthen frontline justice services, ensure their perpetuity, and reject the notion that it is the fate of the poor to swallow the bitterness of legal disempowerment.
To listen to more African voices of legal empowerment from the Kampala gathering, visit Namati's media page.
The Kampala Declaration on Community Paralegals remains open for signature. Interested organizations can sign the Declaration here.]]>There Are No 'Perfect Victims'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17612822012-08-14T18:20:25-04:002012-10-14T05:12:02-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/"perfect victims" in advocacy and publicity campaigns, and consequently to disregard injustices faced by other marginalized individuals who may inspire more ambivalent and complicated responses from the public.
The privileging of "perfect victimhood" is misguided because all people have human rights regardless of subjective determinations of "worthiness." This is, in fact, the very core of the idea of human rights. The danger of the "perfect victim" construct is illustrated by two examples: Anti-prostitution advocates who privilege abuses experienced by victims of trafficking over violence faced by those voluntarily involved in adult sex work; and society's failure to view economically disenfranchised black men as victims of the devastating 'war on drugs' because they, too, stand in opposition to notions of "perfect victimhood."
A well-intentioned student at the law school where I teach human rights advocacy once told me "victims of sex trafficking are perfect victims." In her estimation, women and girls who are trafficked into prostitution -- those forced, deceived, or coerced -- are archetypal victims and, therefore, more deserving of human rights protection. We must address the roots and realities of abuses like human trafficking, but the hierarchies of victimhood implicit in such ideas about "deserving victims" often lead to harmful human rights policies and practices.
Victims of trafficking into prostitution fit into anti-prostitution advocates' moral prototype of "perfect victimhood." These advocates privilege the violence "perfect victims" experience over the violence faced by legally and socially stigmatized individuals involved in consensual adult sexual transactions and thus viewed as less deserving of our attention and advocacy. Anti-prostitution crusaders often pursue misguided policies that lead to violence and stigma against sex workers; yet, they are silent on how these policies and practices cause harm.
Allied with right-wing politicians, they pushed for the adoption of the "anti-prostitution pledge," which requires organizations receiving U.S. foreign HIV/AIDS prevention funding to adopt a policy opposing prostitution. But anti-prostitution advocates don't acknowledge how this policy effectively stymies HIV prevention efforts among sex workers, a group at high risk of HIV infection. Public health advocates have long argued that the anti-prostitution pledge makes it impossible for organizations to implement HIV prevention programs with sex worker communities in a non-judgmental spirit of solidarity -- how do you take an oath against a community's activities and then work in partnership with them? The Nicholas Kristofs of the world live tweet their brothel raids but don't report on the "rescued" sex workers who are forced into "shelters" only to face sexual and physical abuse. Before large sporting events like the Olympics, anti-prostitution advocates drum up moral panics about imminent rises in trafficking cases -- alarm bells that routinely prove to be unfounded -- and then are silent when there are police crackdowns of sex workers under the guise of rooting out trafficking.
Another example of how the "perfect victim" paradigm blinds us to the injustices faced by those who don't fit its construct is our willful ignorance of the most severe human rights violation in the United States today -- the mass incarceration of poor black and Latino men and youth due to the 'war on drugs,' a failed policy that has not led a decrease in drug use or availability. Although black people do not use or sell drugs at higher rates than white people they are incarcerated for drug infractions in shockingly larger percentages. The 'war on drugs' has always been a war on poor people of color with devastating effects: Those convicted of drug crimes may lose the right to vote and face discrimination in access to public benefits, employment, public housing, or education following their release.
In light of these disparities, why do we not view black men trapped in the vortex of the criminal justice system for drug crimes as victims of state-sponsored human rights abuse? In part, it's because our society portrays them as dangerous, as aggressors -- the opposite of "perfect" or "deserving" victims. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and we continue to feed a drug war that has shattered countless lives. And, yet, because these men fit the vicious stereotype of aggressive, criminal men of color, we don't see them as possible victims, only as potential threats, and thus we don't view the injustice they face as a massive human rights abuse.
When I was a law student, my criminal law professor once said that as an indigent criminal defender working with poor communities of color, people often asked her why she was dedicating her career to working with "such people." They didn't believe that her clients were "perfect victims." She said her response was always simple and always the same: "Here, too, there are rights."]]>Police Confiscation of Condoms From Sex Workers Compromises Public Health and Fuels HIV/AIDStag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16877632012-07-20T10:00:47-04:002012-09-19T05:12:38-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/Kenya, Namibia, Russia, South Africa, the United States, and Zimbabwe, police often confiscate condoms from sex workers to use as evidence of prostitution, thereby impeding public health interventions aimed at reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. This year's New York State legislative session recently ended, and by failing to vote on and pass the "no condoms as evidence of prostitution" bill, lawmakers missed an opportunity to be national and global leaders in ensuring that counterproductive policing and prosecuting of sex workers does not compromise disease prevention and public health. Passage of the bill would have prevented police officers and prosecutors from confiscating condoms from suspected sex workers and using them as evidence of prostitution in criminal proceedings.
This global practice impedes public health by discouraging sex workers -- who are at higher risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections and HIV -- from carrying condoms out of fear of arrest and police harassment. The passage of the "no condoms as evidence" bill would have ensured that New York will no longer engage in the hypocritical action of flooding the public with free condoms while allowing the police to confiscate them for use as evidence against sex workers.
New York could have distinguished itself by definitively ending this troubling practice, setting an example for other cities and countries. In a recently-released report, Human Rights Watch researchers have documented how the practice in several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., undermines disease prevention efforts. It's also a global problem. The Open Society Foundations' multi-country survey found, for instance, that 80% of Russian sex workers reported having their condoms confiscated by police and 75% of Namibian sex workers who had their condoms destroyed by police later had unprotected sex during the course of their work. My students and I documented the public health ramifications of the practice while working on a sex workers' rights campaign in South Africa.
During a town hall meeting with South African sex workers in Cape Town, we asked about impediments to condom use with clients. "If the police find condoms in my pocket, they arrest me," a sex worker quickly responded, as others nodded in agreement. Outreach workers at the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) based in Cape Town echoed this and reported that South African police often take away boxes of condoms from sex workers to use as evidence of prostitution. The head of the African Sex Worker Alliance noted with frustration the hypocrisy of a state giving away free condoms as a bid to promote public health only to tolerate police confiscating these same condoms to use as evidence against at-risk populations.
This hypocrisy is also evident in New York where last year New York City distributed more than 37 million condoms, only to have the NYPD undercut this effort by seizing condoms from individuals they suspect of engaging in prostitution. A 2010 New York City health department survey of 63 sex workers found that 36 had had their condoms confiscated by police, as harassment or a basis for arrest. In 2011, a network of sex workers' rights advocates conducted a survey that produced similar findings, in which 42.8% of the sex workers surveyed stated that police confiscated or destroyed their condoms, and 46% percent confirmed that at some point they had not carried condoms with them out of fear that it would prompt abusive interactions with police.
States should never take action that discourages safe sex practices. As they distribute free condoms to promote public health while arresting those suspected of engaging in sex work for possessing them, they waste resources and muddle public messaging about the necessity of practicing safe sex.
There is sustained and growing support for the practice's abolition: numerous New York City-based human rights and public health organizations publicly backed the "no condoms as evidence" bill; San Francisco officials have begun to express misgivings about the practice in their city; and recent and upcoming events are exploring the practice's harmful effects in other parts of the country and the world. Next week over 20,000 HIV/AIDS activists will attend the XIX International AIDS Conference being held in Washington D.C. -- a perfect opportunity to raise our voices and keep pushing our representatives to pursue policies that safeguard public health.]]>Sex Workers in Greece Face Forced HIV Testing, While Those in Malawi Fight Backtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15853012012-06-11T14:51:59-04:002012-08-11T05:12:07-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/recent news reports have also focused on another disturbing reality: At the end of April, Greek police began systematically arresting sex workers, forcing them to undergo HIV testing, and posting the names and photographs of those who test HIV-positive on official police websites. The sex workers face criminal charges of intentionally causing serious bodily harm, even though there is no evidence they were aware of their HIV status.
The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Amnesty International, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects and the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, have all condemned the Greek authorities' actions as incompatible with human rights and discordant with proven public health measures to prevent HIV transmission. State-sanctioned forced HIV testing of sex workers also occurs elsewhere, including in the southern African country of Malawi. But in Malawi, something inspiring has happened -- sex workers are fighting back.
It began in 2009, when police officers in southern Malawi raided a bar, arresting male patrons and female sex workers. The police later released all of the men but took the women to the district hospital where they forced them to undergo HIV tests without their consent. The sex workers who tested HIV-positive were charged with "spreading disease dangerous to life," and before sentencing, a judge read out their HIV status results in open court. During this period, other Malawian sex workers reported similar instances of forced HIV testing to human rights groups.
The Malawian sex workers involved in these cases could have returned to their homes and swallowed the bitterness of these indignities. Instead, fourteen sex workers decided to sue the government and challenge the constitutionality of forced HIV testing. The legal case, among the first of its kind, is making its way, slowly but hopefully, through the Malawi courts.
The human rights organization representing the Malawian sex workers requested help from the human rights legal clinic I direct; my students and I contributed to the case by conducting international and comparative law research on the human rights implications of forced HIV testing. The results were clear: Because forced HIV testing is physically invasive in nature, it violates the right to bodily integrity and security of the person. Because it's a coercive and stigmatizing measure that discourages people from seeking voluntary counseling, testing, and treatment, it violates the right to the highest attainable standard of health. And "outings" of individuals' HIV status without their consent, as was done in open court in Malawi and on police websites in Greece, violate the rights to privacy and dignity, especially because such revelations can lead to stigma, discrimination, and even violence.
Greek officials have attempted to justify the forced HIV testing of sex workers by stating that they're protecting public health after an increase in AIDS cases in the country in the past year. This logic feeds into the stigmatizing notion of women as the main source of sexually transmitted infections and the misguided idea of female sex workers as "vectors of disease" from whom we must protect the general population. Rights-based public health measures should seek to protect all people from HIV infection, and provide those who are HIV-positive with the tools to live healthier lives.
As UNAIDS and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have argued, coercive measures in the fight against HIV/AIDS, including forced HIV testing, produce bad public health outcomes by alienating at-risk groups. Mandatory HIV testing breaches medical confidentiality and facilitates stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS, therefore discouraging vulnerable groups from seeking out what we know works to stem the tide of HIV transmission -- voluntary and confidential counseling, testing, and treatment. Discriminatory state action like the forced HIV testing of sex workers drives further underground some of the people most in need of public health services that facilitate HIV prevention. It also alienates groups, like sex workers, who make fantastic peer educators on HIV.
Our eyes should remain on Malawi as this band of defiant sex workers takes a brave step to affirm their rights and the rights of all people, especially the marginalized, to live free from coercive practices that do not safeguard public health.
Sign the online petition to Greek authorities to stop the forced HIV testing of sex workers.]]>Why the Women's Rights Movement Must Listen to Sex Workerstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15614282012-06-01T17:35:05-04:002012-08-01T05:12:19-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/stated:
"The key demand of the sex workers' movement in Burma, in Asia and all around the world is simple. We demand that sex work is recognized as work. But we have one other key demand, specific to certain parts of the women's movement. We demand that we are not treated as victims."
This defiant rejection of victimhood by a sex worker, speaking on behalf of the global sex workers' rights movement, took place at the recent AWID International Forum on Women's Rights and Development, one of the largest gatherings of women's rights activists in the world. It was an extraordinary moment because there's a tendency by some in the women's movement to reject sex workers like Kthi because they dispute the monolithic narrative that all people in prostitution seek rescue.
The characterization of sex workers fighting for their human rights as "prostituted women" engaged in futile attempts to "organize the enslaved" is perplexing. For five years my students and I have worked with and been inspired by sex workers successfully organizing from the margins of society. Sex workers in India who fight against police abuse, work as safe sex peer educators, and run afterschool programs for their children. Sex workers in South Africa who are leading a national campaign to decriminalize sex work. Sex workers in Malawi who had the courage to sue the government and challenge the constitutionality of forced HIV testing of sex workers without informed consent. And there are countless more examples of sex workers organizing in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America. To label and disregard these advocates as "victims" who cannot comprehend their true "enslavement" is condescending, disempowering, and untrue.
They are fighting for their human rights with creativity and agency and in defiance of deep societal and legal marginalization, forming a chorus of agitation for the right to work, the right to live free from violence, the right to access health care.
Women's rights advocates who view all people in prostitution as "slaves" and make no distinction between those trafficked into prostitution and consenting adult sex workers who are in the trade by choice or circumstance often advocate for anti-sex trafficking policies that harm adult sex workers. Kthi, who has personally experienced the impact of strategies like brothel raids, which often involve indiscriminate round-ups of sex workers in an effort to locate trafficking victims, provided a visceral critique of such policies:
"We live in daily fear of being 'rescued.' The violence happens when feminist rescue organisations work with the police who break into our work places and beat us, rape us and kidnap our children in order to 'save' us... What we need is for the mainstream women's movement to not just silently support our struggle but to speak up and speak out against the extremists who have turned the important movement against real trafficking into a violent war against sex workers."
Kthi's insightful criticisms have been echoed elsewhere. In Cambodia, an anti-sex trafficking law that was supposed to assist people forced into prostitution has been manipulated by police as a pretext to send sex workers to "rehabilitation" centers where they endure physical and sexual abuse and a lack of adequate food and health care, a dire situation documented by groups like Human Rights Watch and the award-winning Asian Pacific Network of Sex Work Projects. The harsh consequences of brothel raids on sex workers have also been detailed in Thailand, Malaysia, India and elsewhere.
We must listen to sex workers. If the women's movement insists on conflating trafficking with sex work and labeling all people in prostitution as slaves who are incapable of speaking on their own behalf, we will insulate ourselves from hearing important critiques of methods that are ostensibly supposed to help sex workers but invariably lead to more rights violations. The women's rights movement should not embrace policies that harm female, male, and transgender sex workers. At the end of her speech, Kthi echoed this sentiment by repeating the cri de coeur of the global sex workers' rights movement: "Nothing about us, without us."]]>Why Economic Justice Is Central to LGBT Rightstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14796012012-05-07T11:38:52-04:002012-07-07T05:12:01-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) international forum on economic rights, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates from around the world highlighted the urgent need to link economic justice and LGBT rights. As one representative of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission noted, the United States LGBT rights movement has focused largely on civil and political issues, including hate crime legislation, partnership benefits, gay marriage, and repeal of the shameful military policy "Don't Ask/Don't Tell." The link between economic justice and LGBT rights, however, in both the United States and abroad, has received considerably less attention.
In general, there is a dearth of data regarding poverty within the LGBT community. This must change so that organizations can design effective interventions to assist LGBT people who disproportionately suffer economic marginalization because of homophobia and transphobia.
The limited economic statistics we do have regarding how the LGBT community experiences economic marginalization are cause for alarm. In the United States, for instance, children in same-sex households experience rates of poverty double those of children in heterosexual ones. Transgender people in San Francisco have a 35 percent unemployment rate. Nearly 24 percent of lesbian and bisexual women live in poverty, compared with 19 percent of heterosexual women. I confronted equally disturbing economic realities during a research project my students and I conducted on employment discrimination against the transgender community in Lebanon.
The stories of economic exclusion we heard in Beirut were sobering. Common experiences included blatantly discriminatory hiring practices. "Aziza," a transgender woman from Algeria, found it impossible to find a job as a nurse in Beirut despite having a university degree and 16 years of work experience. Once employers realized she was transgender, they refused to hire her. When Aziza finally did secure employment as a home caregiver, her employer assigned her to long shifts and refused her days off, knowing she would have little choice but to accept this treatment because her employment options were so limited. Experiencing this sort of flagrant discrimination resulted in some transgender people stating they had stopped looking for work altogether.
Transgender individuals we interviewed who were able to secure employment faced levels of exploitation and harassment by employers and coworkers that often drove them from their jobs. When "Ramona" began transitioning from male to female, her boss immediately lowered her salary. When "Gloria" enlisted in the Lebanese military, the constant sexual harassment she endured as a transgender woman from supervisors and other enlistees was so unrelenting that she pretended to be suicidal in order to be discharged.
We also learned that transgender youth often experience abuse from teachers and classmates that can lead to early exits from school, making them less qualified and prepared to enter the job market. In addition, transgender individuals with disapproving families may be driven from their homes, losing their families' financial support and their place of residence, dramatically increasing their vulnerability to poverty.
Advocates at the conference from China, Kyrgyzstan, Namibia, the Philippines, South Africa, the United States, and other parts of the world, made it clear that LGBT people in their countries also disproportionately experience economic discrimination, underemployment, and unemployment. They all agreed that there is a need for more research on how LGBT people experience poverty. Such data is essential in designing effective interventions for economic empowerment.
One such innovative intervention highlighted at the conference was the Coalition for Advancement of Lesbian Business in Africa (CALBiA), which was established in 2011 and seeks to economically empower African lesbians and transgender people by assisting them with start-up capital for small and medium businesses. Interventions such as the CALBiA model that seek to advance the financial independence and security of LGBT people are much needed. We cannot ignore the ways in which poverty and economic stigmatization disproportionately affect LGBT people, especially during these difficult times of global economic malaise and injustice.]]>Confronting Police Abuse of Sex Workerstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11307172011-12-15T16:44:51-05:002012-02-14T05:12:02-05:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers, observed on December 17, lay in the decades-long serial murder of sex workers by the Green River Killer. While these are heartbreakingly real forms of violence against sex workers, one area that receives scant public attention despite its entrenched global reality is police abuse of sex workers.
The illegal status of sex work in most countries has not eradicated prostitution. Instead, criminalization has increased sex workers' vulnerability to human rights abuses and created fertile ground for police exploitation, especially of street-based sex workers.
For example, in South Africa, where sex work has been illegal since the former apartheid regime criminalized it in 1957, police officers often fine sex workers inordinate sums of money and pocket the cash, resulting in a pattern of economic extortion of sex workers by state agents. For some sex workers, the cost of a police bribe to evade arrest can equal an entire night's worth of work. In other instances, police have exhibited shameless levels of exploitation: In one reported example, a police officer in Cape Town demanded a sex worker give him money in lieu of arrest; when the sex worker told him she possessed only a meager 10 South African rand, or the equivalent of $1.25, the police officer even pocketed that pittance.
In addition to economic abuse, police exploitation of sex workers manifests in other disturbing ways. South African sex workers report that police confiscate condoms to use as evidence of prostitution; demand sexual favors in exchange for release from jail or to avoid arrest; physically assault and rape sex workers; actively encourage or passively condone inmate sexual abuse of transgender female sex workers assigned to male prison cells; and use municipal laws to harass and arrest sex workers even when they're engaged in activities unrelated to prostitution. "When you get arrested," notes one sex worker, "they put you in the bad cells, with wet blankets, no food, no phone calls allowed. And not everything you had with you -- money, cell phones, necklace -- gets given back." Many sex workers get trapped in a cycle of arrests that only serves to drain state resources and further entrench sex workers' vulnerability.
Police abuse of sex workers is not a uniquely South African phenomenon. It is echoed in documented reports throughout the world, from New York City to Cambodia to Papua New Guinea to Eastern Europe and beyond.
Police are also often impediments to sex workers' access to justice when they are victims of violence. "To gather evidence of a crime against a sex worker, they have to first take it seriously," argues one sex worker about the lack of police attention to reports of violence. "If we go to the police to report abuse, we're made fun of, we're told 'you deserve it.' They chase you away," notes another sex worker. In addition, because of the continual police harassment they face, many sex workers don't bother to officially report abuse to police. Most sex workers' experience with criminal justice systems is not as survivors of abuse but as "perpetrators" of the "crime" of prostitution.
Of course, not all police officers abuse sex workers. There are police officers that seek to stop those who violate sex workers' rights -- whether they are clients, intimate partners, or police officers themselves. But the moral stigma that is attached to the criminalization of prostitution often leads to the deeply offensive attitude, on the part of some police, prosecutors, and others, that sex workers somehow consent to abuse. Prohibitionist legal regimes insist that all sex workers are criminals, making it almost impossible for society to view sex workers as legitimate victims of violent crime when it occurs.
Criminalization, sadly, has resulted in the invisibility of violence against sex workers to societies-at-large. Decriminalization would allow sex workers to come out of the shadows and defend their rights, ensuring that the crimes committed against them by police and others will no longer be hidden.
But even under prohibitionist regimes, much can and should be done to ensure that police cannot abuse sex workers with impunity. Police departments must train law enforcement to treat abuses against sex workers with the same attention and urgency they would give reports by any victim of violence. Police and justice departments must properly investigate and punish police officers accused of economically or physically abusing sex workers. Formal police outreach to sex workers must ensure that those who have been the victims of violence, even while committing prostitution, will be given assistance and will not themselves be prosecuted for breaking anti-prostitution laws.
Sex workers deserve the basic respect and protection from violence that each nation owes its citizens.
]]>Africa's LGBT Rights Movementtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8566952011-05-03T15:46:00-04:002011-07-03T05:12:02-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/Fannyann Eddy was brutally murdered while she worked alone in the office of the gay rights organization she founded in Sierra Leone. She was a courageous crusader for the rights of Africa's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Years after Fannyann's death, the state of LGBT rights in Africa may at first blush seem woefully bleak, but in fact now is a time for cautious hope.
African NGOs and community groups championing the rights of Africa's sexual minorities are publicly condemning institutionalized homophobia, filing lawsuits arguing for the recognition of LGBT rights, and taking their grievances directly to government officials -- collective action that was exceedingly rare at the time of Fannyann Eddy's death.
In spite of ongoing discrimination against Africa's sexual minorities, fearless advocates fighting for LGBT rights continue to win small but significant victories. As the law school human rights program I lead grew, I remembered Fannyann and looked for opportunities to collaborate with some of those brave protest voices.
My program began working with a Malawian human rights NGO on a project crafting constitutional and international legal arguments against Malawi's anti-sodomy law, which criminalizes sex between men. While working on the project, we were shocked when in January the Malawi government passed a new discriminatory law also criminalizing sex between women.
One could certainly argue that Malawi's recent criminalization of lesbian sex is yet another example of rampant institutionalized homophobia on the continent. But, refreshingly, over 40 African NGOs quickly condemned the new law as an affront to human rights in a strongly worded public letter of protest. Africa's mushrooming indigenous LGBT rights movement created the political space for this swift and strong civil society condemnation. Public rebukes of homophobia in what is essentially a "closeted" continent are deeply important -- when marginalized groups refuse to silently swallow the bitterness of their suffering, true social movements can blossom.
There was a similar strong public denunciation of the recent homophobic and shameful action of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the continent's leading quasi-judicial human rights body. In 2010, the Commission, tasked with promoting and protecting human rights on the continent, refused to grant observer status to an African lesbian rights NGO, despite the fact that the group had fulfilled all of the Commission's administrative requirements. African civil society organizations publicly condemned the Commission's disgraceful and discriminatory decision, flooding the Commission with letters of protest, bringing media attention to the injustice, and demanding that the Commission live up to its human rights mandate and reverse its decision.
In addition to public condemnation of institutionalized acts of homophobia, African gay rights activists have begun to take their righteous grievances to court. In a landmark case for gay rights in Africa, in January the Ugandan High Court held that it is unconstitutional for Ugandan media companies to out alleged homosexuals in their publications. Most importantly, the court affirmed the rights of LGBT people to privacy and dignity.
One of the main plaintiffs in the lawsuit was David Kato, a leading Ugandan gay rights activist who sued a Ugandan newspaper after it ran a cover story with his picture above the title "Hang Them." Weeks after winning the lawsuit, Kato was murdered. The successful lawsuit was one of his last acts of courage before his death, and it will serve as persuasive and powerful legal precedent for future lawsuits on the continent challenging attacks on LGBT rights.
In April, human rights defenders in Botswana filed a landmark case in the country's High Court, suing the government in an attempt to decriminalize homosexuality. And gay rights activists in South Africa are soon expected to file a lawsuit in South Africa's Constitutional Court challenging the government's failure to sign on to a United Nations statement condemning human rights violations against LGBT people, despite the fact that gay rights are recognized in the South African constitution.
Activists have also been taking their grievances straight to the halls of government. A small group of South African lesbian activists rallying against 'corrective rape,' a hate crime in which men rape lesbian women in order to 'turn' them straight, recently led a bold international petition drive, obtained tens of thousands of signatures from 163 countries condemning the practice, and presented it directly to the South African Parliament. Due to their activism, South African government officials have vowed to develop a national action plan to confront 'corrective rape.'
These are but a few examples of the overlooked victories and defiant determination that mark the burgeoning African LGBT rights movement. Throughout the continent, organizations and activists bravely championing LGBT rights, echoing the spirit of Fannyann Eddy, refuse to be silent in the face of discrimination. It is with this spirit of optimism and fierce determination that those of us dedicated to the rights of LGBT people everywhere must, in solidarity, approach the struggle for LGBT rights in Africa.]]>The Architecture of Maternal Deathtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8441882011-04-07T15:32:21-04:002011-06-07T05:12:01-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/This post was co-authored by Tarek Meguid
The architectural design of two newly built public maternity hospitals in Malawi, which has one of the world's highest rates of women dying in childbirth, seeks to respect the human rights of birthing women and has had a significant impact on Malawi's maternal health care system. Ill-designed government-run maternal health centers litter many poor countries and contribute to unacceptably high maternal death rates. There's a pressing global need to design public maternity units that uphold the dignity of socially disadvantaged women.
Architecture is not a neutral backdrop to our lives. The basic design of maternity hospitals can affirm or negate women's rights and facilitate or impede more equitable power balances between patients and health workers.
For decades the design of Bottom Hospital, once the largest public maternity unit in Malawi's capital city Lilongwe, adversely affected health care delivery to the country's poorest pregnant women. British colonial rulers designed and built Bottom for the 'native' population, and the Malawian government under dictator Kamuzu Banda -- supported by Western development aid -- later updated the hospital but preserved its original blueprint. These elites' condescending attitudes towards the poor were evident in Bottom's inhumane design. The hospital was constructed with only one labor room, one operating room and one recovery room, depriving women of their rights to privacy, dignity, adequate health care and in many cases, their right to life.
Pregnant women were expected to give birth together in Bottom's one labor room, sometimes underneath beds on the floor. Because of the lack of privacy in the labor room, birthing women were not allowed to have family members present for emotional support. Oceans of concerned relatives filled the grounds immediately outside the hospital, nervously awaiting news of their loved ones in a country where maternal mortality is a leading cause of death among women.
With the hospital's one operating room, mothers and babies routinely died preventable deaths waiting their turn for emergency obstetric care. Patients whose babies had died during delivery shared a post-op room with luckier women who cradled healthy babies in their arms. These realities ensured that women were treated without sensitivity or dignity and that their access to quality health care was compromised.
By denying women their rights to privacy, dignity and adequate health care, Bottom became a continuation of the injustices poor women faced in their everyday lives outside of the hospital, instead of a repudiation of those indignities. The building itself was abusive.
Architecture in a health care setting can also profoundly shape health workers' experiences and attitudes. Bottom's constricting design poisoned health workers' relationships with patients. The health workers became desensitized to the daily scenes of patients birthing on the floor and dying from lack of emergency care. The environment did not allow women dignified births, and health workers began to view the women through this dehumanizing prism, often becoming abusive towards patients themselves. Bottom's dilapidated buildings and inhumane design also sent a discouraging message to health workers about the value of their services. Those who could move on to greener pastures often did, resulting in an even more desperate situation in the maternity hospital.
After years of advocacy, maternal health rights activists from Bottom Hospital won international and national funding and support to design and build the two new humane public maternity units in Lilongwe to replace Bottom.
The architectural design of the newly built Bwaila Hospital and Ethel Mutharika Maternity Wing at Kamuzu Central Hospital responds to the needs of birthing women. The hospitals are outfitted with multiple operating and recovery rooms, and all women, including the poor and disadvantaged, give birth in their own private delivery rooms -- the first such public facilities in Africa.
The individual private rooms are large enough for patients to be accompanied by birth attendants, family members or partners, affording women the privacy and emotional support they need during delivery. Additionally, the creation of individual private delivery rooms has led to the welcome engagement of fathers who have exhibited keen interest in participating in the birthing process.
The new facilities have also boosted health worker morale. The designers hoped the new maternity units would send a strong message to health workers about the value of their services, keeping them connected to their environment in a way that benefits mothers and babies.
One of the most important goals of the new maternity hospitals' design was the creation of a humane space where women could lay claim to their power as patients. Because of Bottom's poor design women were shown little respect and thus exhibited almost no agency. Even a newborn's death did not prompt most mothers to ask questions or demand answers. This lack of agency often displayed by poor women in the health care context is the result of the oppressive and intimidating nature of the birthing experience in ill-designed government-run health centers in many poor countries.
Yet there has been a remarkable change in the confidence level of women giving birth in Lilongwe's new public maternity hospitals. They are beginning to exhibit agency in the birthing process, asking questions and demanding answers, willing and able to fight for their rights as patients.
Although basic architectural design has the power to contribute to safe childbirth under conditions consistent with human dignity, it is not enough. The human tragedy hidden behind sterile maternal mortality statistics continues in Malawi and other countries struggling with the scourge of high maternal death rates. The biggest challenge in realizing maternal health rights is the implementation of already existing guidelines and roadmaps, as well as the development of new tools to facilitate patients' agency. But a building, as a profound and functional expression of the respect for the human rights of poor women birthing in poor countries, is a bright, shining beginning.
Tarek Meguid, M.D., is the former head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Bwaila Hospital and Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi. Chi Mgbako is clinical associate professor in the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School in New York City.]]>Aiding Children Accused of Witchcrafttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8161352011-03-14T17:32:41-04:002011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/mobile legal-aid clinic, which was offering free legal services for witchcraft cases in her rural community. She came to us for help.
My law students and I were in southern Malawi partnering with a Malawian N.G.O., the Center for Human Rights Education Advice and Assistance, to run the mobile legal-aid clinic. In the months before our arrival, the students researched the legal and social contours of witchcraft accusations in Malawi and other African countries, guided by our Malawian partners who work on witchcraft cases year-round.
Their research revealed that witchcraft accusations against children in countries including Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria have increased in recent years, sparked and sustained in part by unrelenting poverty and conflict, family structures weakened by HIV/AIDS, and burgeoning religious sects that encourage child witch-hunts. These accusations often result in tragic tales of child abuse and abandonment.
During the mobile legal-aid clinic we proposed potential solutions tailored to each client's case, such as legal advice dissuading clients from making witchcraft accusations and police referral letters in serious cases of violence. But with some cases, we had to humbly accept that the power of the law is not always enough. During our initial consultations with Selene, she found our explanations of Malawi's witchcraft law, which outlaws accusations of witchcraft, to be unhelpful. She didn't believe the law offered an appealing solution to her predicament.
We had to look beyond the law. We switched gears and asked Selene to bring Emma into the clinic. When we first met Emma she was wearing a blue dress the color of the sky. She was painfully shy but obviously a special, magnetic child. We all noticed her beautiful eyes, deep pools of curiosity.
We sat in a small circle with Emma underneath a tent. She told us that the witches had punished her for discussing their nightly trips to the forest. "I've heard of other children who are also taken at night by witches," she said sadly. At one point, she said the "spirits" were watching her, and she became quiet and withdrawn.
Selene and Emma truly believed something terrible had befallen Emma. In order to help them, my students and I had to understand the context in which we were working. Many Malawians hold similar beliefs about the possibility of bewitchment, and we had heard numerous disturbing tales involving children and witchcraft from other clients in the clinic.
We moved to solutions. The goal of our "intervention" was for Selene and Emma to reject the idea that Emma was bewitched. They told us they were devout Christians and had fervently prayed for Emma's protection. So, even though the students and I were a motley crew of atheists, Jews, Sikhs and spiritualists, we decided to try and dislodge Selene's and Emma's belief that Emma was bewitched by appealing to their unwavering confidence in the protective, positive elements of their faith. We understood that our personal beliefs were irrelevant.
We first suggested that Selene and Emma chant nightly affirmations rejecting the idea that Emma is a witch. We also told them to repeat these affirmations when Emma awoke in the night and when other school children teased her. Then we all held hands in the circle and chanted in unison, "Emma is not a witch. Emma is a daughter of God." As we repeated the chant in both English and the local language Chichewa, Emma eagerly looked at all of us, intently following the movement of our lips, a smile as warm as summer slowly appearing on her once forlorn face. And then the rain suddenly began to pour, a thunderous percussion to our chants.
The next day we invited Selene and Emma back to the clinic for a follow-up session. We were relieved when they told us that for the first time in a year Emma had peacefully slept through the night. The "witches" hadn't come to take her. Instead, Emma said she had dreamt of all of us forming a circle of protection around her.
We wrote a "contract" to bind the group -- a written affirmation in Chichewa rejecting the idea that Emma is, or ever was, a witch -- and we all signed our names and gave it to Emma for safe keeping. Selene also confidently, lovingly signed her name to the contract. And then we held hands and again chanted, "Emma is not a witch. Emma is a daughter of God." Curiously, as soon as we started to chant, the clear sky once again began to thunder.
Our Malawian partner N.G.O. conducts monthly follow-up checks with Selene and Emma. Selene happily reports that Emma is thriving and blossoming. My students send Emma care packages with notes in Chichewa telling her how special she is and encouraging her love of math and dreams of becoming a teacher.
Many other stories involving children and witchcraft do not end on such a bright note of hope. To confront the relatively recent phenomenon of accusations of witchcraft against children, governments struggling with this issue must develop public sensitization campaigns that firmly dispel the crippling, destructive notion that children can be witches. Governments must also rally NGOs, religious organizations, traditional healers, police, and the justice system to join in the fight against child abuse and abandonment linked to witchcraft, drawing on the deep reservoirs of love and care for children that exist in African communities.
When I think of Emma, I remember her moonbeam smile and her radiant innocence. But I also think of the thousands of children accused of witchcraft whose futures will not be as bright, absent critical child protection intervention and support.
Names in this article have been changed to protect client confidentiality.
]]>Honoring the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workerstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7968602010-12-14T23:08:21-05:002011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/
The event will likely pass with barely a whisper of media notice, and many women's rights groups will ignore or remain blithely unaware of the occasion. It is an uncomfortable global truth that we do not regard violence committed against non-trafficked sex workers as violence against women.
Our staunch moral judgment of women who by choice or circumstance participate in the sex industry -- buttressed by laws that criminalize, stigmatize, and condemn many of them to unsafe working conditions without police protection -- results in the shatteringly silent incidents of rapes, assaults, and murders of sex workers. This unforgiving moral judgment is unfair. Most sex workers are trying to do the best they can for themselves and their families in choosing among the options life presents them.
Why do we not view violence against sex workers as violence against women? Because we do not see sex workers as women. We rarely view them through a multi-dimensional prism of personhood. Our distaste for their work and our beliefs about their ethical posture denies their womanhood and disallows us from registering violence against sex workers as violence against women.
Many sex workers reject this moralized dismissal of their personhood. Several years ago I had the good fortune of collaborating on a human rights project with empowered sex workers in India. I still remember one sari-clad, doe-eyed sex worker defiantly noting, "In the past we thought that sex work was not a good thing and anything bad that happened to us we just accepted it and cried. But we learned that we deserve to be treated not as good or bad but as women."
Our underlying moral judgment of sex workers may also account for why many women's rights groups do not actively package and promote violence against non-trafficked sex workers as an urgent issue of violence against women.
Women's rights advocates are often more comfortable focusing their attention on violence against victims of sex trafficking who are forced into prostitution via threats, abduction, or economic exploitation. These trafficked women and girls fit more squarely into society's moral paradigm of the 'innocent victim' than non-trafficked female and transgender victims of violence who may choose to participate in the sex trade.
Feminists, conservative politicians, and religious groups have formed an unlikely alliance that perpetuates this hierarchy of victimhood, which marginalizes the pain of non-trafficked sex workers whose moral positioning is less palatable to the vast majority who disapprove of what they do. This hierarchy renders us less sensitive to their suffering and leaves many women's rights groups strangely silent on instances of violence against non-trafficked sex workers.
Sex trafficking, let me be clear, is rightly condemned as an international crime worthy of sustained eradication efforts. But in their zealous efforts to fight global sex trafficking, many women's rights advocates have supported raids of brothels that have often led to violence perpetrated against non-trafficked sex workers.
The Indian sex workers I partnered with were terrorized when an NGO-initiated raid led by local police purporting to rescue trafficked child prostitutes resulted in the arrest of 70 sex workers in the community, none of whom were victims or perpetrators of sex trafficking.
In seeking to 'save' underage trafficked sex workers, the advocates had perhaps unwittingly fostered violence against women who had bravely created a sex workers' collective demanding freedom from societal and occupational abuse. "We say, save us from saviors!" the Indian sex workers proclaimed.
Indeed, women's rights advocates cannot justify violating the rights of one group of women while trying to save another. Donors and advocates supporting anti-sex trafficking efforts must ensure that police anti-trafficking units are not engaged in abuses of non-trafficked sex workers.
Amid the lit candles and the haunting reading of names, I will attend a vigil to commemorate sex workers who have been assaulted, battered, and murdered, who we have chosen to criminalize instead of protect. There will be signs and posters that say "violence against sex workers = violence against women." There will be passionate appeals for the building of broad women's coalitions to decry this violence. And, hopefully, there will not be an empty seat in the house.
Chi Mgbako is clinical associate professor of law at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School in New York City and is the co-author of "Sex Work and Human Rights in Africa," published by the Fordham International Law Journal.
]]>Sierra Leone Youth Call for an End to Female Genital Mutilationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7884152010-11-26T13:35:25-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/
I witnessed hundreds of Sierra Leonean students in sweltering lecture halls and classrooms highlight FGM's physical, sexual, and mental consequences. The workshops were a clarion call from Sierra Leonean youth to end the practice of FGM.
I conducted the workshops in partnership with seasoned Sierra Leonean activists from the anti-FGM organization Centre for Safe Motherhood Youth and Child Outreach ("CESMYCO") but still assumed it would to be difficult for students to speak openly about FGM. But they were eager and willing to discuss the practice.
My partners and I commenced each workshop by asking students to identify traditional practices that affect girls in their communities. We avoided any direct mention of FGM so that the students could initiate the discussion themselves. Almost immediately, and without hesitation, students raised the issue of FGM.
At the Kambia Islamic Secondary School, students highlighted FGM's harmful medical effects. They eagerly raised their hands to note that FGM can "expose girls to disease" due to the re-use of unsanitary razor blades, cause uncontrollable bleeding, have a "negative effect on giving birth," and even result in death.
When students raised the issue of FGM's health consequences, we asked how many students knew a girl who had died after undergoing FGM. Without fail, a flurry of hands would reach for the sky.
At the Madina Secondary School, a student confidently noted that she disagreed with FGM because it "can remove healthy organs." This statement was an insightful repudiation of FGM proponents who argue that female genital cutting and male circumcision are synonymous. They erroneously equate the clitoris, which is indeed a genital organ, with the foreskin of the penis. The correct male equivalent of FGM would be penile amputation.
The students also bravely referred to FGM's negative effects on healthy female sexual functioning. A student at the Kambia Islamic Secondary School stated that she disagreed with FGM because "it decreases sexual urge." At the Federation Junior Secondary School another student shyly said that she objected to the practice because "girls lose feeling." At the Kolenten Senior Secondary School one student boldly stated that FGM "can hurt the child physically and mentally because the clitoris is a sensitive organ connected to the mind." I was deeply impressed with their sophisticated notion of the physical and psychological layers of female sexuality.
The complicated effect of FGM on female sexuality is an often-marginalized aspect of the FGM debate. When I first met Sierra Leonean activist and CESMYCO director Laurel Bangura, who conducted the school workshops with me, she spoke openly about FGM's negative effects on female sexuality. Too often this focus is dismissed as a Western preoccupation. I remember Laurel speaking movingly about the older Sierra Leonean women who had undergone FGM in their girlhoods and still mourn the loss of a part of their sexual lives.
The students who raised the issue of sexuality were making a salient and oft-ignored point - they are forced to undergo a practice that has negative effects on their future sexual functioning at ages when they have no choice in the matter.
In addition to highlighting FGM's physical, mental and sexual effects, the students were also very concerned with FGM's impact on girls' access to education. In Sierra Leone, and in other African countries, FGM "fleeing" stories are common. Young girls who fear the practice will sometimes flee their villages - acts of courage that often disrupt their education. Several years ago, while working on my first FGM project in Sierra Leone, I met a group of young sisters who had fled their village in Magburaka to escape FGM. High-ranking FGM initiators had attempted to force the girls to undergo FGM and begin training to become FGM initiators, which would have halted the girls' formal education. To avoid this fate, the sisters ran away from their village to seek refuge with a human rights organization.
Like the Magburaka girls, student testimonials from our workshops reveal that children are under enormous pressure to undergo FGM even when they have grave misgivings about the practice. In one of the more powerful moments of our workshops, students at the Umuro Muchtarr Muslim Secondary School said they wanted "education" instead of "cutting." "You can go to the bush and [the FGM initiators] can teach you what they want, but they shouldn't touch you," declared a student. The rest of the students burst into applause. They were affirming that traditional rituals from childhood to adulthood should not involve harm.
The final school we visited was different. Gone were the hands eagerly flying into the air to discuss FGM. Gone was the shimmering confidence of the students in the previous schools. Laurel Bangura stepped to the front of the silent classroom and asked how many of the students knew a girl who had died in the bush after undergoing FGM. Many students slowly raised their hands.
Laurel asked, "Is it right for girls to die in the bush because they've been cut?"
"Maybe death is our destiny," one girl softly replied.
"Death should not be any child's destiny," Laurel answered.
I watched the students listening with rapt attention as Laurel made the case against the practice and medicalization of FGM. She spoke, with quiet power, of the human rights of women and girls to integrity and freedom from discrimination. The schoolgirls sat in their white hijab head coverings, like perfect rows of precious eggs, leaning in closer and intently listening with wide, open eyes.
]]>International Donors Must Fund Breakthrough Female-Controlled HIV Prevention Geltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7521012010-10-11T10:04:00-04:002011-05-25T17:55:20-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/
If funding does not materialize, an unprecedented opportunity to reduce HIV infection rates among women will be lost. African women comprise the majority of new HIV transmission cases in sub-Saharan Africa and are the group most likely to benefit from the development of this female-controlled HIV prevention tool.
Although condoms remain a highly effective method of HIV prevention, they are male-controlled. If a vaginal microbicide gel that can block HIV arrives on the market it will be a significant leap forward in the struggle for female empowerment and women's health. Women would not have to receive their intimate partners' permission to use the gel, which they could apply before or after sexual intercourse.
Several years ago I, along with colleagues at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, co-produced a documentary on women and AIDS in Malawi. After conducting hundreds of interviews with Malawian women throughout the country, we found that women's inability to negotiate condom use in their intimate relationships greatly increased their vulnerability to HIV. This truth is echoed throughout Africa, indeed throughout the world, and it was clear from our interviews that women need a method of protection that they can control.
During our community meetings with rural villagers they reported that it was impossible for women to insist on condom use because their husbands often interpreted such demands as veiled accusations of infidelity. This predicament should not be foreign to many women here in the United States where it can be challenging to negotiate condom use in intimate relationships that are supposed to be monogamous.
The countless Malawian women we interviewed cited poverty and violence as contributing factors to their inability to insist on safe-sex practices with their partners. Malawian men have primary access to land and household assets, which entrenches women's financial dependence. Women whose relationships with male partners are their only viable routes to economic survival have less power to negotiate condom use. "If you don't have unprotected sex, the man won't provide food for the family. You will get nothing," noted Daphne Gondwe, president of the Coalition of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi. "How are you going to live?"
In addition to economic dependence, domestic violence also contributes to women's inability to insist on condom use. A widowed HIV-positive mother of five feared demanding condom use in her abusive marriage: "I was afraid I might be exposed to HIV, but I couldn't even think about using a condom [with my husband]," she confided. Another HIV-positive woman whose husband assaulted her when she refused sex without a condom simply stated: "I had no power to say no condom, no sex."
Scientific researchers who desperately sought to develop a highly effective anti-retroviral vaginal gel understood that the complex dynamics of intimate partner relationships, especially those marked by economic dependency and violence, highlight the need for female-controlled HIV prevention methods.
In July, researchers in South Africa announced the breakthrough microbicide trial's results at the International AIDS Conference. They conducted the study in both a rural and urban area in South Africa and revealed that HIV-negative women who used the tenofovir-laced microbicide gel in 80 percent of their sex acts decreased their chances of contracting HIV by 54 percent. With average adherence, the HIV infection rate was reduced by 39 percent.
Despite the South African trial's great promise, less than 60 percent of the $100 million needed to fund subsequent research has been pledged, as donors shift from HIV efforts to other global health issues. Although global health priorities like maternal and child health should be major concerns for governments and private donors, we must not forfeit the opportunity to give women the tools they need to protect themselves from HIV.
African women make up 60 percent of new HIV transmissions in Africa. That number jumps to 75 percent for young African women between the ages of 15 and 24. If governments and private donors pledge the funds for two more trials to confirm the groundbreaking South African research, then the full-scale production, marketing, and public education needed to get the gel into women's hands and confront these staggering statistics can begin. Millions of women's lives hang in the balance. ]]>Africa's Women Turn 50tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.6895172010-08-20T16:06:15-04:002011-05-25T17:25:21-04:00Chi Mgbakohttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/chi-mgbako/
Without a second wave of emancipation for Africa's women, fifty years from now the continent is doomed to celebrate its liberation centennial grappling with the same dreams deferred and opportunities lost.
The state of African women five decades after independence is both sobering and hopeful. If you were born today, with the highest chance of contracting HIV/AIDS, dying in childbirth, exiting school prematurely, or suffering sexual assault as the result of armed conflict, by most indicators, you would likely be born a woman in Africa. And if you were born with a high propensity for courage with the potential to carry an entire continent on your back? The answer might well be the same.
As a professor and human rights advocate working on women's rights in Africa, and a dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria, I have witnessed firsthand how national emancipation has not translated into women's liberation.
In acknowledgment of the continent's failures regarding women's empowerment, the African Union declared the years 2010 - 2020 as the "African Women's Decade," an opportunity to right political, social and economic wrongs through the implementation of aggressive gender-sensitive policies.
Of course, it is much easier to declare a women's decade, than to muster the political will to realize one. But as African states look back on fifty years of independence, they must recognize that women's emancipation is a central component of Africa's true liberation.
"My bones will rise again!"
African women's contribution to the continent's liberation struggles often remains in the shadows of history, even though women played a central role in national emancipation.
While many can identify Kwame Nkrumah as Ghana's liberation hero, few know of Nana Yaa Asantewaa, the Queen Mother of the Asante people of Ghana, who led a rebellion against British colonialists as early as 1900. Even the Ghanaian high school students in an African women's history class I taught were unaware of Yaa Asantewaa's heroics on the battlefield, where she famously challenged her male counterparts: "If you the men of Asante will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon my fellow women ... We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields."
The students also learned of the legendary Nehanda of Zimbabwe, the female spiritual leader who led the first Chimurenga, or war of liberation, against colonialists in 1896. For her leadership role in the revolt, Nehanda was hanged by the British, and famously proclaimed before her death at the gallows, "My bones will rise again!"
Every morning, the students would arrive in class eager for more lessons on the brave African women buried in their history, spinning in their sunbeam yellow uniforms and shouting in unison, "My bones will rise again!"
Nehanda's prophecy came true. Her legacy, and that of other resistance heroines like Yaa Asantewaa, lived on in post-World War II liberation struggles in which African women took up arms, worked as spies, boycotted racist laws, and formed anti-colonial women's political organizations.
African women's sacrifices and contributions during the struggle for liberation did not translate into formal positions of power in post-colonial Africa.
Women and political power
Men have remained the central players in African power politics since independence.
In 2005, there was an historic break in this uninterrupted chain of male political dominance when Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia was elected the first female head of state in Africa. I was in Liberia during the election and was fortunate enough to receive a coveted ticket to the inauguration ceremony.
Foreign luminaries were everywhere, but the stars of the ceremony were the countless African women dressed in their colorful finest who journeyed from all over the continent to witness the historic event. They formed a chorus of goodwill and blanketed the festivities with their unfettered pride. At the end of her speech, Johnson Sirleaf spoke directly to the women of Africa and said that things had changed forever.
Although Johnson Sirleaf's tenure has not been without controversy, she is widely regarded as a capable, no-nonsense leader. The early promise of her election was accompanied by the silent acknowledgement that male leaders have failed the African populace.
Despite the dismal, and oftentimes criminal, performance of Africa's strongmen, there are few competent African women who are given the support and opportunity to compete and succeed in national electoral politics. (Rwanda, which has the highest percentage of women in parliament of any country in the world, is a shining exception.)
Low levels of education, feminized poverty, and patriarchal notions of politics as a man's domain all conspire to lock women out of political office. Much must still be done to open up political space for African women. At the local level, successful women's associations have spread like bush fire, with strong female leaders providing steady guidance. Women's leadership abilities on the community-level must be given the opportunity to translate to the national stage. Programs that provide female candidates with financial and technical support and skills training as well gender-based affirmative action may be some additional methods of increasing the number of African women engaged in electoral politics.
A greater number of African female political leaders, specifically those with proven track records on gender sensitivity, would help garner and sustain the political will needed to focus on the myriad issues affecting African women today, such as HIV/AIDS.
"I refuse to die of AIDS. I refuse to die of bitterness."
HIV/AIDS is one of the biggest challenges that many post-independence African states have faced. The majority of people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa are women and girls, who make up 60% of new HIV transmissions and 75% of HIV-positive people between the ages of 15 and 24. It has become a gendered disease.
In Malawi in southeastern Africa, where I co-produced a documentary on the feminization of HIV/AIDS, economic insecurity, lack of sexual autonomy, and gender-based violence, increase women's vulnerability to HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
HIV-positive women in Malawi have become the face of AIDS in their country. Daphne Gondwe, the co-founder and president of Malawi's Coalition of Women Living with HIV/AIDS, once defiantly told me, "I refuse to die of AIDS. And I refuse to die of bitterness." Instead, she formed an advocacy organization that now counts over 50,000 HIV-positive Malawian women as members. I have met hundreds of them, all forging ahead in their lives with a courage and resilience that is deeply humbling.
Policymakers in Africa should take advantage of recent findings concerning women and AIDS. New evidence-based studies have proven that gender-based violence doubles women's risk for HIV, regularly used female microbicidal gels can reduce a woman's chances of contracting the virus by up to 54%, and small monthly cash transfers to school-age girls can cut their chances of contracting HIV by half. There must be political will to put resources into the application of these encouraging breakthroughs.
"These pregnant women die because they are female, poor, and voiceless."
Maternal mortality is another major health crisis affecting African women. They suffer the world's highest death rates from pregnancy and childbirth. In some African countries, like Malawi, pregnant women are dying at the same rate that birthing women died in medieval Europe.
In 1936, British colonialists built "Bottom Hospital" in the capital city of Lilongwe, Malawi, where for decades, some of the country's poorest women gave birth in a government-run maternity unit with one labor ward and one operating room where over-worked and outnumbered health workers assisted between 12,000 and 13,000 women a year. It was by its very design and operation a human rights violation - robbing women of their rights to adequate healthcare, privacy, dignity, and in many cases, their right to life.
When I asked one of the heroic obstetricians at the hospital why pregnant women in Malawi die in such staggering numbers, he replied, with righteous anger, "These pregnant women die because they are female, poor, and voiceless."
Wearied of the relentless and preventable maternal deaths stalking them at every turn, health workers at Bottom Hospital advocated nationally and internationally for the funds and political will to shut down Bottom Hospital and build two new humane public maternity units in Lilongwe. Bottom Hospital, where countless women lost their lives, now sits empty - a ghost in central Lilongwe.
In its place are two brand new public maternity hospitals, outfitted with new equipment and operating rooms, where the poor and disadvantaged give birth in their own private delivery rooms - the first such facilities in Africa.
The new public maternity units in Lilongwe are examples of the small victories that sustain our hope. But for lasting change in the fight against maternal mortality in Africa, politicians must also spend more resources on retaining the doctors and nurses who often look for greener pastures abroad, invest in the necessary drugs and equipment that can prevent deaths, provide HIV-positive pregnant women with access to antiretrovirals, and increase women's access to health units by fortifying roads and transportation access.
"She is just like you."
Standing in front of hundreds of students at a school assembly in northern Sierra Leone under the sweltering West African sun, where I am leading a human rights workshop, I look out at the sea of bright-eyed schoolgirls' faces and wonder, how many of these girls will eventually die premature deaths during childbirth? How many will contract HIV?
How many will have their first sexual experience be one of violence? How many will undergo female genital mutilation and have their external genital organs removed?
How many will drop out of school because of early marriage?
At this school and many others, the school principals would introduce me at the beginning of the workshops and proclaim to the students: "Our guest is so young, and she's already a professor! And she's African, like us! Girls, you must work hard so one day you, too, can become professors. She is just like you."
Whether those bright-eyed girls will indeed become economically independent, free women, or will join the ranks of the 90% percent of Sierra Leonean women who undergo female genital mutilation, or the 13% of Sierra Leonean pregnant women who die during pregnancy or childbirth, or the 83% of Sierra Leonean girls who do not attend secondary school, will depend on the economic and educational opportunities they receive.
Educational and economic empowerment is the key to women's liberation in Africa. Educated women are more likely to have fewer children and higher incomes, which in turn increases their access to quality health care and drastically reduces their chances of dying during pregnancy or childbirth. Educated women are also less likely to have undergone female genital mutilation or to become victims of domestic violence. Women who are economically independent are in a stronger position to negotiate safer sex practices with their intimate partners, thereby decreasing their chances of contracting HIV.
In order to strengthen women's educational and economic status, governments must address deeply entrenched gender biases in the educational system and increase women's access to land, credit, potable water, agricultural farm inputs, and markets.
As we mark 50 years of African independence and look towards the uncertain future, the international community, African governments, and civil society must dedicate themselves in word and deed to the support of initiatives meant to bolster the status of African women in social, economic and political life. African men must become advocates for the rights of their mothers, daughters, and wives, and promote improved gender relations. And African women, clutching their courage in the tradition of their foremothers during the anti-colonial struggle, must demand their liberation. ]]>