from Africa Today Volume 49, Number 2Women's Rights as Human Rights: Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF)
Dorothy L. Hodgson
Permission to CopyYou may download, save, or print for your personal use without permission. If you wish to disseminate the electronic article, or to produce multiple copies for classroom or educational use, please request permission from:
Copyright Clearance CenterFor other permissions or reprint use contact:
Professional Relations Department
222 Rosewood Drive
Danvers MA 01923 FAX: 978-750-4470/4744
Web address: www.copyright.com
Rights and Permissions, Journals Division
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton St.
Bloomington, IN 47404FAX: 812 855-8507
E-mail: journals@indiana.edu
In recent years, "women's rights as human rights" has emerged as a new transnational approach to demanding women's empowerment. This article explores the advantages and limitations of such an approach to women's activism in Africa through a case study of Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), a multinational African NGO that has been at the forefront of using "women's rights as human rights" to educate women throughout the continent about their legal rights, lobby for national legislative reforms, extend the scope of state accountability, and mobilize international support. Issues addressed include the tensions between universal human rights and national and local differences, the significance of a shift from the language of needs to human rights, the influence of transnational meetings and networks, efforts to reconcile internal social differences among members, and the constraints to such an approach.
Introduction
The human rights of women and the girl child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights. The full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life, at the national, regional and international levels, and the eradication of all forms of discrimination on the grounds of sex are priority objectives of the international community
--Article 18, Vienna Declaration on Human Rights (1993)
In the late 1980s, a new transnational strategy for women's empowerment emerged, linking women's rights agendas to the increasingly vocal and visible international human rights campaigns. Articles by Bunch (1990) and others challenged the international human rights movement to address and incorporate women's rights, prompting extensive debate over and, eventually, restructuring of human rights agendas. In Africa, as elsewhere, this strategy enabled activist women to adopt new languages and strategies to circumvent and reframe enduring debates over women's empowerment mired in the potent, contradictory terms of "culture," "tradition," and "modernity." As part of a broader study of forms of collective action among African women, this article analyzes how the human rights agenda has informed the objectives, agendas, policies, and practices of one of the most prominent and successful groups of activist women: Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF), a multinational African nongovernmental organization (NGO) formed in 1990 "to promote the development of strategies that link law and development to empower women."
As a case study, WiLDAF offers a unique perspective on how the "women's rights as human rights" strategy has shaped local women's activism. How successful has the strategy been in terms of improving female equality and empowerment in Africa? What are its advantages and limitations? In a 1992 conference about the relationship between international human rights and women's rights, several questions were raised about the approach:
1)İİİ Do legal rights really offer anything to women? Women's disadvantages are often based on structural injustice, and winning a case in court will not change this. (Cook 1994a:4)
2)İİİ Can women's rights be universal? Put another way, is the idea of women's international human rights, premised onthe fact that women worldwide suffer from patriarchy, misconceived? Is the pervasive devaluation of women's lives enough to link women in the effort to add a gender dimension to international human rights? (Cook 1994a:5)
3)İİİ How can universal human rights be legitimized in radically different societies without succumbing to either ho-mog-enizing universalism or the paralysis of cultural relativism? (Cook 1994a:7)
As participants in the conference realized, these are not easy questions with clear answers. Instead, they are enduring challenges and sites of tension.
The case of WiLDAF, I believe, suggests how and why some organizations promote the "women's rights as human rights" framework as a useful approach for women's empowerment, and, furthermore, how these organizations negotiate and mediate the inherent challenges and tensions described above. Despite some inevitable setbacks, WiLDAF has used the "women's rights as human rights" paradigm to educate women throughout the continent about their legal rights and to work for national legislative reforms to protect and promote women's rights in such areas as marriage, separation, divorce, inheritance, property rights, reproductive rights, domestic violence, and sexual harassment.1
The International "Women's Rights as Human Rights" Campaign: An Overview
In a now famous 1990 article, Charlotte Bunch reviewed the long-standing exclusion of women's experiences and rights in international debates and statements on human rights. Though the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, listed "sex" as one of numerous "distinctions" that would not be tolerated as grounds for refusing entitlement to the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration, questions of gender were rarely addressed in international discussions. As Bunch explained:
When it is suggested that governments and human rights organizations should respond to women's rights as concerns that deserve attention, a number of excuses are offered for why this cannot be done. The responses tend to follow one or more of these lines: (1) sex discrimination is too trivial, or not as important, or will come after larger issues of survival that require more serious attention; (2) abuse of women, while regrettable, is a cultural, private, or individual issue and not a political matter requiring state action; (3) while appropriate for other action, women's rights are not human rights per se; or (4) when the abuse of women is recognized, it is considered inevitable or so pervasive that any consideration of it is futile or will overwhelm other human rights questions. (1990:488)
In particular, the narrow definition of human rights supported by many in the West as solely state violations of civil and political rights (so-called "first generation rights"), rather than economic and social rights, such as food, water, health, and education ("second generation rights"), limits their applicability to women (compare Butegwa 1995).2 As Riane Eisler argues, "[T]he underlying problem for human rights theory, as for most fields of theory, is that the yardstick that has been developed for defining and measuring human rights has been based on the male as the norm" (1987:297, quoted in Bunch 1990:492).
In response, a global movement has emerged in the past decade to challenge such narrow, androcentric definitions of human rights by demonstrating "both how traditionally accepted human rights abuses are specifically affected by gender, and how many other violations against women have remained invisible within prevailing approaches to human rights" (Bunch, Frost, and Reilly 1998:1). As Bunch (1990:489) notes, "[S]ex discrimination kills women daily." The most egregious forms of violence against women include wife beating, incest, rape, dowry deaths, genital mutilation, and sexual slavery. Other forms of sexual discrimination include women's economic, social, and political subordination in marriage, child custody, inheritance, property ownership, access to credit, education, access to health services, and reproductive rights (compare Bunch and Carrillo 1991). Many of these gender inequalities are codified in customary, religious, and even state laws. According to Bunch and others, all these forms of discrimination and violence against women are related, since women's economic, political, and social vulnerability makes them especially susceptible to violent treatment and physical abuse.
Key moments in the campaign include the Third World Conference on Women (Nairobi, 1985), where ideas of women's rights as human rights were first debated among women in the NGO Forum and global networks of women's groups were crystallized; the second United Nations World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), where activist women and women's organizations from Africa and elsewhere successfully mobilized and lobbied for formal UN recognition of women's rights as human rights; and the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995), where the campaign gained further visibility, momentum, and sophistication.3
Throughout this period, the movement has been characterized by a dynamic interaction between local and global initiatives that seek to carefully promote women's human rights as a universal principle while recognizing and respecting national and local differences in agendas, priorities, practices and political/economic/social frameworks. In the context of long-standing Western political, economic, and cultural imperialism (including the paternalistic assumptions and practices of some Western feminists),4 this delicate weaving of diverse local concerns into a global coalition and framework has been achieved through several means. These include ongoing, systematic caucusing of local women's organizations about their priorities and projects through local, regional, national, and international workshops and meetings; the use of newsletters, the Internet, and other media to publicize and share ideas, issues, and strategies; and organizing global initiatives that encourage and coordinate locally defined and controlled activities.
Like all social movements, the "women's rights as human rights" movement is dynamic, historical, and hardly immune to disputes and disagreements over the appropriate strategies, objectives, and agendas (see, for example, discussion in Charlesworth 1994). Moreover, despite their many accomplishments, advocates still confront numerous obstacles. As Charlesworth explains:
The structure and institutions of women's international human rights law are more fragile than their apparently more generally applicable counterparts: international instruments dealing with women have weaker implementation obligations and procedures; the institutions designed to draft and monitor them are under-resourced and their roles often circumscribed compared to other human rights bodies; the widespread practice of states in making reservations to fundamental provisions in the instruments is apparently tolerated; as is the failure of states generally to fulfill their obligations under the instruments. (1994:59)
More radical feminists even question the usefulness of a legalistic, "rights-based" approach to women's empowerment. They argue that the narrow, individualistic language of rights "oversimplifies complex power relations" and cannot articulate women's experiences and concerns (Charlesworth 1994:61), or even that law is inherently androcentric and a part of the structure of male domination and therefore can never be a tool for female empowerment (Charlesworth 1994:65). Nonetheless, the movement, as I will discuss below, has provided an important framework and resource for international women to use to organize and mobilize for changes in their societies.
Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF): Background
WiLDAF provides a useful illustration of how the "women's rights as human rights" campaign influences local women's rights activism.5 WiLDAF was formed in 1990 after a series of international and continental meetings sponsored by the Women in Law and Development project of OEF International, a private U.S. donor agency based in Washington, D.C. Prompted, in part, by the upcoming 1985 U.N. Decade for Women conference in Nairobi, OEF International in 1983 contacted women's rights workers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to find out if they would be interested in networking and participating in a proposed Forum on Women, Law and Development to run parallel to the U.N. meetings. This group formed the core network from which Forum planners and key presenters were drawn. Approximately 500 women attended each of the five days of workshops and plenary sessions, which addressed four major themes: (1) state, law, and development; (2) custom and customary law; (3) violence and exploitation; (4) strategies for collective action (OEF International 1990:1-2; for the report and recommendations of the Forum, see Schuler 1986). As a result of the sessions, according to OEF International, "Forum participants discovered that women throughout the Third World wage similar struggles for their rights. They clearly saw that combining efforts is a critical step toward overcoming obstacles that face women everywhere. The WLD Forum, they agreed, should mature as a vehicle for continued dialogue and collective action at the international and regional levels" (OEF International 1990: 2-3). Among the proposals for future action recommended by Forum participants was the establishment of regional networks "to exchange information, share strategies addressing women's rights issues, and develop mechanisms to coordinate research and action at the regional level" (OEF International 1990:3). As a result, the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) was established in 1987, the Latin American Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (CLADEM) soon after, and WiLDAF in 1990, after a further series of planning meetings by women's rights activists from throughout the continent.
The purpose of WiLDAF is "to promote the development of strategies that link law and development to empower women" (OEF International 1990:264). The rationale for this goal was clearly expressed by participants in the 1990 conference, at which it was founded:
We the assembled women, realizing that development for women in Africa means increased access to economic and other resources and greater participation in decision making at all levels of society,
that some laws and certain legal practices and aspects of legal systems inhibit African women's benefit from and participation in the development process, and deny their fundamental human rights,
that, in many cases, women lack the awareness of specific information about how to use the legal system, or lack the necessary self-confidence, leadership skills, or organization to challenge unjust laws or demand their rights and protection under the law,
Hereby, adopt the following resolutions which will guide the design and implementation of legal rights programs to empower and enable women to participate actively in decisions regarding the betterment of their own lives, their families' and their nation and to use the law as a tool to increase their access to and ability to utilize national resources. (OEF International 1990:259)The resolutions included promoting legal literacy efforts to educate "grassroots" women about their legal rights and to encourage them to identify and discuss their problems and then work together to find legal and other solutions for them; mobilizing women at all levels to demand law and policy reforms in legal content, judicial structures, and the attitudes of those who enforce laws and policies; organizing women around economic rights; ensuring their access to and control over economic resources; and eradicating all forms of physical and psychological abuse of and violence toward women to ensure their empowerment and self-respect. Following each resolution was a list of seven to eleven specific steps to be pursued to advance their demands.
Initially, two regional coordinators staffed the WiLDAF headquarters in Harare, reporting to a fifteen-member steering committee, composed of one representative from each African country that had participated in the 1990 conference. To meet their resolutions and objectives, they set five initial areas of priority: institutional development and planning, education and training, outreach and communication, setting up a system for mobilizing immediate responses to violations of women's rights, and building international and south-south linkages (OEF International 1990:266-268). They created a tiered institutional structure, making national WiLDAF offices responsible for most national organizing and mobilizing efforts. WiLDAF headquarters supported their efforts by strengthening their organizational capacities through training, promoting national and regional meetings and linkages, assisting in the production and dissemination of legal education materials, and promoting their project proposals with donors. By 1994, they had expanded their work significantly into Francophone and Lusophone Africa by opening new offices in Cameroon and Mali, welcoming an array of women's rights organizations into their network, and publishing WiLDAF News, their newsletter, in English and French. At their 1994 General Assembly, they also expanded the scope of their interests to address eight broad categories of "emerging issues of concern to African women," which they listed as: "economic injustices; political participation and decision-making; violence against women; reproductive rights, sexuality and health matters; women in situations of armed conflict; gender awareness and education; women with disabilities; and fundamentalism" (WiLDAF News 8 1994:16).
Despite some problems and difficulties, WiLDAF has played an important role in educating African women throughout the continent about their legal rights and working for legislative reforms to protect and promote women's rights. In addition to their newsletter, which includes feature articles about aspects of women's rights, country status reports on women's rights issues and organizations, and news of WiLDAF's activities and accomplishments, they have published or copublished innumerable legal literacy guides, aids, and other educational materials (e.g., WiLDAF 1994a); held workshops and training sessions to teach organization building, participatory methods of legal education, strategies for collective action, proposal writing and fundraising; worked with other organizations to research women's rights and legal status in various countries; mobilized lawyers, activists, and others to lobby their governments for legal reforms; and launched media campaigns to educate women about their rights.6 Examples include:
1. Working with women's rights groups in Togo to organize a two-week multimedia educational campaign against domestic violence in late 1998. Their aim was to encourage abused women to "break their silence" and "take legal action." To change public perceptions of the issue, they used public lectures, ads, posters, and even a mock trial at the French Cultural Center in Lome--a trial that recounted the story of a battered woman who overcame her fear and took her husband to court (Blao 1998).
2. Working with the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) to write a shadow report on women's reproductive rights in Zimbabwe (CRLP 1997), a report that researched and reviewed in great detail the laws and policies affecting women's reproductive lives, including their implementation, enforcement, and impact. The report was designed to supplement, or "shadow," the official government report to the international Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women by "bringing to the attention of true monitoring bodies the human rights dimensions of health issues, with a particular focus on women's reproductive and sexual health" (CRLP and WiLDAF 1997:3). The topics covered included family relations, sexual violence, employment rights, and access to health care (including family planning) and education for adolescents.
3. Publicizing and challenging common law and customary laws in Swaziland which relegated women to the status of minors, including laws prohibiting women from being chiefs, requiring married women to receive their husband's or a guardian's permission to obtain a passport, forbidding married women to own property, and preventing women from inheriting their husband's property (Hlatshwayo 1996).
Funding for these activities and others has been received from the Ford Foundation, USAID, OEF International, the Carnegie Corporation, OXFAM, Match International, and other Euro-American donors and NGOs.
WiLDAF: Issues and Insights
So what do we learn from the case of WiLDAF? What does it teach us about the advantages and limitations of the "women's rights as human rights" approach to female equality and empowerment in Africa?
From Basic Needs to Equal Rights to Human Rights
First, as Schuler (1995b; cf. Bauer 1996) and others have discussed, adoption of the human rights framework has enabled WiLDAF and other organizations to reframe women's economic, political, social, and cultural demands from the weak, dependent language of needs to the more powerful and assertive discourse of rights. Florence Butegwa, the former regional coordinator of WiLDAF, recalls studying various human rights instruments to see whether issues of concern to WiLDAF would fit. "Ah yes, inheritance could be addressed here! I took lots of liberties in my interpretations of those rights; it was exciting to see an alternative way of framing them" (Butegwa 1999). Fulfilling women's needs depends on the whims and decisions of donors and states. In contrast, the concept of rights injects these demands into the legal domain and invokes national and international attention, pressure, and monitoring. "Previously . . . you were begging," explains Butegwa (2000). "The state [was] some benevolent entity that you [were] trying to say please, do this. But now the language and politics are different. You are saying they are obliged, they have ratified these things and they have agreed to be bound, so do whatever you say you are going to do." Or, as Charlesworth argues, "Because women in most societies operate from such a disadvantaged position, rights discourse offers a recognized vocabulary to frame political and social wrongs" (1994:61). Unlike needs, rights can be legislated, monitored and enforced.
Moreover, the language and legislation of human rights offers women distinct advantages over claims for equal rights (compare Zoelle 2000). Campaigns for equal rights accept the economic and political rights of men as the standard and demand these rights for women. Such liberal agendas have been quite successful in challenging inequalities in hiring, pay, access to and control over economic resources such as land, voting rights, and other forms of economic and political discrimination. By taking men as the norm, however, the equal rights framework cannot address some of the specific needs and problems confronted by women, such as reproductive rights; adequate maternity care, benefits, and protection; legal recognition of forms of gender violence, such as rape, domestic violence, and sexual harassment as criminal offenses (Bunch 1995; Bunch and Carrillo 1991; Bunch and Reilly 1995; Joachim 1999); and clarification and codification of the rights of men and women in so-called "family" matters, such as marriage, divorce, child custody, household maintenance, and inheritance (Armstrong et al. 1992). These issues can, however, be advanced using a strategy that sets humans, not men, as the standard. Activists can invoke, for example, second-generation rights, such as food security and access to land to demand improvements in women's rights as wives and mothers in their families (compare Butegwa 1994b).
The power of the shift to a language of human rights is clearly seen in debates over culture and tradition.7 Like Bunch and others, WiLDAF members argue that nation-states invoke "culture" and "tradition" to justify discriminatory or violent actions against women and absolve themselves of responsibility. "Tradition and culture," explains one WiLDAF report, "continue to be manipulated and used by States and society as a whole to deny women the enjoyment of fundamental human rights and to perpetuate systematic violations of those rights" (WiLDAF 1993:11; compare Butegwa 1993).
In response, WiLDAF and other organizations initially used the language of human rights to say that "this is a legal issue, not a cultural issue" (Butegwa 2000). But now they have replaced their idea of culture as a static set of traditional practices with more sophisticated understandings of culture as dynamic, contested, and infused with multiple power relations, perspectives, and interpretations. Rather than dismissing "culture" as an obstacle to women's rights, many recognize that cultural institutions can change (as they always have), and there often exist alternative cultural institutions that support and enhance women's rights (see Butegwa 2000; Rao 1995). Through education, legal reforms, and women's activism, among other strategies, women (and men) can work to reshape the aspects of their culture that they find oppressive (see Ekechi 1996; Hodgson & McCurdy 2001; House-Midamba 1996). In an interview, Butegwa discussed the situation of women in Uganda:
Until this current government [legally] provided for women's participation in politics and actually opened that window, it was like everybody believed it was the culture [preventing women from participating], you know, "women don't do this, blah, blah, blah. . . ." Once women were able to get the law to explicitly say this and to get women in there, now there are peer women politicians and all of a sudden, it doesn't seem to matter. It is like it has never been part of the culture. More and more women are standing for these positions and doing extremely well. And, because they are doing that, the women, the young girls are growing up articulating "I want to be the vice-president, I want to be a minister, I want to be this." (Butegwa 2000)
For WiLDAF, issues of culture and tradition are most prominent in debates over customary and religious law. Most African states still operate with multitiered legal systems, accommodating and recognizing state laws (most predicated on the legal frameworks of their former colonial rulers), so-called "customary laws," and finally, in states with significant Muslim populations, religious laws. WiLDAF argues that current versions of customary law (and religious law) are selective, retaining only those aspects that subordinate women.8 As WiLDAF's Southern Africa Women's Rights Satellite meeting reported:
In almost all countries of the sub-region discrimination in law and practice in marriage, divorce and inheritance was rampant as these are areas still governed by so-called customary law. The concern was that only aspects of custom in these areas which perpetuated the subordination of women have been retained. In Lesotho and Swaziland women are still perpetual minors at law. Marriage is a union negotiated by families of the woman and man. A woman can be forced to marry against her will so long as her father or other male guardian consent to the marriage. (WiLDAF 1993:11)
Other subregional groups listed widow inheritance, forced circumcision, and early childhood marriages as "customs which perpetuate violations of women's human rights" (WiLDAF 1993:15).
WiLDAF has invoked the legal obligations of states under international human rights agreements to challenge customary and religious laws and demand that states become accountable for condoning continued discrimination and violence against women. As reported in its official statement to the Vienna World Conference:
In spite of the ratification of international and regional human rights instruments, States still maintain laws and practices which discriminate against women. Selective traditions and customs are used by States to perpetuate discrimination against women and condone it in the private sphere, contrary to obligations freely assumed by States and to the expectations of the international community. This is particularly true in the field of access to land and other economic rights, legal status and capacity and rights within the family. (WiLDAF 1993:42)
The language of "women's human rights" strengthens the visibility and legitimacy of such demands. It also extends the accountability of states into supposedly "private" domains, as seen most clearly in pressure by WiLDAF and its member organizations to reform so called "family law" (compare Armstrong et al. 1992; Romany 1994).
Of course, women in any given country do not necessarily share similar perspectives about the need to change certain cultural institutions. Butegwa describes such a tension in the case of Uganda, where some women were once organizing "to demand the abolition of polygamy as a necessary step for protecting women's rights in marriage." But Muslim women, "either on their own volition or on the demands of their Islamic leaders," led a strong countermovement: "They liked polygamy, they [didn't] want it to go away." Their claims "provided the government with an escape route" (Butegwa 2000).
National/Transnational Connections
Second, the case of WiLDAF demonstrates the tremendous significance of international meetings and networks in helping inspire, shape, and further the work of local women's organizations. In particular, the founders and members of WiLDAF describe the NGO Forums that accompanied UN conferences, as at the UN Decade for Women Conference in Mexico (1975), Nairobi (1985), and Beijing (1995) as formative experiences (compare Sow 1997:32, 42). For African women, the Nairobi Forum was pivotal: "A lot of women from Africa were able to participate in that Forum, and they started to think about the issues," says Butegwa. "Exchanging information with other women from all over was, in my view, a very crucial factor in motivating each of the women who participated. It inspired them to start something dealing with women and the legal system in their own countries" (Butegwa in Reilly 1992:19). Attending such conferences and participating in national and international research and information networks have provided these African women activists and organizers with new ideas, creative strategies for mobilization, assistance in designing and implementing programs and projects, political support, and inspiration (Butegwa 2000; compare Michaelson 1994; OEF International 1990; Reilly 1992; Sow 1987). Face-to-face meetings are crucial, but the expanding if uneven Internet connectivity on the continent has facilitated the formation of virtual networks as well, such as the African Women Global Network.9
Furthermore, these transnational connections have enhanced the international visibility of local activities by providing framing themes and events. For example, in 1991, the Center for Women's Global Leadership and the International Women's Tribune Centre, two U.S.-based organizations at the forefront of the movement, launched an annual campaign called "16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence," which links November 25th (International Day Against Violence Against Women) to December 10th (International Human Rights Day). According to Bunch, Frost, and Reilly (1998:3), the initiative
aims to provide a global umbrella for local activities that promote public awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights concern and that seek specific commitments to women's human rights at all levels. Groups participating in the campaign select their own particularized objectives and determine their own local activities, but all are done with a sense of being part of this larger global focus. (Bunch, Frost, and Reilly 1998:3; compare Bunch and Reilly 1995)
WiLDAF member organizations, like other groups, have taken advantage of the "16 Days of Activism" to implement a range of programs, projects, and actions, including the campaign against domestic violence in Togo in 1998, described above.
Despite these transnational connections, WiLDAF operates within national frameworks, acknowledging the historical, social, and economic differences between countries. As the Dakar Declaration of Another Development Including Women, issued at a seminar of the same name in 1982, proclaimed: "Feminism is international in that its objective is the liberation of women from all kinds of oppression and in that it seeks to promote solidarity between women of all countries; it is national in its definition of its strategies and priorities, which must conform to the specificity of cultural and socio-economic conditions" (AAWORD 1985:12, cited in Sow 1987:41). Yet some believe the African women's movement has an ambivalent relationship with nationalism. "It is a relationship," says Patricia McFadden, "which binds us to certain loyalties, loyalties which are directly and indirectly connected to our subjective relationship with men who inherited the state at independence" (Machipisa 1998). It is the state, of course, which creates and reinforces certain gender inequalities in the economic, political and domestic arena through its policies, practices, and laws, thereby shaping women's lives as workers and citizens, and as wives, mothers, and sisters (Hodgson 2001; Mikell 1997; Sow 1999).
But these regional and international connections have transformed the relationship between WiLDAF and the nation-states it works within. WiLDAF has used its transnational linkages to mobilize international support, resources, and inspiration to assist them in lobbying national governments to revise their laws. In so doing, it has benefited in these efforts from new international legal instruments, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,10 passed in 1980, which more than 100 countries have now ratified. As an international bill of rights for women, the Convention provides important legal mechanisms for women activists, who can pressure their governments to sign and implement its provisions, and report regularly on their compliance to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The Convention, however, does have important limitations, including difficulty demanding its implementation and, until recently, no direct provision addressing violence against women (Bunch 1990:495-496). Yet its mandates have been reaffirmed and expanded by other conventions and declarations, some of which directly address violence against women.11
The Convention and other international treaties and resolutions have provided WiLDAF substantial leverage in lobbying national governments for legal reforms, combating the perennial problem of translating the rhetoric of governments into reality. According to Rebecca Cook (1994a:22), "the international human rights movement has used three distinct theories of government accountability: government agency, government complicity through failure to act, and government responsibility for the unequal application of the law" (1994a:22). WiLDAF, along with other organizations, has used the "women's rights as human rights" paradigm to build on and expand these notions of state accountability by "expanding the definition of human rights, expanding the scope of state responsibility and expanding the effectiveness of the human rights system to enforce women's rights" (Schuler 1995b:4; compare Cook 1994a:23). But these efforts, though somewhat successful, have become even more difficult, given the recent radical restructurings of many African states and economies in light of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), increased international competition, trade liberalization, and the expanded presence and political muscle of multinational corporations (Kuenyehia 1994; O'Neil 1995; WiLDAF 1995b). The result has been "the withdrawal of the state from responsibility for providing basic services for their people and an erosion of state accountability to citizens, particularly in relation to the protection of fundamental rights" (Schuler 1995b:5; compare Meyer and Pr¸gl 1999).
Nonetheless, the "women's rights as human rights" paradigm has made nation-states such as Zimbabwe and Tanzania accountable to their citizens, especially their female citizens, in new ways. WiLDAF has implemented at least two practices to ensure international attention to and pressure on nation-states to reform their laws in light of international human rights agreements. First, WiLDAF regularly requests and publicizes "country reports" from its members that survey the state's implementation and enforcement of legal reforms and rights (see, for example, WiLDAF 1994b). The wide dissemination of these reports guarantees international scrutiny of national affairs. Second, in 1990, WiLDAF implemented an "Emergency Response System,"
which could be activated in response to serious violations or threats of violations of the human rights of women in African countries. The system was to be used in those cases where members in the country concerned felt they could not deal with the situation alone or where regional and international support would strengthen local responses or strategies. (WiLDAF 1994b:20)
The Emergency Response System has been activated about once a year for such purposes as expressing outrage at a 1994 police attack on a meeting of the League of Kenya Women Voters, challenging government proposals to lower the legal age of sexual consent in Uganda, and rebuking the government of Nigeria for nominating only two women out of 96 delegates to a constitutional conference (WiLDAF 1994b:87-88).
A related issue is how WiLDAF members have negotiated the sometimes treacherous terrain of global and local agendas and decision-making. One way that WiLDAF has mediated such tensions has been to institutionalize a participatory, "from the ground-up" process for decision-making and consultation--a process that involves its members and member organizations in several stages of meetings, from the local level to the country level, and to regional and international meetings. This decision-making structure is most clearly seen in the WiLDAF General Assemblies, which have been held approximately every four or five years to evaluate WiLDAF's accomplishments, review and revise its objectives, and set the agenda for the next few years. Another example was WiLDAF's preparations for the 1993 Human Rights conference in Vienna. WiLDAF first organized four subregional meetings (for East Africa, Southern Africa, Francophone West Africa, and Anglophone West Africa), in which participants presented country reports on the situation of women's human rights and their priority concerns, then worked together to formulate a subregional report. Once these meetings were completed, WiLDAF organized a Pan-African meeting with representatives from the different subregional meetings "to reach a consensus on priority issues common to all the sub-regions and work out a common strategy which we could adopt and implement as African women" (WiLDAF 1993:19). A statement of these priorities in turn informed WiLDAF's lobbying strategies in preparation for and during the Vienna conference.
Development vs. Empowerment
WiLDAF also challenges narrow ideas of development as merely material improvements in infrastructure, technology, and income. Instead, it advances agendas for women's political and economic empowerment. "The starting point for the majority of women," argues Butegwa, "has to be at the personal, family and community level; building her self-confidence, changing power relationships within the family and playing a more active, substantive and independent role within her immediate community" (1994a:6). WiLDAF does not deny the importance of material improvements to women's lives (see Butegwa 1994b), but these mean little unless accompanied by structural changes in gendered power relations that allow women the same political participation, economic opportunities and control, and self-determination as men. Though the means to such empowerment may differ, WiLDAF emphasizes a legalistic view of empowerment, grounded in the language of rights and predicated on publicizing, promoting, enforcing, and expanding these rights. WiLDAF leaders stress the need for women to work together in groups to realize change: "Political participation by women, if uncoordinated into an identifiable well organized constituency, is unlikely to lead to change" (Butegwa 1994a:6).
Differences Within
Finally, an issue that has plagued many women's organizations in Africa and elsewhere is how to reconcile internal differences among members of class, urban-rural experiences, education, and so forth. To what extent, for example, are the empowerment agendas espoused by WiLDAF class-based? As Aina notes, many "elite [African] women for a long time were more concerned with protecting their status quo, than with developing an interest in modern feminist issues which aim at fighting their persistent domination by men and the exertion of patriarchal arrangements" (1998:75). She accuses even those organizations that she recognizes as feminist of being "elitist" and identifying more with "their international sisters in Europe and America" (1998:81). The divide between elite and grassroots women, she argues, is based on starkly different life experiences, privileges, and opportunities, which can produce misunderstanding and mutual distrust12 (1998:82). A major task is therefore finding strategies to bridge the gap between these groups by empowering grassroots women (1998:83-84).
The strategies she advocates--understanding local knowledge and practices, raising women's consciousness, providing women with the "basic ingredients for empowerment" (such as formal education and critical resources), and challenging polices that subordinate women--are all central to WiLDAF's agenda (see Butegwa 1992). WiLDAF was started, implemented, and coordinated by elite, educated women as outreach efforts to what they term grassroots women--generally illiterate, poor, rural and urban women. It seeks to transform grassroots women from "silent partners" to vocal participants in feminist movements (Aina 1998). As Butegwa explains, in contrast to the United States,
a lot of the work that feminists in Africa do is based in the communities. They may be educated and living in the urban areas, but their work is in the communities so there isn't that much of a distance. . . . Being educated and in the urban areas is an opportunity for you to think, to pool your resources, for you to help women in the communities organize. Because left on their own, they have immediate demands, they don't have information, they don't even have a forum to think about their own selves. And the feminists are providing that possibility. They are being able to get these women together to have their own conversations and to be able to do something about it. (Butegwa 2000)
In a sense, members seek to use the benefits of their class position to better the situation of all women. Most have the requisite freedom and flexibility provided by job security, adaptable work schedules, childcare, and domestic help. But as these elite women themselves know all too well, their class position and privileges make it is easy for their critics, both African and non-African, to denounce their feminist efforts as "rampant imperialism" and to stigmatize them as "non-African, uprooted, bourgeois, or worse . . . lesbian" (Sow 1997:33). But that "is rhetoric that is meant to avoid the issue at hand" (Butegwa 2000).
Butegwa herself often tells a story about how she became conscientized to the need for legal education and legal reform. In 1982, while teaching a class in Nairobi for women bankers on the concept of marriage in law, a woman walked out of class crying. The woman later told Butegwa that she was upset because she realized she was not legally married to the man she had been living with for eight years:
Hers was a customary marriage, but her husband already had a wife he had married by the church, which meant her own marriage was not accepted by law. She was devastated.
The experience struck me, and I said to myself, "If she doesn't know this simple thing about her legal situation, how much do other women know?" This was an educated woman in a managerial post. So, I remember very well, the following day I started writing a proposal to investigate the level of awareness of these kinds of things among women. The findings of that research were so amazing that I suppose I never stopped working on this.(Butegwa in Reilly 1992:20; see Butegwa 1999)
Of course, not all elite African women are feminists or community organizers. Some are more concerned with promoting their careers and protecting their class privileges. And certainly, as the above story suggests, "women who are educated and have jobs are not immune from abuse" (Butegwa 2000). "Many women," Butegwa continues, "have a university education, have jobs, but they have no idea what to do about the oppression they experience. Or they are at a level where . . . they are able to distance themselves from what occurs to other women. Or they just haven't [had] the opportunity to see . . . what role they could play in political discourse" (2000).
Moreover, WiLDAF promotes a gender-inclusive agenda. Although primarily involving women, it welcomes sympathetic men as members and allies in its efforts. Such an encompassing stance is firmly in keeping with the "Africanist feminist" goals espoused by Aina (1998), Steady (1987), and others--goals that call on African women, where possible, to try to work with, rather than against, African men for mutual empowerment (but see Sow 1987). Butegwa, for example, speaks frankly about the support and encouragement her husband has given her in her work for women's rights (in Reilly 1992:22).
Mixed Success: Constraints and Limitations
WiLDAF's success in using the "women's rights as human rights" paradigm to pressure states to codify women's rights in their constitutions and legislation has, however, had uneven results, depending on the different dispositions of national governments (which range from repressive to progressive regimes in terms of social justice, human rights, and women's rights), the mechanisms available to citizens to defend their rights and make the state accountable, the varying institutional capacities and organizing abilities of national WiLDAF offices and members, and the history and state of the women's rights movement in each country.
The success of national WiLDAF offices, for example, depends on several factors. First, according to Butegwa, "in countries where there was already a vibrant . . . women's rights movement, it [is] easy to organize" (2000). Nonetheless, much depends on the organizational base of the national WiLDAF coordinator and steering-committee members. Since all are volunteers, having a formal organizational affiliation subsidizes financial costs and provides immediate legitimacy and recruits. According to Butegwa, one of the first WiLDAF country coordinators for Senegal had no institutional affiliation or support, which severely hampered her ability to finance, organize, and coordinate national lobbying and mobilization efforts.
Most important, perhaps, is the relationship that develops between national WiLDAF offices and their respective governments at the institutional level, as well as alliances between individuals in WiLDAF and those in various government ministries and offices. According to Butegwa (2000), some repressive governments are hostile to WiLDAF's initiatives, in part because they feel threatened by the international visibility and political ramifications of WiLDAF's linkage of women's rights demands with human rights legislation. Other governments may support rival groups. In Ghana, for example, the government refused to allow WiLDAF to organize a march and protest in 1999 to address the problem of women being murdered near the market in Accra. A few weeks later, however, the wife of the President, who had been trying to increase her visibility as a female leader and even voiced her interest in being the next president, organized a march to draw attention to the murders (Beverly Stoeltje, personal communication).
Several governments are quite supportive. WiLDAF Zimbabwe, for example, successfully mobilized women throughout the country to participate in public meetings by a government commission on a proposed reform of inheritance laws. But "the only responses they got were the responses collected by WiLDAF. So it turned out that the commission would call WiLDAF and say 'but we haven't got anything from this province, can you go there and try to get it?'" (Butegwa 2000). As a result, the law was changed to enable women to inherit directly (not just in trust), including from their deceased spouse. Similarly, in Tanzania, "where the WiLDAF chapter is really strong, it is almost like an advisor [to the government], or like a body that has created respect and the state agencies will approach it. For instance, . . . WiLDAF was engaged by the state to translate the [Beijing] platform for action . . . into Kiswahili . . . and then help with disseminating it within the regions" (Butegwa 2000).
Another set of ongoing constraints for WiLDAF is negotiating donor expectations and demands. A key issue has been the insistence by WiLDAF headquarters that they were not an implementing organization; rather, their "task was to strengthen the capacities of members so that they can do their work. . . . [But] donors have this concept of [all] women's organizations working at the grassroots level and I was insisting that we are not a grassroots organization and we don't want to be a grassroots organization because [our] members are doing that" (Butegwa 2000). Such a position fuels the occasional donor accusation that WiLDAF is an elitist organization.
Conclusion
As the case of WiLDAF illustrates, women's human rights activists in the north and south have been able, so far, to successfully mediate tensions between diverse local constituencies to form a vibrant global coalition that has transformed the ability of local women's groups to work for change. These transnational linkages have been crucial to increasing the visibility of women's human rights violations, lobbying for international and national laws and treaties to remedy persistent inequities, and then working to ensure that both international monitoring bodies (such as the United Nations) and national governments are accountable for and implement these agreements. African women themselves, elite and grassroots, are setting their own agendas for social, political, and economic change. Yet by linking their concerns to other social movements such as human rights, they have extended their political base and demonstrated that women's issues and rights are integral to all facets of development and empowerment. Moreover, the experience of groups such as WiLDAF has informed and shaped international strategies and approaches and challenged Western stereotypes about African women's agency and activism.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the 1999 Conference on African Development in the 21st Century, at Smith College; the Women, Language and Law Conference at Indiana University in 2000; the 2001 annual meeting of the Society for Cultural Anthropology / American Ethnological Society / Canadian Anthropology Society; and the 2001 annual meeting of the African Studies Association. I am grateful to audience members at all venues, and to Beverly Stoeltje, Kathryn Firmin-Sellers, William Fisher, and Judith Van Allen for their helpful comments. This project has been supported by research funds from Rutgers University, a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, grant #29800639), and research assistance by Nia Parson and Jessica Libove. Conversations with Florence Butegwa and Fatou Sow, in addition to formal interviews, and attendance at events sponsored by the Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, stimulated much of my thinking in this paper. Finally, I thank Lisa Clarke, the CGWL librarian, for helping me locate certain WiLDAF materials.
NOTES
1. This article is based on a critical review of documents about and by WiLDAF, newspaper and other media reports, and two long interviews and many conversations with Florence Butegwa, an attorney and the first regional coordinator of WiLDAF.
2. "Third-generation rights" have also recently emerged, encompassing collective or group rights (see Charlesworth 1994:58, 75-76).
3. For detailed histories, background, and case-studies of the women's rights as human rights movement, see Alfredson and Tomaevski (1995); Amnesty International (1995); Bunch, Frost, and Reilly (1998); Center for the Study of Human Rights (1996); Center for Women's Global Leadership (1994a, 1994b); Cook (1994b); Grimshaw, Holmes, and Lake (2001); Hilsdon et al. (2000); International Women's Tribune Centre (1998); Miller (1999); Schuler (1986, 1993, 1995a); Peters and Wolper (1995); and Schuler and Kadirgamar-Rajasingham (1992).
4. See, for example, Mohanty (1991). Bunch, Frost, and Reilly (1998) discuss these tensions and strategies for their resolution.
5. See Kuenyehia (1995) for another overview of the history of WILDAF's formation. Akua Kuenyehia was one of the two original coordinators (with Butegwa) of WiLDAF. Information has also been drawn from WiLDAF (1993, 1994a, 1994b, 1995a, 1995b).
6. For details, see Reilly (1992), Rusere (1995), and issues 2, 6, and 8 of the WiLDAF News.
7. For insightful discussions of "the culture question" in human rights debates, see An-Na'im, Madigan, and Minkley (1997), Mamdani (2000), Rao (1995), and Wilson (1997).
8. See, for example, Chanock (1985) on the creation of customary law, and Hodgson (1996) for a case that examines a confrontation between customary and state law regarding a forced marriage.
9. The African Women Global Network describes itself as a "global organization that networks all men and women, organizations, institutions, and indigenous national organizations within Africa, whose activities are targeted towards the improvement of the living conditions of women and children in Africa" (www.osu.edu/org/awognet/).
10. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, General Assembly Resolution 34/180, United Nations Document A/Res/34/180 (1980).
11. See the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, adopted first by the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, and then, on 20 December 1993, unanimously by the U.N. General Assembly.
12. Butegwa (1990) discusses some of the challenges of creating legal awareness among grassroots women in Uganda.
REFERENCES CITED
AAWORD. 1985. Proceedings of the Dakar Seminar on "Un autre Développement avec les Femmes." 21–26 June 1982, reprinted in a special issue of Development Dialogue 1985 (1–2).
Aina, Olabisi. 1998. African Women at the Grassroots: The Silent Partners of the Women's Movement. In Sisterhood: Feminisms and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora, edited by Obioma Nnaemeka. Trenton: Africa World Press.
Alfredson, Gudmundur, and Katarina Tomaevski, eds. 1995. A Thematic Guide to the Documents on the Human Rights of Women. The Hague, Boston, London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, for the Raoul Wallenburg Institute for Human Rights.
Amnesty International. 1995. It's About Time! Human Rights are Women's Rights. New York: Amnesty International.
An-Na'im, Abdullhi A., Amy Madigan, and Gary Minkley. 1997. Cultural Transformations and Human Rights in Africa: A Preliminary Report. Emory International Law Review 11(1): 287-349.
Armstrong, Alice, Chaloka Beyani, Chuma Himonga, Janet Kabeberi-Macharia, Athaliah Molokomme, Welshman Ncube, Thandabantu Nhlapo, Bart Rwezaura, and Julie Stewart. 1992. Uncovering Reality: Excavating Women's Rights in African Family Law. Harare, Zimbabwe: Women and Law in Southern Africa.
Bauer, Jan. 1996. Only Silence Will Protect You: Women, Freedom of Expression and the Language of Human Rights. Montreal: International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development.
Blao, Yaovi Tchalim. 1998. Rights-Togo: Breaking the Silence on Domestic Violence. Interpress Service, 15 December 1998. Retrieved 3 September 1999 from the World Wide Web: www3.xls.com/cgi-bin/cwisuite.exe.
Bunch, Charlotte. 1990. Women's Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights. Human Rights Quarterly 12:486-498.
_____. 1995. Transforming Human Rights from a Feminist Perspective. In Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, edited by Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper. New York: Routledge.
Bunch, Charlotte, and Roxanna Carrillo. 1991. Gender Violence: A Development and Human Rights Issue. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Women's Global Leadership.
Bunch, Charlotte, and Niamh Reilly. 1995. The Global Campaign: Violence Against Women Violates Human Rights. In From Basic Needs to Basic Rights: Women's Claim to Human Rights, edited by Margaret Schuler. Washington, D.C.: Women, Law and Development International.
Bunch, Charlotte, Samantha Frost, and Niamh Reilly. 1998. Making the Global Local: International Networking for Women's Human Rights. Unpublished manuscript.
Butegwa, Florence. 1990. Challenges of Creating Legal Awareness among Grassroots Women in Uganda. In Women, Law and Development in Africa: WILDAF: Origins and Issues. Washington, D.C.: OEF International.
_____. 1992. Challenges of Promoting Legal Literacy among Women in Uganda. In Legal Literacy: A Tool for Women's Empowerment, edited by Margaret Schuler and Sakuntala Kadirgamar-Rajasingham. Washington, DC: OEF International.
_____. 1993. Limitations of the Human Rights Framework for the Protection of Women. In Claiming Our Place: Working the Human Rights System to Women's Advantage, edited by Margaret Schuler. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Women, Law and Development.
_____. 1994a. Promoting Women's Political Participation in Africa. WiLDAF News 7:1-6.
_____. 1994b. Using the African Charter on Human Rights and Peoples' Rights to Secure Women's Access to Land in Africa. In Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, edited by Rebecca Cook. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
_____. 1995. International Human Rights Law and Practice: Implications for Women. In From Basic Needs to Basic Rights : Women's Claim to Human Rights, edited by Margaret Schuler. Washington, D.C.: Women, Law and Development International.
_____. 1999. The Woman's Walk: Reminiscences of an African Activist in the Women's Human Rights Movement. Laurie Chair Lecture, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 26 October 1999.
_____. 2000. Interview by author. Tape recording, 17 May. New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Center for the Study of Human Rights. 1996. Women and Human Rights: The Basic Documents. New York: Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University.
Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) and Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF). 1997. Women's Reproductive Rights in Zimbabwe--A Shadow Report. Harare: CRLP. Retrieved 3 September 1999 from the World Wide Web: www3.xls.com/cgi-bin/cwisuite.exe.
Center for Women's Global Leadership. 1994a. Gender Violence and Women's Human Rights in Africa. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Women's Global Leadership.
_____. 1994b. Testimonies of the Global Tribunal on Violations of Women's Human Rights. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Women's Global Leadership.
Chanock, Martin, 1985. Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Charlesworth, Hilary. 1994. What Are "Women's International Human Rights"? In Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, edited by Rebecca J. Cook. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Cook, Rebecca J. 1994a. Women's International Human Rights: The Way Forward. In Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, edited by Rebecca J. Cook. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
_____. ed. 1994b. Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Eisler, Riane. 1987. Human Rights: Toward an Integrated Theory for Action. Human Rights Quarterly 9:287–308.
Ekechi, Felix K. 1996. Perceiving Women as Catalysts. Africa Today 43(3):235-249.
Grimshaw, Patricia, Katie Holmes, and Marilyn Lake, eds. 2001. Women's Rights and Human Rights: International Historical Perspectives. New York: Palgrave.
Hilsdon, Anne-Marie, Martha Macintyre, Vera Mackie, and Maila Stivens, eds. 2000. Human Rights and Gender Politics: Asian-Pacific Perspectives. New York: Routledge.
Hlatshwayo, Vuyisile. 1996. Swaziland: Laws Deny Women Equal Rights. Interpress Service 15 October 1996. Retrieved 3 September1999 from the World Wide Web: www3.xls.com/cgi-bin/cwisuite.exe.
Hodgson, Dorothy L. 1996. My Daughter . . . Belongs to the Government Now: Marriage, Maasai and the Tanzanian State. Canadian Journal of African Studies 30(1):106-123.
_____. ed. 2001. Gendered Modernities: Ethnographic Perspectives. New York: Palgrave.
Hodgson, Dorothy L., and Sheryl McCurdy, eds. 2001. "Wicked" Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa. Portsmouth: Heinemann.
House-Midamba, Bessie, ed. 1996. Reconceptualizing African Women: Toward the Year 2000. Special Issue of Africa Today 43(3).
International Women's Tribune Centre. 1998. Rights of Women: A Guide to the Most Important United Nations Treaties on Women's Human Rights. New York: International Women's Tribune Centre.
Joachim, Jutta. 1999. Shaping the Human Rights Agenda: The Case of Violence against Women. In Gender Politics in Global Governance, edited by Mary K. Meyer and Elisabeth Pr¸gl. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Kuenyehia, Akua. 1994. The Impact of Structural Adjustment Programs on Women's International Human Rights: The Example of Ghana. In Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, edited by Rebecca Cook. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
_____. 1995. Organizing at the Regional Level: The Case of WiLDAF. In From Basic Needs to Basic Rights : Women's Claim to Human Rights, edited by Margaret Schuler. Washington, D.C.: Women, Law and Development International.
Machipisa, Lewsi. 1998. Rights–Africa: Women Groups Prepare for the Next Millennium. Interpress Service. Retrieved 3 September 1999 from the World Wide Web: www3.xls.com/cgi-bin/cwisuite.exe.
Mamdani, Mahmood, ed. 2000. Beyond Rights Talk and Culture Talk: Comparative Essays on the Politics of Rights and Culture. New York: St. Martin's.
Meyer, Mary K., and Elisabeth Pr¸gl, eds. 1999. Gender Politics in Global Governance. Lanham: Row-man & Littlefield.
Michaelson, Marc. 1994. Wangari Maathai and Kenya's Green Belt Movement: Exploring the Evolution and Potentialities of Consensus Movement Mobilization. Social Problems 41(4):540-61.
Mikell, Gwendolyn, ed. 1997. African Feminism: The Politics of Survival in Sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Miller, Alice M. 1999. Realizing Women's Human Rights: Nongovernmental Organizations and the United Nations Treaty Bodies. In Gender Politics in Global Governance, edited by Mary K. Meyer and Elisabeth Pr¸gl. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Mohanty, Chandra. 1991. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by Chandra Mohanty, Anna Russo, and Lourdes Torres. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
OEF International. 1990. Women, Law and Development in Africa. WiLDAF: Origins and Issues. Washington, D.C.: OEF International.
O'Neil, Maureen. 1995. Economic and Policy Trends: Global Challenges to Women's Rights. In From Basic Needs to Basic Rights : Women's Claim to Human Rights, edited by Margaret Schuler. Washington, D.C.: Women, Law and Development International.
Peters, Julie, and Andrea Wolper, eds. 1995. Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives. New York: Routledge.
Rao, Avati. 1995. The Politics of Gender and Culture in International Human Rights Discourse. In Women's Rights Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives, edited by Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper. New York: Routledge.
Reilly, Niamh. 1992. Interview with Florence Butegwa. International Campaign for Women's Human Rights 1992-1993 Report. New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Women's Global Leadership.
Romany, Celina. 1994. State Responsibility Goes Private: A Feminist Critique of the Public/Private Distinction in International Human Rights Law. In Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, edited by Rebecca J. Cook. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rusere, Patience. 1995. Zimbabwe Women: Bloodied but Unbowed. Interpress service, November 25, 1995. Retrieved 3 September 1999 from the World Wide Web: www3.xls.com/cgi-bin/cwisuite.exe.
Schuler, Margaret, ed. 1986. Empowerment and the Law: Strategies of Third World Women. Washington, D.C.: OEF International.
_____. ed. 1993. Claiming Our Place: Working the Human Rights System to Women's Advantage. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Women, Law and Development.
_____. ed. 1995a. From Basic Needs to Basic Rights: Women's Claim to Human Rights. Washington, D.C.: Women, Law and Development International.
_____. 1995b. From Basic Needs to Basic Rights: Women's Claim to Human Rights. In From Basic Needs to Basic Rights: Women's Claim to Human Rights, edited by Margaret Schuler. Washington, D.C.: Women, Law and Development International.
Schuler, Margaret, and Sakuntala Kadirgamar-Rajasingham, eds. 1992. Legal Literacy: A Tool for Women's Empowerment. Washington, D.C.: Women, Law and Development, OEF International.
Sow, Fatou. 1997. The Social Sciences in Africa and Gender Analysis. In Engendering African Social Sciences, edited by Ayesha M. Imam, Amina Mama, and Fatou Sow. Dakar: CODESRIA.
_____. 1999. Challenging the State: African Women's Rights. Distinguished African Women Lecture Series, Rutgers University, 22 September 1999.
Steady, Filomena. 1987. African Feminism: A Worldwide Perspective. In Women in Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by Rosalyn Terborg Penn, Sharon Harley, and Andrea Benton Rushing. Trenton: Africa World Press.
WiLDAF. Women in Law and Development in Africa News 2 (March, 1992), 6 (1994), 8 (1994).
_____. 1993. The World Conference on Human Rights: The WiLDAF Experience. Harare, Zimbabwe: WiLDAF.
_____. 1994a. Legal Rights Awareness among Women in Africa: A Handbook for Non-Lawyer Legal Education. Harare, Zimbabwe: WiLDAF.
_____. 1994b. Strengthening Linkages for Women's Rights in Africa. Harare, Zimbabwe: WiLDAF.
_____. 1995a. Human Rights of Women in Conflict Situations: The WiLDAF Initiative. Harare, Zimbabwe: WiLDAF.
_____. 1995b. Structural Adjustment Programs and the Human Rights of African Women. Harare, Zimbabwe: WiLDAF.
Wilson, Richard A., ed. 1997. Human Rights, Culture & Context: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Pluto Press.
Zoelle, Diane G. 2000. Globalizing Concern for Women's Human Rights: The Failure of the American Model. New York: St. Martin's.
IU Press Journals
Home PageMore about Africa Today
Library
RecommendationTables of
ContentsAdvance
InformationSubmission
Guidelines