The year 1995 was a turning point for the women’s movement in Africa and the world at large with the unanimous adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) by 189 countries. This agenda has been defined as the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights and the key global policy document with historic commitments to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment. The agenda is one of the few women’s rights instruments that has received high praise for ushering in enormous improvements in the lives of women and girls across the globe. More women and girls than at any previous point in time serve in political offices, are protected by laws and policies against violence against women and live under constitutions that guarantee gender equality and equity.
Whereas these leading-edge advancements to improve the political, economic and social well-being of women and girls must be celebrated, there remains more ground to break. Some countries have taken a couple of steps back, away from advancing women’s rights in all dimensions of life like the BPfA envisioned. Women continue to earn less than men and are more likely to work in poor quality jobs. A third of the world’s women are said to have suffered a form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetime while an estimated 800 women die in childbirth everyday due to gaps in reproductive rights and health care. In Africa, women continue to be treated as second class citizens and the female Heads of State count remains at four (4).
The commemoration of Beijing+25 in 2020 provides an opportunity to comprehensively assess the current gains and challenges in the implementation of the agenda as well as scale up progress to achieve all-round autonomy for half of the world’s population. It is an opportunity to look back on what has been achieved but also look forward to what needs to be done. Akina Mama wa Afrika together with other African Civil Society under the auspices of FEMNET and NGOCSWAFRICA were part of both online and off line consultative processes to ensure that feminist perspectives are integrated in the outcome documents.
AMwA participated in the East Africa CSO Consultation that attracted 60 feminists from 20 African countries held between 28th to 29th August, 2019 and the Africa CSO Consultation attended by over 100 feminists which was held between 28th October and 30th October, 2019 respectively. The major outcomes so far has been emerging consensus as African CSOs on the critical issues by developing a CSO position paper and draft CSO Parallel report; effective advocacy on the adoption of an African progressive outcome document by African Gender Ministers and protection from reversals on already agreed language in other international frameworks.
