Defending human rights

Today, December 10, is Human Rights Day. This year’s theme is human rights defenders who are working to end discrimination and human rights violations.

Not coincidentally, today's post is about two human rights defenders: Jestina Mukoko and Beatrice Mtetwa.

Jestina Mukoko is a Zimbabwean human rights activist. A former broadcaster with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, she’s the Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), which monitors human rights abuses.

In 2008, during Zimbabwe's election period, Mukoko was abducted from her home by government security forces and held for 21 days before appearing before a court. She was tortured, beaten and charged with attempting to recruit people to overthrow the government. Local and international pressure helped secure her release.

Jestina Mukoko’s efforts to appeal her arrest and to bring those responsible for the violation of her human rights to justice, and her continuing work with ZPP, have led to international as well as local recognition. She received the 2009 Laureate of the City of Weimar Human Rights prize and the 2009 National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO) peace award, as well as a 2010 International Women of Courage Award from the U.S. State Department. This past year she was the 2010 Oak Fellow at the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby College in the U.S. She’s returning to Zimbabwe prior to the elections scheduled for 2011.
　
Beatrice Mtetwa is a Zimbabwean media and human rights lawyer. She’s defended activists, opposition politicians, and Zimbabwean and foreign journalists who have been wrongly arrested or harassed.

For this, she’s been harassed and intimidated herself. She was arrested in 2003, beaten during custody, and released without charge; she was attacked again in 2007.

I heard Beatrice Mtetwa speak at Ottawa’s Carleton University, where she’s also been an Honorary Visiting Adjunct Professor in the Institute of African Studies. In 2009 she participated in a panel at Carleton on the road to democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe. She also gave the convocation address, which includes an interesting account of how she became a lawyer "by mistake".

Mtetwa received an International Press Freedom Award in 2005 from the Committee to Protect Journalists, as well as the Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize in 2009 and an International Human Rights Award from the American Bar Association Section of Litigation in 2010.

Both Jestina Mukoko and Beatrice Mtetwa defend human rights despite enormous challenges and personal risk.

You can find more stories of human rights defenders around the world at http://www.un.org/en/events/humanrightsday/2010/index.shtml.

Saying no to violence

You might have heard the statistic recently: up to 70 percent of women in the world experience physical or sexual violence during their lifetimes.

If you've heard this or numbers like it, that's because November 25-December 10 are dedicated to raising awareness about and taking action on violence against women.

November 25 was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. It also marked the start of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, incorporating International Women Human Rights Defenders Day on November 29 and ending on International Human Rights Day, December 10.

In Canada, today, December 6 is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. It commemorates the 1989 murders of 14 young women at l'École Polytechnique de Montréal.

The United Nations’ UNITE to End Violence Against Women campaign underlines that there are many forms of violence against women, and that these are not confined to a specific culture, region or country. But since this blog is about Africa, and in honour of December 6, today’s post will feature 6 groups in Sub-Saharan Africa who are working to address gender violence:

1. Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), Zimbabwe: WOZA is a civic movement advocating for Zimbabwean women and their families. It has over 75,000 members, both women and men. For WOZA, November 29 is not only International Women Human Rights Defenders Day but the date in 2006 when hundreds of its members were beaten and arrested while peacefully launching the WOZA People’s Charter. WOZA has conducted hundreds of protests since 2003 and over 3,000 of its members and leaders have been wrongfully arrested while exercising their constitutional rights.

2. Mothertongue, South Africa:  Mothertongue is an artists’ collective that supports women to tell their stories through performing, visual and literary arts and art therapies. This enables women who are victims of violence to self-heal and gain awareness of their rights. It also challenges society’s silencing of women. Mothertongue cites the example of a woman whose husband infected her with HIV and then forced her out of her home, who started legal action against him. Mothertongue, with support from the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Trust Fund To End Violence Against Women, brought together 28 women in Khayelitsha near Cape Town who were HIV-positive and survivors of gender-based violence to develop performances based on their experiences. This helped them in their own healing and in supporting other women in the community.

3. Tisunge Ana Athu Akhazi Coalition (TAAAC) / Let’s Protect Our Girl Children, Zambia: TAAAC is a coalition of 9 organisations working to fight sexual violence against girls in Zambia. It advocates for judicial reform to stop violence against women and girls, and supports the Safe Spaces program for educating school children about their rights. Safe Spaces teaches girls about HIV and AIDS, puberty, gender stereotypes and human rights, and provides physical space for them to meet together. It also teaches boys about respect for girls, and gender roles. (Let’s Protect Our Girl Children is also a recipient of a UNIFEM Trust Fund Grant.)

4. The New Sudanese Indigenous NGO Network, Sudan: NESI-Network is one of 16 organisations and individuals that the Nobel Women’s Initiative is highlighting during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. This 22-member network of organisations throughout Sudan seeks to strengthen civil society and to enhance the dignity of people regardless of ethnicity, gender or religion.

5. Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre (CIRRDOC), Nigeria: CIRRDOC supports women survivors of violence and works to halt violence and the spread of HIV through various mechanisms such as the creation of anti-violence committees headed by men, including traditional leaders:




6. Raising Voices, Uganda: Raising Voices is a project that along with the Centre for Domestic Violence Prevention in Kampala aims to prevent violence against women. It uses a model of community mobilisation called SASA -- a Kiswahili word that means "now" as well as an acronym for Start, Awareness, Support, Action --  to stop violence and the spread of HIV, by raising awareness of power imbalances and how to address them:




Stopping violence against women requires action at many levels, and by all of us.

Stories

Sometimes a human story can tell us more than a whole page of statistics about what’s going on in the world.

Tsitsi Dangarembga / Photo courtesy
http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/images/tow/TOW2007/bios/Dangarembga.htm

One storyteller is Tsitsi Dangarembga. A novelist and filmmaker, she portrays the lives of people, family relationships and women’s situations in Zimbabwean society with candour and sharpness. Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions (1988) and her films Neria (1993) and Everyone’s Child (1996) have blazed a trail in Zimbabwean literature and cinema.

I had the opportunity to see Everyone’s Child in Harare shortly after it was released. The film tells the difficult story of four children whose parents have died of AIDS, and underlines the value of community support.



Tsitsi Dangarembga continues to make films and her novel The Book of Not came out in 2006. She founded the International Images Film Festival for Women in Harare in 2002. In early 2010 Dangarembga was appointed portfolio Secretary for Education for the Movement for Democratic Change - Mutambara in Zimbabwe.

Statistics? Stories? I could tell you that the UN’s just-released figures on HIV/AIDS say that 22.5 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are living with HIV, including 2.3 million children under 15 years old. Or that although new infections are declining in many countries, 1.8 million people were newly infected last year, or that 1.3 million people in Africa died of AIDS in 2009.

Or, I could suggest that you listen to their stories.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation has information about the organisations it supports that are working to strengthen communities dealing with HIV/AIDS. (They can tell you the stories better than I can.)

One more story before I go. This one is a real-life story about how one community in Kenya is supporting its members coping with HIV/AIDS. (The video features Francis Muiruri, the Nyeri District Coordinator of the Kenya Network of Women with AIDS, and was written, filmed and edited by a Canadian, the multi-talented Jasmine Osiowy, and narrated by educator extraordinaire Rod Osiowy, for the College of the Rockies in Cranbrook, Canada.)

Promoting health equity

Talking Drum (2005) / Attribution: っ
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TalkingDrum.jpg

When we hear about health in Africa, we often hear about diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS or water-borne diseases, or people without affordable health care, clinics, hospitals or medications. These are of course real and urgent problems. But what we hear less about are the people who are working to improve health in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation supports some of those people – especially frontline health care professionals, communities and families who are dealing with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This post is about another group – one made up of some of the world’s foremost health specialists, who are based in southern Africa. I’m referring to EQUINET: the Regional Network on Equity in Health in Southern Africa.

EQUINET is a network of remarkable people who are promoting an approach to health in southern Africa that is based on equity and social justice. They are internationally-respected researchers, health professionals, civil society advocates and policy makers – municipal, national and regional -- who also have firm roots in local groups and communities.

The coordinator and one of the founders of EQUINET is Rene Loewenson, director of the non-profit Training and Research Support Centre (TARSC) in Harare, Zimbabwe. She’s an epidemiologist (with amazing energy, I might add) with expertise in public health, occupational health, health and employment, and community participation in health. She's worked at the University of Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe’s Congress of Trade Unions and with UN agencies in addition to establishing TARSC.

EQUINET’s steering committee is made up of people from over a dozen institutions in the region. Along with Rene Loewenson, they include: Ireen Makwiza, Lot Nyirenda and Bertha Simwaka at REACH Trust, Malawi; Lucy Gilson and Ermin Erasmus at the Centre for Health Policy, University of the Witwatersrand, and the University of Cape Town, South Africa; Di McIntyre, University of Cape Town Health Economics Unit, South Africa; Greg Ruiters, Institute for Social and Economic Research, Rhodes University, South Africa; Yoswa Dambisya, University of Limpopo, South Africa; Scholastika Iipinge, University of Namibia; Noma French Mbombo and Leslie London, University of Western Cape and University of Cape Town School of Family and Public Health, South Africa; Aulline Mabika, SEATINI, Zimbabwe; Selemani Mbuyita and Ahmed Makemba at IFAKARA Health Institute, Tanzania; and Mickey Chopra, Health Science Research Council, South Africa. Additional members coordinate thematic work, alliance-building with civil society and parliamentarians, and national networks.

EQUINET chose to focus on equity after observing the persistent inequalities in health and access to health care in the region. For EQUINET, achieving equity in health means that countries must address differences in health status that are unnecessary, avoidable, and unfair, but also the power relations among people that affect who gets health care. EQUINET tries to influence the way that governments make decisions about health and resource allocation, and also how communities participate in that decision-making.

EQUINET members tackle a range of issues, including people’s participation in health, health financing, health policy, human resources, health rights, trade, diseases like HIV/AIDS and their treatment, and food security and nutrition. They also connect people through national networks, a newsletter and a website.

EQUINET began as an idea, that a few individuals shared and then discussed at a conference in 1997 that brought together researchers, community health activists and senior government officials. EQUINET grew from there thanks to the persistence and determination of a half dozen key people. (I have to admit to having been involved with EQUINET in its early phases when I was working with the International Development Research Centre, one of the early supporters of EQUINET's work.)

EQUINET's reach is wide. It has a dizzying array of collaborative partners in Africa and elsewhere around the world. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is a key partner. Others include the People’s Health Movement, the Community Working Group on Health and International People's Health Council, the Municipal Services Project, the Global Equity Gauge Alliance, the University of New South Wales, Australia, Medact (UK), and the University of Saskatchewan. Then there’s the African Health Research Forum, the International Development Research Centre (Canada), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the World Health Organisation, the Council on Health Research for Development, the International Society for Equity in Health, the Dag Hammerskjold Foundation, Rockefeller and many others.

Despite its wide range of activities and reach, EQUINET’s members remain focused on their primary goal: promoting equity in health for people in southern Africa.