Tuesday 16 January 2007
Women at the World Social Forum
Until end of January I'm going to be in Nairobi blogging the World Social Forum from a women's perspective. Please check out the blog here
Sunday 7 January 2007
Happy New Blog
For the creation of this new blog, thanks are due to: my boss Philip Dearden and the rest of the team at the Centre for International Development and Training for agreeing to a year's leave of absence; my good friend Mary Allen Ballo of Sahel Eco who provided a little rooftop kingdom in Djelibougou, Bamako for 3 months where I could sit and think (or sometimes just sit); my editor David Hayes at opendemocracy who encouraged my taste for writing political articles; and my family who are always supportive.
The 4 posts below were all written in the final quarter of 2006 and based largely on my stay in Mali / West Africa. Please keep visiting the blog, there's a lot more to come!
The 4 posts below were all written in the final quarter of 2006 and based largely on my stay in Mali / West Africa. Please keep visiting the blog, there's a lot more to come!
Malta or House of Cards
One of the highlights of a visit to Malta is St John’s Cathedral in Valetta. This building is testament to the wealth, power and religious ardour of the Knights of the Order of St John, who used Malta as a military fortress for 200 years. Known as the Knights Templar, these noblemen from the most important families in Europe had a single mission – to protect Europe from attack by the Ottoman Turks and, thus, the Catholic faith from the influence of Islam.
Or rather, as Laurence Olivier narrates in the British wartime propaganda film, Malta, GC, ‘to protect Christendom against the infidel.’
The cathedral is simple on the outside with an opulent interior. Fantastic baroque stone carving on every wall and pillar, in the nave it’s still all covered with gilt. So in one way, the building is filled with light. But there’s a feeling of darkness here and violent death – not the serenity of a soul gone to meet their maker. One of many examples is a magnificent 3-D memorial to a fallen knight, executed in shiny black metal, decorated with shields and swords. You don’t get a sense of redemption, only a sense of anger. ‘It’s as if they’re still fighting,’ says my daughter.
Is that what the family (or the Order) requested from the artist? The entire interior, including many of the altar-pieces, was commissioned from the Calabrian Matthia Preti. Did he actually subvert the task to convey his own perception of the knights? The bucolic biblical scenes painted in pastels on the ceiling are marred at the bottom by giant figures of knights in black robes who cleverly but frighteningly emerge in 3-D from the fresco. They do not form part of the biblical story at all - they crouch ready to leap out.
The whole is designed to shock and awe the congregation.
Another highlight is the grand harbour cruise, where we learn that Valletta has numerous forts, accumulated from different periods of its turbulent history. The most beautiful is San Angelo. Originally built by the Phoenicians, with a temple to the goddess Astarte, it was taken over by the Romans - whose temple was to Juno. When the Knights Templar took over the fort, they also built a church to ‘Our Lady.’ They later turned the fort into a prison, in which the artist Caravaggio was incarcerated because he had (perhaps by subversive painting) offended one of the high knights. During world war two the British renamed the fort HMS San Angelo. Now the location is used by Hollywood filmmakers for epics like Troy, starring Brad Pitt.
The former capital Mdina (Medina, the walled city) was established by the Arabs when they conquered the island in the ninth century. Two hundred years later, Malta was taken by the Normans. After the Knights of St John established their sea-base at Valletta in the sixteenth century, the island suffered but withstood the three-month ‘great siege’ by Suleiman the Magnificent. But in 1798 Napoleon took Malta without a fight and forced out the knights.
‘With revolutionary fervour the French tried to impose their ideas on Maltese society, abolished the nobility, defaced their escutcheons, persecuted the clergy and looted the churches. In a spontaneous uprising the Maltese massacred the French garrison at Mdina.’(Lonely Planet 2004 )
At the War Museum on Vittoriosa we learn that the defence of Malta (1940 –1943) against the axis powers of fascism enabled the allies to take Egypt and French North Africa from German / Italian occupation. The whole island was awarded the George Cross for bravery, but in fact the Maltese people, caught in the cross-fire, had little choice but to struggle on as best they could, cut off by broken supply lines and under constant bombardment from German air-raids.
First line of defence
Control of Malta has always been essential for control of the Mediterranean -strategically located 1000 miles east of Gibraltar and 1000 miles west of Alexandria. Malta gained her independence in 1964, but is still the first line of defence for mainland Europe. But now the discourse is more of the north-south divide between Europe and Africa.
Walk down by the central bus station and you will see groups of north African men sitting at pavement cafes in new, maybe borrowed, clothing. One or two women in the hijab follow them as their men walk through the crowd.
For Malta has a problem with illegal immigrants from Libya, which is next stop south across the Mediterranean. They come across in fishing boats, trying to reach Italy but, because of poor navigation or other difficulties, land instead on Malta. An estimated one thousand ‘irregular’ immigrants were picked up at sea in the first half of 2006. Seven hundred are detained in an overcrowded former school. Cases are reviewed on an individual basis and some are awarded right of stay.
Interestingly, communication between north Africans and the Maltese is not too much of a problem: though now a Catholic country, Malta’s language is basically Arabic.
On Christmas morning, the internet café is the only open place in town. It is packed with young Africans, skyping home, checking emails, surfing for work or accommodation. One is on his mobile, discussing photographs for a new passport. Another has managed to get a short-term job as an electrician.
The majority are economic asylum seekers or refugees. Not all are from Libya itself, disenchanted with Gaddafi’s islamic socialism which has failed to deliver expected opportunities for its young people. Libya has become a jumping-off point for youth from war-torn Somalia and even from Ghana (probably via Gao in northern Mali, a thriving illegal immigration centre which manages several routes out of West Africa).
Public debate has been facilitated, for example through a four-part series in The Times (Malta) by Martin Sciuna (December 13th-16th 2006). A majority of the Maltese population agree that, while appreciating charitable support for refugees from (Catholic) religious orders, they do not wish this to be used as a wedge to open up the island to illegal immigrants
Malta’s foreign minister Dr Michael Frendo has been successful in getting the EU to recognise illegal immigration from Libya as a serious problem – and not only for Malta. Several conferences have been held since July 2006 to try to come to an agreement on practical measures for the Mediterranean.
In November, after several months delay through lack of support from Libya (which for various reasons seems not to be able to patrol her own coastline) the EU border agency Frontex finally began a two-week marine security operation, which deployed Maltese and Italian military vessels along with French, Greek and German aircraft.
This is in addition to the Frontex rapid reaction team on the island of Lampedusa, the more direct staging post for mainland Italy (an estimated 23,000 illegal immigrants entered Italy through this route in 2005).
The other main route to Europe from West Africa is via the Canary Islands to the Spanish mainland. Because of thae large numbers involved, Spain has been receiving ‘emergency aid ‘ from the EU - and Frontex patrols have been active off the coast of Senegal since August, deploying Finnish aircraft and Spanish / Italian vessels.
Unholy wars
But further west along the north African coast another problem has arisen. Much consternation has been caused, particularly in France and Spain, by the recent release of 2,600 ‘terrorists’ from Algerian jails. European intelligence sources suggest that some of these may join the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) - who formally announced their allegiance to Al Qaeda in September 2006, have escalated their acts of violence inside Algeria and constitute ‘one of the biggest threats to France.’
According to El País (21 December 2006) a third of suicide bombers in Iraq come from the Magreb (basically former French colonies). Al Qaeda has tasked GSPC with attacking Europe, developing links with similar groups in Morocco and Libya, as well as forming a federation across the Sahel (Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad).
‘Our Algerian brothers will be a thorn in the side of the yankee crusaders and their allies,’ says Ayman el Zawahiri (Al Qaeda’s number two) in a video on the internet ‘and will continue our holy war (jihad) in Algeria.’ Meanwhile Bush is talking about winning the ‘ideological war’ by sending more soldiers to Iraq.
In contrast, Gaddafi’s denunciation of Al Qaeda, his decision to renounce support for terrorism and eliminate his own WMD programmes, has earned Libya praise from the US ‘as an important model for regime behaviour change’ (Condoleeza Rice May 15 2006)
Gaddafi’s previous vision of pan-arabic unity has never met with success, perhaps unfortunately, as this may have helped to provide different solutions to current problems. His promotion of a pan-Sahel tamashek (touareg) republic still holds some currency – and may be a factor in the rejection of the salafiste influence in northern Mali by the predominantly touareg population.
Meanwhile, on October 7th 2006, Mali, along with Benin, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, took part in a trans-national day of action against migration controls - to commemorate the anniversary of the shooting of Moroccan immigrants in southern Spain the previous year.
House of cards
Amnesty International’s EU office warns against ‘the deep divide between Europe’s repressive immigration agenda and Africa’s interest in increasing development and opening up legal channels of immigration.’
In Malta, the non-governmental organisation Moviment Graffitti argues from an anti-capitalist position, against the construction of ‘fortress Europe’ and the fact that ‘free movement of capital around the world is accompanied by restrictions on the free movement of people.’
The island is orderly and hospitable. But a holiday on Malta is a neatly packaged reminder that, while separate ideologies may wax and wane, the god ideology remains, rampant.
The entire floor of St John’s Cathedral is tiled with giant tombstones for illustrious knights. The guidebook calls it a unique treasure of heraldic devices. The suit of swords predominates, the black eagle soars and death, grinning, holds up the hour-glass. These are not religious symbols. They are the language of the tarot cards, which, though not harmful in themselves, reveal for us the influences which have not yet passed away, that which has been ordained and which has not yet come to pass.
December 2006
Or rather, as Laurence Olivier narrates in the British wartime propaganda film, Malta, GC, ‘to protect Christendom against the infidel.’
The cathedral is simple on the outside with an opulent interior. Fantastic baroque stone carving on every wall and pillar, in the nave it’s still all covered with gilt. So in one way, the building is filled with light. But there’s a feeling of darkness here and violent death – not the serenity of a soul gone to meet their maker. One of many examples is a magnificent 3-D memorial to a fallen knight, executed in shiny black metal, decorated with shields and swords. You don’t get a sense of redemption, only a sense of anger. ‘It’s as if they’re still fighting,’ says my daughter.
Is that what the family (or the Order) requested from the artist? The entire interior, including many of the altar-pieces, was commissioned from the Calabrian Matthia Preti. Did he actually subvert the task to convey his own perception of the knights? The bucolic biblical scenes painted in pastels on the ceiling are marred at the bottom by giant figures of knights in black robes who cleverly but frighteningly emerge in 3-D from the fresco. They do not form part of the biblical story at all - they crouch ready to leap out.
The whole is designed to shock and awe the congregation.
Another highlight is the grand harbour cruise, where we learn that Valletta has numerous forts, accumulated from different periods of its turbulent history. The most beautiful is San Angelo. Originally built by the Phoenicians, with a temple to the goddess Astarte, it was taken over by the Romans - whose temple was to Juno. When the Knights Templar took over the fort, they also built a church to ‘Our Lady.’ They later turned the fort into a prison, in which the artist Caravaggio was incarcerated because he had (perhaps by subversive painting) offended one of the high knights. During world war two the British renamed the fort HMS San Angelo. Now the location is used by Hollywood filmmakers for epics like Troy, starring Brad Pitt.
The former capital Mdina (Medina, the walled city) was established by the Arabs when they conquered the island in the ninth century. Two hundred years later, Malta was taken by the Normans. After the Knights of St John established their sea-base at Valletta in the sixteenth century, the island suffered but withstood the three-month ‘great siege’ by Suleiman the Magnificent. But in 1798 Napoleon took Malta without a fight and forced out the knights.
‘With revolutionary fervour the French tried to impose their ideas on Maltese society, abolished the nobility, defaced their escutcheons, persecuted the clergy and looted the churches. In a spontaneous uprising the Maltese massacred the French garrison at Mdina.’(Lonely Planet 2004 )
At the War Museum on Vittoriosa we learn that the defence of Malta (1940 –1943) against the axis powers of fascism enabled the allies to take Egypt and French North Africa from German / Italian occupation. The whole island was awarded the George Cross for bravery, but in fact the Maltese people, caught in the cross-fire, had little choice but to struggle on as best they could, cut off by broken supply lines and under constant bombardment from German air-raids.
First line of defence
Control of Malta has always been essential for control of the Mediterranean -strategically located 1000 miles east of Gibraltar and 1000 miles west of Alexandria. Malta gained her independence in 1964, but is still the first line of defence for mainland Europe. But now the discourse is more of the north-south divide between Europe and Africa.
Walk down by the central bus station and you will see groups of north African men sitting at pavement cafes in new, maybe borrowed, clothing. One or two women in the hijab follow them as their men walk through the crowd.
For Malta has a problem with illegal immigrants from Libya, which is next stop south across the Mediterranean. They come across in fishing boats, trying to reach Italy but, because of poor navigation or other difficulties, land instead on Malta. An estimated one thousand ‘irregular’ immigrants were picked up at sea in the first half of 2006. Seven hundred are detained in an overcrowded former school. Cases are reviewed on an individual basis and some are awarded right of stay.
Interestingly, communication between north Africans and the Maltese is not too much of a problem: though now a Catholic country, Malta’s language is basically Arabic.
On Christmas morning, the internet café is the only open place in town. It is packed with young Africans, skyping home, checking emails, surfing for work or accommodation. One is on his mobile, discussing photographs for a new passport. Another has managed to get a short-term job as an electrician.
The majority are economic asylum seekers or refugees. Not all are from Libya itself, disenchanted with Gaddafi’s islamic socialism which has failed to deliver expected opportunities for its young people. Libya has become a jumping-off point for youth from war-torn Somalia and even from Ghana (probably via Gao in northern Mali, a thriving illegal immigration centre which manages several routes out of West Africa).
Public debate has been facilitated, for example through a four-part series in The Times (Malta) by Martin Sciuna (December 13th-16th 2006). A majority of the Maltese population agree that, while appreciating charitable support for refugees from (Catholic) religious orders, they do not wish this to be used as a wedge to open up the island to illegal immigrants
Malta’s foreign minister Dr Michael Frendo has been successful in getting the EU to recognise illegal immigration from Libya as a serious problem – and not only for Malta. Several conferences have been held since July 2006 to try to come to an agreement on practical measures for the Mediterranean.
In November, after several months delay through lack of support from Libya (which for various reasons seems not to be able to patrol her own coastline) the EU border agency Frontex finally began a two-week marine security operation, which deployed Maltese and Italian military vessels along with French, Greek and German aircraft.
This is in addition to the Frontex rapid reaction team on the island of Lampedusa, the more direct staging post for mainland Italy (an estimated 23,000 illegal immigrants entered Italy through this route in 2005).
The other main route to Europe from West Africa is via the Canary Islands to the Spanish mainland. Because of thae large numbers involved, Spain has been receiving ‘emergency aid ‘ from the EU - and Frontex patrols have been active off the coast of Senegal since August, deploying Finnish aircraft and Spanish / Italian vessels.
Unholy wars
But further west along the north African coast another problem has arisen. Much consternation has been caused, particularly in France and Spain, by the recent release of 2,600 ‘terrorists’ from Algerian jails. European intelligence sources suggest that some of these may join the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat) - who formally announced their allegiance to Al Qaeda in September 2006, have escalated their acts of violence inside Algeria and constitute ‘one of the biggest threats to France.’
According to El País (21 December 2006) a third of suicide bombers in Iraq come from the Magreb (basically former French colonies). Al Qaeda has tasked GSPC with attacking Europe, developing links with similar groups in Morocco and Libya, as well as forming a federation across the Sahel (Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad).
‘Our Algerian brothers will be a thorn in the side of the yankee crusaders and their allies,’ says Ayman el Zawahiri (Al Qaeda’s number two) in a video on the internet ‘and will continue our holy war (jihad) in Algeria.’ Meanwhile Bush is talking about winning the ‘ideological war’ by sending more soldiers to Iraq.
In contrast, Gaddafi’s denunciation of Al Qaeda, his decision to renounce support for terrorism and eliminate his own WMD programmes, has earned Libya praise from the US ‘as an important model for regime behaviour change’ (Condoleeza Rice May 15 2006)
Gaddafi’s previous vision of pan-arabic unity has never met with success, perhaps unfortunately, as this may have helped to provide different solutions to current problems. His promotion of a pan-Sahel tamashek (touareg) republic still holds some currency – and may be a factor in the rejection of the salafiste influence in northern Mali by the predominantly touareg population.
Meanwhile, on October 7th 2006, Mali, along with Benin, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia, took part in a trans-national day of action against migration controls - to commemorate the anniversary of the shooting of Moroccan immigrants in southern Spain the previous year.
House of cards
Amnesty International’s EU office warns against ‘the deep divide between Europe’s repressive immigration agenda and Africa’s interest in increasing development and opening up legal channels of immigration.’
In Malta, the non-governmental organisation Moviment Graffitti argues from an anti-capitalist position, against the construction of ‘fortress Europe’ and the fact that ‘free movement of capital around the world is accompanied by restrictions on the free movement of people.’
The island is orderly and hospitable. But a holiday on Malta is a neatly packaged reminder that, while separate ideologies may wax and wane, the god ideology remains, rampant.
The entire floor of St John’s Cathedral is tiled with giant tombstones for illustrious knights. The guidebook calls it a unique treasure of heraldic devices. The suit of swords predominates, the black eagle soars and death, grinning, holds up the hour-glass. These are not religious symbols. They are the language of the tarot cards, which, though not harmful in themselves, reveal for us the influences which have not yet passed away, that which has been ordained and which has not yet come to pass.
December 2006
Africa: Responsible Parenting
My good friend Mary tells me the story of how she once went into a posh hotel in Bamako and saw five or six white women sitting in a line, each with a cute black baby on her knee, ‘for all the world as if they’d just been on a shopping spree and were showing off their purchases.’
Adoption of African babies by white families in the West is an ongoing practice and may be done from the best of intentions. Yet Mary, who has been in Mali for twenty years and has her own Malian family, explains how the practice of African-Western adoption highlights fundamental cross-cultural misunderstandings.
It is, in fact, common for African parents to let family or friends look after one of their children, give them a good education or a better start in life. But this is quite different from giving up their child for good: the child is always part of their natural family and will always return to take up their adult role there.
‘However carefully the process is explained to an African family, they simply don’t grasp the concept of adoption as we understand it in the West, because for them, the idea of giving up a child for good is simply inconceivable. So, when African parents enter into such an adoption agreement, they do not realise the full consequences of what they are doing.’
In addition, there is plenty of evidence from personal testimony that, however loving white adoptive parents may be, black children taken out of their natural environment – no matter how disadvantaged - will grow up to resent this and even say: ‘I wish it had never happened.’
You can take the child out of Africa, but you can’t take Africa out of the child.
Although some of this evidence is now contested there has been, in the UK, since the early 1980s, serious opposition to ‘transracial adoption’ - which makes it extremely difficult for a white British family to adopt a black child who has been born to parents in the UK. But, somehow, this restriction doesn’t apply to adoptions from overseas.
Adopt a country
We’ve had the sponsor a child concept - which means providing extra support for a child in their own environment. That’s been criticised for setting the child apart, creating inequality in the community. There followed the ‘sponsor a community’ concept, but this attracts the same criticisms. You can’t solve Africa’s problems by focussing on individual needs, without addressing the system in which these needs arise, as Malawian child rights activists have tried to point out to Madonna.
Good intentions are simply not enough. There’s inevitably a power and wealth differential in these arrangements which has to be recognised. So when I read that Angela Merkel is proposing that each of the G8 countries adopt an African country as part of her G8 presidency platform, my blood runs cold. Although this won’t mean taking children out of Africa, there are a number of possible consequences worth considering.
My first reaction is that this is a 21st century return to the original carve-up of the African continent between colonial powers, the impact of which is still being suffered by individual African countries. This seems to smack of the same kind of paternalism: ‘we can do things better, we know what you need.’ Haven’t we learned anything?
But there’s always more than one perspective. When I mention the idea to the president of one of the leading African women’s organisations, she’s surprisingly enthusiastic. ‘What a great idea! Just think, if Germany was really concentrating on Mali, all our problems would be sorted within 12 months!’
Maybe it’s something to do with who is going to do the parenting. Because, in fact, though Germany’s contribution to development aid is rather thrifty, it’s always money wisely spent, her technical assistance is widely recognised as excellent and, in Mali, very much appreciated.
Despite this, German representatives here privately admit to grave doubts about the longer-term sustainability of their projects, given the lack of real commitment of central government to the decentralisation process and the related lack of effective social mobilisation at the grassroots.
One of the reasons Mali may welcome greater involvement from Germany is their strongly felt need to escape from the psychological influence of ageing France – whose continuing stranglehold on the education system in francophone West Africa deliberately, according to education workers, impedes the development of locally appropriate skills and attitudes for both young men and women.
What kind of partnership?
Are African countries now going to have the choice over who will adopt them? Will there be a squabble in the nursery? ‘No, I want Germany to be our new dad!’ or ‘Yes, we want China to be our new mum!’
For each G8 country is going to do parenting differently. Does this mean we will see new paradigms of development, and, for example, competition between the latest German and Japanese models?
I’m not seriously worried about the proposal, because I don’t believe the G8 countries will buy into it. Whatever their relative levels of altruism as regards development aid, they all want to have a footprint in every African country, for reasons of future political influence and their own economic benefit.
But I want to run with the metaphor because it can be both entertaining and informative. What’s going to happen if Germany is doing a good parenting job with characteristic Zuverläßigkeit and China comes along, like a flamboyant rich auntie, saying: ‘That’s OK, bruv, take the weekend off, I’ll give her a treat.’ Then proceeds to subvert little Mali with a diet of takeaway pizza, coca cola and adult-rated movies?
China is willing to adopt any of the children. You can already see the marks of her high-heels across Africa, from Algeria to Angola, most recently in Accra (Ghana). She now rivals the US in trade relations. But Africans are beginning to ask: ‘what does our Chinese friend really want? She’s not applying any political conditions to economic engagement. Is she a new partner or just a neo-colonial?’ (Afrique Magazine No. 254 November 2006)
In contrast, the German proposal specifies that only certain countries are going to be adopted. Like those respectable white ladies in the Hotel Salaam, G8 is mainly interested in cute well-behaved babies. After all, who but China would want to invest in rebellious, abused, conflicted children like the Sudan or D R Congo, when you can’t trust them to play nicely at parties?
Rwanda has successfully managed to grow out of her bad-girl image. (Far be it from me to suggest this success is due to the fact that, after the 1994 genocide, the majority of the population were women.) The country’s also thrown off the influence of France, whose neglect in the 1990s had such unimaginable consequences. Now Rwanda has her own vision for her future, she is able to stand up to France and say: ‘We are equals.’
Her government’s had a lot of help through much-needed budget support from the UK. But people from both East and West Africa have also raised issues with me about commercially motivated UK support for Rwanda playing dirty games across the fence with neighbouring DR Congo…
Readers may argue that I’m being unfair. Merkel’s proposal is about G8 countries ‘picking a partnership’. She is suggesting a summit with (male) African leaders to discuss the proposal. In fact, as other reports highlight, this is not about giving more money in development aid, but (what a surprise) developing private sector investment. So, without checking the small print or talking to their (female) partners in country, are African governments going to sign up yet again to an agreement of which the consequences may be unexpectedly negative?
Good parenting
I am very lucky that I was brought up where I belonged, in Yorkshire, by my natural parents, both poor but proud working class socialists. This tough love upbringing consisted of the Brian Daniel Methodist-based morality (‘Well, you should have been sorry before you did it’) and Victorian work ethic (‘If anything’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right’) combined with the Mildred Baxter school of counselling (‘It’s time you pulled your socks up, love’).
This resulted in me working hard, taking responsibility for my own actions, never being a victim or wearing wrinkled stockings. I grew up with self-respect, because I was always treated as an intelligent equal.
Good parenting also works by example. Despite their humble origins, my parents were both loved and respected members of society. They didn’t lie, cheat or steal; never countenanced violence; they gave their services to the community for free after work in the evenings (because that’s what you do) and didn’t feel the need to advertise their achievements.
It’s not enough to have good intentions - you also need to live out your principles.
Adoption procedures in the UK continue to be stringent, and rightly so, because parenting is a big responsibility, not everyone can hack it. So, all you G8 countries, please line up behind Germany: I’d like to inspect your credentials. Africa is still experiencing growing pains because of colonialism - and which one among you, in the meantime, has become a fit parent?
December 2006
Adoption of African babies by white families in the West is an ongoing practice and may be done from the best of intentions. Yet Mary, who has been in Mali for twenty years and has her own Malian family, explains how the practice of African-Western adoption highlights fundamental cross-cultural misunderstandings.
It is, in fact, common for African parents to let family or friends look after one of their children, give them a good education or a better start in life. But this is quite different from giving up their child for good: the child is always part of their natural family and will always return to take up their adult role there.
‘However carefully the process is explained to an African family, they simply don’t grasp the concept of adoption as we understand it in the West, because for them, the idea of giving up a child for good is simply inconceivable. So, when African parents enter into such an adoption agreement, they do not realise the full consequences of what they are doing.’
In addition, there is plenty of evidence from personal testimony that, however loving white adoptive parents may be, black children taken out of their natural environment – no matter how disadvantaged - will grow up to resent this and even say: ‘I wish it had never happened.’
You can take the child out of Africa, but you can’t take Africa out of the child.
Although some of this evidence is now contested there has been, in the UK, since the early 1980s, serious opposition to ‘transracial adoption’ - which makes it extremely difficult for a white British family to adopt a black child who has been born to parents in the UK. But, somehow, this restriction doesn’t apply to adoptions from overseas.
Adopt a country
We’ve had the sponsor a child concept - which means providing extra support for a child in their own environment. That’s been criticised for setting the child apart, creating inequality in the community. There followed the ‘sponsor a community’ concept, but this attracts the same criticisms. You can’t solve Africa’s problems by focussing on individual needs, without addressing the system in which these needs arise, as Malawian child rights activists have tried to point out to Madonna.
Good intentions are simply not enough. There’s inevitably a power and wealth differential in these arrangements which has to be recognised. So when I read that Angela Merkel is proposing that each of the G8 countries adopt an African country as part of her G8 presidency platform, my blood runs cold. Although this won’t mean taking children out of Africa, there are a number of possible consequences worth considering.
My first reaction is that this is a 21st century return to the original carve-up of the African continent between colonial powers, the impact of which is still being suffered by individual African countries. This seems to smack of the same kind of paternalism: ‘we can do things better, we know what you need.’ Haven’t we learned anything?
But there’s always more than one perspective. When I mention the idea to the president of one of the leading African women’s organisations, she’s surprisingly enthusiastic. ‘What a great idea! Just think, if Germany was really concentrating on Mali, all our problems would be sorted within 12 months!’
Maybe it’s something to do with who is going to do the parenting. Because, in fact, though Germany’s contribution to development aid is rather thrifty, it’s always money wisely spent, her technical assistance is widely recognised as excellent and, in Mali, very much appreciated.
Despite this, German representatives here privately admit to grave doubts about the longer-term sustainability of their projects, given the lack of real commitment of central government to the decentralisation process and the related lack of effective social mobilisation at the grassroots.
One of the reasons Mali may welcome greater involvement from Germany is their strongly felt need to escape from the psychological influence of ageing France – whose continuing stranglehold on the education system in francophone West Africa deliberately, according to education workers, impedes the development of locally appropriate skills and attitudes for both young men and women.
What kind of partnership?
Are African countries now going to have the choice over who will adopt them? Will there be a squabble in the nursery? ‘No, I want Germany to be our new dad!’ or ‘Yes, we want China to be our new mum!’
For each G8 country is going to do parenting differently. Does this mean we will see new paradigms of development, and, for example, competition between the latest German and Japanese models?
I’m not seriously worried about the proposal, because I don’t believe the G8 countries will buy into it. Whatever their relative levels of altruism as regards development aid, they all want to have a footprint in every African country, for reasons of future political influence and their own economic benefit.
But I want to run with the metaphor because it can be both entertaining and informative. What’s going to happen if Germany is doing a good parenting job with characteristic Zuverläßigkeit and China comes along, like a flamboyant rich auntie, saying: ‘That’s OK, bruv, take the weekend off, I’ll give her a treat.’ Then proceeds to subvert little Mali with a diet of takeaway pizza, coca cola and adult-rated movies?
China is willing to adopt any of the children. You can already see the marks of her high-heels across Africa, from Algeria to Angola, most recently in Accra (Ghana). She now rivals the US in trade relations. But Africans are beginning to ask: ‘what does our Chinese friend really want? She’s not applying any political conditions to economic engagement. Is she a new partner or just a neo-colonial?’ (Afrique Magazine No. 254 November 2006)
In contrast, the German proposal specifies that only certain countries are going to be adopted. Like those respectable white ladies in the Hotel Salaam, G8 is mainly interested in cute well-behaved babies. After all, who but China would want to invest in rebellious, abused, conflicted children like the Sudan or D R Congo, when you can’t trust them to play nicely at parties?
Rwanda has successfully managed to grow out of her bad-girl image. (Far be it from me to suggest this success is due to the fact that, after the 1994 genocide, the majority of the population were women.) The country’s also thrown off the influence of France, whose neglect in the 1990s had such unimaginable consequences. Now Rwanda has her own vision for her future, she is able to stand up to France and say: ‘We are equals.’
Her government’s had a lot of help through much-needed budget support from the UK. But people from both East and West Africa have also raised issues with me about commercially motivated UK support for Rwanda playing dirty games across the fence with neighbouring DR Congo…
Readers may argue that I’m being unfair. Merkel’s proposal is about G8 countries ‘picking a partnership’. She is suggesting a summit with (male) African leaders to discuss the proposal. In fact, as other reports highlight, this is not about giving more money in development aid, but (what a surprise) developing private sector investment. So, without checking the small print or talking to their (female) partners in country, are African governments going to sign up yet again to an agreement of which the consequences may be unexpectedly negative?
Good parenting
I am very lucky that I was brought up where I belonged, in Yorkshire, by my natural parents, both poor but proud working class socialists. This tough love upbringing consisted of the Brian Daniel Methodist-based morality (‘Well, you should have been sorry before you did it’) and Victorian work ethic (‘If anything’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right’) combined with the Mildred Baxter school of counselling (‘It’s time you pulled your socks up, love’).
This resulted in me working hard, taking responsibility for my own actions, never being a victim or wearing wrinkled stockings. I grew up with self-respect, because I was always treated as an intelligent equal.
Good parenting also works by example. Despite their humble origins, my parents were both loved and respected members of society. They didn’t lie, cheat or steal; never countenanced violence; they gave their services to the community for free after work in the evenings (because that’s what you do) and didn’t feel the need to advertise their achievements.
It’s not enough to have good intentions - you also need to live out your principles.
Adoption procedures in the UK continue to be stringent, and rightly so, because parenting is a big responsibility, not everyone can hack it. So, all you G8 countries, please line up behind Germany: I’d like to inspect your credentials. Africa is still experiencing growing pains because of colonialism - and which one among you, in the meantime, has become a fit parent?
December 2006
Saturday 6 January 2007
MDG9: A new millennium challenge
There’s a cheeky little email entitled ‘bedtime reading’ which is doing the rounds in francophone West Africa, passed on by women in the non-governmental (NGO) sector, about how sexism in the real world is reflected in the French language use of grammatical gender (le and la).
Like all the best spoofs, the email contains more than a grain of truth and I’ve used it to good effect to provoke discussion in gender training here with mixed groups of NGO workers. To give you a flavour, though English doesn’t have the same grammatical system, I’ve freely translated some of the text below by highlighting the French masculine words in blue and feminine words in red.
(A man is speaking). Why is it, when there’s a problem, it’s immediately feminine?
Rain, snow, hail, storm, that’s all for you women! For us, it’s sunshine, good weather, springtime and paradise!
You don’t have a chance: washing-up, cooking, food, dust, dirt and cleaning. For us, it’s coffee in the armchair with the newspaper watching the rugby and that would be real happiness, if you didn’t come and sow discord and strife.
To get some peace, I think we should let gender decide. You can watch the TV but we choose the channel. Even if the remote belongs to you, we have the control.
But don’t go looking for any sexism there, oh no! Besides, I need to point out that the word sex has no feminine form. We don’t say sex but the sex of a woman. Of course, by definition, pleasure is for men.
For, if the preliminaries are too quick, it’s because they are only a preliminary. Any more than that and it’s a waste of time. After having achieved orgasm, the man turns his back to get some sleep, while the woman experiences frustration.
This is where I’m going to stop translating since, when I’ve shared the email with individual women in Mali (not the first country to go looking for female outspokenness) this is where they stop and tell me: ‘That is so true.’
This is nothing specific to West Africa – though maybe something about French-speaking men. Because over the summer I read a stereotype-confounding survey report in Le Monde, that 33% of married Frenchwomen had never experienced orgasm. One explanation for this was the social pressure on them to look (but obviously not to feel) good. And in the same paper, an article about how single Frenchwomen are so desperate for the possibility of a good lay that they no longer insist on their casual sex partner using a condom (in case he just leaves).
It’s good to talk
Of course I don’t really think it’s anything to do with the French language.
There are a number of reasons why women don’t enjoy sex. In Africa one of them is female circumcision. According to Ann Birch, making a documentary about Plan International’s work to combat FGM in Mali, a number of men she spoke to admitted they would prefer their wives not to have been circumcised ‘because it puts them off sex.’ It would help a great deal if they said that loudly in public.
But thanks to the miraculously misunderstood mysteries of the female anatomy, even women who have been circumcised can enjoy orgasm. This is because the clitoris is not a tiny hard-to-find switch but the entire female genital muscle, which has 6 times as many nerve endings as the male sex organ.
That’s a little-known fact I learned when I took part in a bilingual community production of the Vagina Monologues in 2003 in north Wales - like Mali, not the first place you’d go looking for open debate about sex. Most of the women in the group had never spoken the word ‘vagina’ out loud in private, let alone on a public stage.
Those women found the experience incredibly empowering. And among the audience in the community hall in the wild Welsh heartland of Porthmadog (we didn’t know if anyone would actually turn up) were old ladies who had come all the way from Angelesy to hear said what they had never been able to say.
Anyone who has seen the Vagina Monologues might remember that around the world there are one hundred and one cute words women are taught to use instead. And one of the main points of the show is that so many women – because of social conditioning, psychological or physical abuse - have a negative relationship with their own sexuality. Basically, ‘down there’ is ugly and dirty (and smelly) and doesn’t really belong to them at all.
The impact of that perception was indicated in a survey around the same time of young men in the UK who said they didn’t go down on their girlfriends because they were afraid of ‘offending’ them. (In other words, men might not think it’s ugly and dirty but they know their girlfriends certainly do.)
But what ‘s going on here? We’re in the third millennium. Towards the end of the last one, a visualisation technique called Body Mapping was developed and used to good effect with women in different parts of the world, to help give them a vocabulary with which to talk about themselves, their sexuality and their (often negative) experiences with men.
Thanks to the bilingual production I learned that the Welsh word cont was widely used by both men and women in Welsh erotic poetry of the Middle Ages. But nowadays, the more sex is talked about in public, the less men and women seem to have an understanding of eroticism, or a shared vocabulary to discuss it in private.
Safe sex
Once while working in Nigeria I innocently suggested to my team of Muslim men that the practice of polygamy (which I don’t agree with) could be seen as positive, if it stopped men visiting prostitutes and thus spreading HIV/AIDS. But I am reliably informed by both men and women across West Africa, that this is not the case. So, we have a scenario where a man is not able to share pleasure any of his four wives and then visits a prostitute for the chance of a little (fabricated) pleasure. Because the prostitute is not able to insist on condom use, the man brings back infection (which was passed on to the prostitute in the first place by another respectably married man) to all of his wives. If he then dies of HIV/AIDS, his wives are parcelled out among his brothers and so the infection continues. In fact, polygamy makes the situation worse.
The other obvious point about the prostitute is that her own pleasure in the transaction is never the issue, because this is a commercial, not an erotic, relationship. In Mali there’s been a big increase in prostitution as an income-generating activity among young women, including university students, who sell their favours to older, richer African or European men. After all (I suppose the reasoning goes) if you don’t enjoy sex, you might as well cash it in. Young men are now complaining that they can’t get a nice girlfriend because they ‘don’t have enough money.’
While not making much of an attempt to crack down on prostitution, the Malian authorities have become concerned at the increase in masturbation among young people - which is stopping them from getting married at all and thus threatening the whole ‘fabric of society’. They have finally found that, although they can’t please each other, they can please themselves.
The result of all this seems to be that everyone is at it like knives in West Africa - but nobody is actually making anyone else happy.
Of course, it’s not just an African problem. In France, adultery is an accepted practice (an attempt to get elsewhere what you’re not able to give at home). In Germany - which has the largest percentage of single people and the lowest birth-rate in Europe - prostitution is fully institutionalised. The Minister for Social Welfare publicly endorsed the mega-brothel that was established outside the Berlin stadium for this year’s World Cup. For this event, young girls were trafficked from Eastern Europe, West Africa and Brazil.
So, despite (quite nice) African men jumping up and down in excitement, shouting ‘gender balance! gender balance!’ when they see two female professionals among a group of twenty people in an NGO meeting, my perception is that all over the world things are regressing. The domestic economy of each country I visit seems to be founded on the beautiful but joyless bodies of young women. I don’t see how this can be good for development.
New targets
Why do we continue to abuse our most precious resources and cynically accept the encroaching desertification of human relationships? Whoever we are, however little we own, whatever the limitations on our future, good sex is the one chance on earth we all have – for everyone and their partner, just for a short time, which may seem like a lifetime - to dance together above the stars.
Bill and Melinda Gates, please take note. If you want to contribute to Millennium Development Goal 6 (Combat HIV/AIDS) you need to work towards the eradication of prostitution. This would require substantial resources to enable existing and potential prostitutes to become successful and independent businesswomen, international tour operators and sports science specialists (possibly with the help of Cuba) as well as to establish legal citizenship for all those girls who have been trafficked across national borders. Of course, that’s only looking at the supply side.
For the solution is even more radical than that, so I’d like to propose an additional goal - MDG 9: Achieve universal female orgasm by the year 2015.
I’m not recommending that we allow the World Bank to provide one of its top-down quick fixes. Nor do I think the Negroponte One Laptop Per Child project is going to help boys and girls transform the future here. This is actually something we could all take personal responsibility for.
It may sound provocative, but it’s certainly much less outrageous than what is happening in the world at the moment. Of course, there are still major obstacles, like the politics of culture, and of the market-place, but think of the gains: no more war, maybe even some help in the kitchen.
In the end, maybe it’s just a corny sixties suggestion. But, like the spoof email, my intention is serious. For peace, equality and sustainable development, why not concentrate on the art of making love.
November 2006
Like all the best spoofs, the email contains more than a grain of truth and I’ve used it to good effect to provoke discussion in gender training here with mixed groups of NGO workers. To give you a flavour, though English doesn’t have the same grammatical system, I’ve freely translated some of the text below by highlighting the French masculine words in blue and feminine words in red.
(A man is speaking). Why is it, when there’s a problem, it’s immediately feminine?
Rain, snow, hail, storm, that’s all for you women! For us, it’s sunshine, good weather, springtime and paradise!
You don’t have a chance: washing-up, cooking, food, dust, dirt and cleaning. For us, it’s coffee in the armchair with the newspaper watching the rugby and that would be real happiness, if you didn’t come and sow discord and strife.
To get some peace, I think we should let gender decide. You can watch the TV but we choose the channel. Even if the remote belongs to you, we have the control.
But don’t go looking for any sexism there, oh no! Besides, I need to point out that the word sex has no feminine form. We don’t say sex but the sex of a woman. Of course, by definition, pleasure is for men.
For, if the preliminaries are too quick, it’s because they are only a preliminary. Any more than that and it’s a waste of time. After having achieved orgasm, the man turns his back to get some sleep, while the woman experiences frustration.
This is where I’m going to stop translating since, when I’ve shared the email with individual women in Mali (not the first country to go looking for female outspokenness) this is where they stop and tell me: ‘That is so true.’
This is nothing specific to West Africa – though maybe something about French-speaking men. Because over the summer I read a stereotype-confounding survey report in Le Monde, that 33% of married Frenchwomen had never experienced orgasm. One explanation for this was the social pressure on them to look (but obviously not to feel) good. And in the same paper, an article about how single Frenchwomen are so desperate for the possibility of a good lay that they no longer insist on their casual sex partner using a condom (in case he just leaves).
It’s good to talk
Of course I don’t really think it’s anything to do with the French language.
There are a number of reasons why women don’t enjoy sex. In Africa one of them is female circumcision. According to Ann Birch, making a documentary about Plan International’s work to combat FGM in Mali, a number of men she spoke to admitted they would prefer their wives not to have been circumcised ‘because it puts them off sex.’ It would help a great deal if they said that loudly in public.
But thanks to the miraculously misunderstood mysteries of the female anatomy, even women who have been circumcised can enjoy orgasm. This is because the clitoris is not a tiny hard-to-find switch but the entire female genital muscle, which has 6 times as many nerve endings as the male sex organ.
That’s a little-known fact I learned when I took part in a bilingual community production of the Vagina Monologues in 2003 in north Wales - like Mali, not the first place you’d go looking for open debate about sex. Most of the women in the group had never spoken the word ‘vagina’ out loud in private, let alone on a public stage.
Those women found the experience incredibly empowering. And among the audience in the community hall in the wild Welsh heartland of Porthmadog (we didn’t know if anyone would actually turn up) were old ladies who had come all the way from Angelesy to hear said what they had never been able to say.
Anyone who has seen the Vagina Monologues might remember that around the world there are one hundred and one cute words women are taught to use instead. And one of the main points of the show is that so many women – because of social conditioning, psychological or physical abuse - have a negative relationship with their own sexuality. Basically, ‘down there’ is ugly and dirty (and smelly) and doesn’t really belong to them at all.
The impact of that perception was indicated in a survey around the same time of young men in the UK who said they didn’t go down on their girlfriends because they were afraid of ‘offending’ them. (In other words, men might not think it’s ugly and dirty but they know their girlfriends certainly do.)
But what ‘s going on here? We’re in the third millennium. Towards the end of the last one, a visualisation technique called Body Mapping was developed and used to good effect with women in different parts of the world, to help give them a vocabulary with which to talk about themselves, their sexuality and their (often negative) experiences with men.
Thanks to the bilingual production I learned that the Welsh word cont was widely used by both men and women in Welsh erotic poetry of the Middle Ages. But nowadays, the more sex is talked about in public, the less men and women seem to have an understanding of eroticism, or a shared vocabulary to discuss it in private.
Safe sex
Once while working in Nigeria I innocently suggested to my team of Muslim men that the practice of polygamy (which I don’t agree with) could be seen as positive, if it stopped men visiting prostitutes and thus spreading HIV/AIDS. But I am reliably informed by both men and women across West Africa, that this is not the case. So, we have a scenario where a man is not able to share pleasure any of his four wives and then visits a prostitute for the chance of a little (fabricated) pleasure. Because the prostitute is not able to insist on condom use, the man brings back infection (which was passed on to the prostitute in the first place by another respectably married man) to all of his wives. If he then dies of HIV/AIDS, his wives are parcelled out among his brothers and so the infection continues. In fact, polygamy makes the situation worse.
The other obvious point about the prostitute is that her own pleasure in the transaction is never the issue, because this is a commercial, not an erotic, relationship. In Mali there’s been a big increase in prostitution as an income-generating activity among young women, including university students, who sell their favours to older, richer African or European men. After all (I suppose the reasoning goes) if you don’t enjoy sex, you might as well cash it in. Young men are now complaining that they can’t get a nice girlfriend because they ‘don’t have enough money.’
While not making much of an attempt to crack down on prostitution, the Malian authorities have become concerned at the increase in masturbation among young people - which is stopping them from getting married at all and thus threatening the whole ‘fabric of society’. They have finally found that, although they can’t please each other, they can please themselves.
The result of all this seems to be that everyone is at it like knives in West Africa - but nobody is actually making anyone else happy.
Of course, it’s not just an African problem. In France, adultery is an accepted practice (an attempt to get elsewhere what you’re not able to give at home). In Germany - which has the largest percentage of single people and the lowest birth-rate in Europe - prostitution is fully institutionalised. The Minister for Social Welfare publicly endorsed the mega-brothel that was established outside the Berlin stadium for this year’s World Cup. For this event, young girls were trafficked from Eastern Europe, West Africa and Brazil.
So, despite (quite nice) African men jumping up and down in excitement, shouting ‘gender balance! gender balance!’ when they see two female professionals among a group of twenty people in an NGO meeting, my perception is that all over the world things are regressing. The domestic economy of each country I visit seems to be founded on the beautiful but joyless bodies of young women. I don’t see how this can be good for development.
New targets
Why do we continue to abuse our most precious resources and cynically accept the encroaching desertification of human relationships? Whoever we are, however little we own, whatever the limitations on our future, good sex is the one chance on earth we all have – for everyone and their partner, just for a short time, which may seem like a lifetime - to dance together above the stars.
Bill and Melinda Gates, please take note. If you want to contribute to Millennium Development Goal 6 (Combat HIV/AIDS) you need to work towards the eradication of prostitution. This would require substantial resources to enable existing and potential prostitutes to become successful and independent businesswomen, international tour operators and sports science specialists (possibly with the help of Cuba) as well as to establish legal citizenship for all those girls who have been trafficked across national borders. Of course, that’s only looking at the supply side.
For the solution is even more radical than that, so I’d like to propose an additional goal - MDG 9: Achieve universal female orgasm by the year 2015.
I’m not recommending that we allow the World Bank to provide one of its top-down quick fixes. Nor do I think the Negroponte One Laptop Per Child project is going to help boys and girls transform the future here. This is actually something we could all take personal responsibility for.
It may sound provocative, but it’s certainly much less outrageous than what is happening in the world at the moment. Of course, there are still major obstacles, like the politics of culture, and of the market-place, but think of the gains: no more war, maybe even some help in the kitchen.
In the end, maybe it’s just a corny sixties suggestion. But, like the spoof email, my intention is serious. For peace, equality and sustainable development, why not concentrate on the art of making love.
November 2006
The veil over the rule of law
‘It is not wrong for women to reject laws which concern them, if these laws have been made by men without their consultation.’
UNIFEM Director Noeleen Heyzer recently quoted Montaigne at a session of the UN Security Council in discussions about the newly appointed Peace-Building Commission (October 26 2006)
A concerted effort is now being made by African women lawyers and human rights activists to highlight how current law discriminates against women and what changes are necessary, at national and regional level, to ensure their participation in peacekeeping operations and democratic processes.
At the beginning of November the ECOWAS Gender and Development Centre held a regional workshop in Banjul to discuss a unified strategy. The participants came up with a plan of action to lobby their own governments ahead of the next African Heads of State Summit, to be held in Burkina Faso in December 2006.
In The Gambia, as in other parts of Africa, women live under four levels of law.
International law emphasises the equal rights of women and there are a number of instruments which do this, notably the UN Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW 1993). The Additional Protocol (on the rights of women) to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights was adopted by the African Union in Maputo 2003. This goes further than CEDAW as regards issues such as ‘harmful practices’ (female genital mutilation) and violence against women.
Many, though not all, individual African countries have ratified such conventions and protocols. But this doesn’t mean that the rights of women are assured because, in order to bring cases of discrimination to court, changes in national legislation often need to be made.
There is resistance to this among (predominantly) male legislators in African parliaments. ‘They don’t understand that international law takes precedence over national law,’ I was told by a woman lawyer, ‘they need “sensitisation” about the law.’ But when the AU Summit was held in Libya and then Sudan, the women’s lobby was even prevented from attending: their visa applications were rejected.
National law is enshrined in the Constitution of the state. The Constitution itself often includes reference to the equal rights of men and women, as in Uganda, The Gambia and Mali, but this doesn’t always translate into equality for women. Why not?
The Malian association of women lawyers has already been lobbying for a 30% quota for women in elections. This is legal under CEDAW article 4 Temporary measures to achieve equality and there is nothing in the Malian Constitution to prohibit it. But when the proposition was recently put to Parliament by President Touré (who supports the principle), it was rejected.
In The Gambia, where women make up a majority of the active electorate, this is explained as follows: ‘Traditionally, society views men as natural leaders, while women are supposed to give support to their men in the background.’
Islamic Law Mali is a secular state but, as in The Gambia, women don’t always make recourse to the high court because they are also subject to Islamic (sharia) Law - which is administered by religious leaders. In The Gambia this is applicable by the Mohammedan Law (Recognition) Act, as part of the Constitution.
Under this Act, the general provision affording protection from discrimination for women is excluded from those laws which make provision for adoption, marriage, divorce, devolution of property, death or other matters of ‘personal law’ - which particularly affect women.
Under sharia law, men are allowed to take another wife (up to four) without the consent or even the knowledge of his first wife. He can divorce any of his wives without their consent or knowledge by saying ‘I divorce thee’ three times in front of the Imam. The inverse, of course, does not apply. The rules for adultery follow the same pattern and in some countries, like Nigeria, can have fatal consequences for women.
Women do have some rights under sharia law during marriage and the divorce process, but are usually unaware of them. The proposed, and still contested, Women’s Bill has sought to codify these rights and entitlements in The Gambia. In all events, these rights revolve around ‘consent’ and there are many pressures on a Muslim woman to say ‘yes’ when she really means ’no’.
Customary law
A key factor in the abuse of Islamic law is that people’s understanding of it is influenced by what is know as customary practice. In the Gambia this is also recognised in the Constitution under The Law of England Application Act, which provides that ‘customary law is part of the laws of The Gambia in so far as it concerns members of the community to which it applies.’ In other words - over 90% of the population.
Customary practice underpins the traditionally accepted roles and relationships between men and women in African society. This is where the practice of FGM comes from, the dowry system whereby young girls are sold into marriage as a transaction between two families and the practice of living with (read belonging to) her in-laws. Even in Uganda, which has made real progress in the political participation of women, these customs still inhibit their personal freedoms.
Another example of customary law is the treatment of widows. If a man dies, his wife is not entitled to his property unless and until she agrees to be inherited by his family. ‘This means that under customary law, a woman is (again) treated as a chattel.’ The fact that this practice is upheld by the Church of Nigeria (the largest Christian community in the world) as well as by the sharia court, is evidence that it predates any religious law.
In short, as the President of FEMNET puts it: ‘the big problem in Africa is that a woman doesn’t belong to herself.’
The public domain
This has a particular bearing on women’s (non) existence in the public sphere. Under customary practice, women do not speak out in the public domain, it is ‘not their place.’ The social pressure for a woman to ‘keep her place’ (that is, indoors) comes from both men and other women. The exception applies to older women who are awarded respect and given a public voice ‘providing they have behaved themselves properly as young women’ (as I am reliably informed).
So when male African parliamentarians argue that the 30% quota (or whatever) in ‘unconstitutional’ and goes against ‘custom’ what they are really saying is that women should still be subject to age-old customary law, while men continue to enjoy the rights of modern legislation.
They simply don’t want women to share the influence and autonomy that comes with participation in the public domain.
No wonder that some men don’t want to take the Maputo Protocol on board, since it proposes that women have the right to a ‘positive cultural context’ rather than the ‘culture that has been wrongly and selfishly used by men to perpetuate serious crime against women.’
Among those enlightened and educated African men and women who do want to see the system change, customary law is widely recognised as the barrier to women’s advancement in African society, barring them from an equal role in decision-making and peace-building processes.
That veiled question
Africa’s hot and dusty, it’s still in the process of modernisation and often the internet server doesn’t work, so we might expect that there to be a few glitches in respect to the law here.
But, in fact, the same concentric system of law applies in the UK. International laws are ratified but not legislated for, European human rights law is disregarded and Muslim women are still subject to aspects of sharia and customary law even though these might not be officially recognised – because, as in The Gambia, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 prohibits discrimination against women in the public domain (employment, education) but does not touch on ‘personal law’.
When Jack Straw made his now infamous statement about the veil, he is said to have offended ‘Muslim opinion’. This is, unsurprisingly, voiced by mainstream male Muslim religious leaders, speaking, of course, with their face uncovered. The reason the British government has to be seen to be listening to their views is because of the increasing threat of terrorism.
As always in any conflict, women’s bodies are caught in the crossfire between warring male factions.
This whole mad max chain of events – the Bush Doctrine, the rise in Islamic fundamentalism and related terrorist acts, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Hamas, Israel-Lebanon – has adversely affected the status of women across the Arab world.
Yes, and down into the Muslim populations of sub-Saharan Africa, where, for example, ambassadors of fundamentalism from Pakistan have been busy since 9/11 encouraging Touareg leaders in the north of Mali to take their girls out of school and their women out of politics – and to take up the practice of FGM which was never part of their traditional culture.
The same forces have been at work on the Mandinka population of the Gambia. So it’s not unreasonable to suggest that a similar process has been happening in the UK. In addition, when any minority group feels beleaguered in society, the response is to retrench, defend, protect and this invariably impacts on the freedom of its women.
Yet, while we rightly invoke international law to condemn the actions of the US (not that it makes any difference) we are content to let British Muslim women continue to live under customary law – because that is where the veil comes from, not the Q’uran.
Only liberal intellectuals could seriously suggest that Muslim women have a free choice about wearing the veil. The choice they make, within their community, is between bowing to social pressure and suffering social ostracism, at best, psychological or physical punishment at worst, as many studies in the UK have documented.
Young women taking the veil as a political protest in the UK might seem to be the exception, but in reality they are still confusing customary practice with Muslim identity.
No woman who truly belongs to herself (who is the subject of her own world and not an object in others’) would choose to make herself invisible (commit an act of self-negation) when she goes out in public.
As my strong-minded Muslim colleague in Banjul puts it: ‘All women are beautiful. Why should we hide it?’
She has just learned that her husband of 12 years has acquired a second wife, he wasn’t happy with his first marriage because my friend is ‘too independent.’ Already the in-laws are closing in, trying to pressure her into not making a fuss, not to file for divorce in the high court and not to fight for custody of their five children. It’s tough, she’s devastated, but at the same time she says: ‘I don’t accept that anything a man says or does should make me feel bad about myself.’
This is not a philosophical debate about ‘dislocation’ and the ‘other’ – it’s a question about the fundamental rights of women to walk and talk and work freely. Do we accept that in UK society, as elsewhere in the world, Muslim women enjoy fewer rights than Muslim men or Western women? I know that, in the end, ‘only yourself can set you free’ (Bob Marley) - but a little help from the rest of society wouldn’t come amiss.
The veil over the public participation of Muslim women contravenes the internationally agreed Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, so why don’t we legislate against it?
Who knows? If Jack Straw had stuck to his guns, one of his female constituents may someday have been able to turn round to her in-laws and explain sweetly: ‘Under British law I am required to speak face to face, as an equal, to my MP.’ And if she was very lucky, she might get away with it.
November 2006
UNIFEM Director Noeleen Heyzer recently quoted Montaigne at a session of the UN Security Council in discussions about the newly appointed Peace-Building Commission (October 26 2006)
A concerted effort is now being made by African women lawyers and human rights activists to highlight how current law discriminates against women and what changes are necessary, at national and regional level, to ensure their participation in peacekeeping operations and democratic processes.
At the beginning of November the ECOWAS Gender and Development Centre held a regional workshop in Banjul to discuss a unified strategy. The participants came up with a plan of action to lobby their own governments ahead of the next African Heads of State Summit, to be held in Burkina Faso in December 2006.
In The Gambia, as in other parts of Africa, women live under four levels of law.
International law emphasises the equal rights of women and there are a number of instruments which do this, notably the UN Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW 1993). The Additional Protocol (on the rights of women) to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights was adopted by the African Union in Maputo 2003. This goes further than CEDAW as regards issues such as ‘harmful practices’ (female genital mutilation) and violence against women.
Many, though not all, individual African countries have ratified such conventions and protocols. But this doesn’t mean that the rights of women are assured because, in order to bring cases of discrimination to court, changes in national legislation often need to be made.
There is resistance to this among (predominantly) male legislators in African parliaments. ‘They don’t understand that international law takes precedence over national law,’ I was told by a woman lawyer, ‘they need “sensitisation” about the law.’ But when the AU Summit was held in Libya and then Sudan, the women’s lobby was even prevented from attending: their visa applications were rejected.
National law is enshrined in the Constitution of the state. The Constitution itself often includes reference to the equal rights of men and women, as in Uganda, The Gambia and Mali, but this doesn’t always translate into equality for women. Why not?
The Malian association of women lawyers has already been lobbying for a 30% quota for women in elections. This is legal under CEDAW article 4 Temporary measures to achieve equality and there is nothing in the Malian Constitution to prohibit it. But when the proposition was recently put to Parliament by President Touré (who supports the principle), it was rejected.
In The Gambia, where women make up a majority of the active electorate, this is explained as follows: ‘Traditionally, society views men as natural leaders, while women are supposed to give support to their men in the background.’
Islamic Law Mali is a secular state but, as in The Gambia, women don’t always make recourse to the high court because they are also subject to Islamic (sharia) Law - which is administered by religious leaders. In The Gambia this is applicable by the Mohammedan Law (Recognition) Act, as part of the Constitution.
Under this Act, the general provision affording protection from discrimination for women is excluded from those laws which make provision for adoption, marriage, divorce, devolution of property, death or other matters of ‘personal law’ - which particularly affect women.
Under sharia law, men are allowed to take another wife (up to four) without the consent or even the knowledge of his first wife. He can divorce any of his wives without their consent or knowledge by saying ‘I divorce thee’ three times in front of the Imam. The inverse, of course, does not apply. The rules for adultery follow the same pattern and in some countries, like Nigeria, can have fatal consequences for women.
Women do have some rights under sharia law during marriage and the divorce process, but are usually unaware of them. The proposed, and still contested, Women’s Bill has sought to codify these rights and entitlements in The Gambia. In all events, these rights revolve around ‘consent’ and there are many pressures on a Muslim woman to say ‘yes’ when she really means ’no’.
Customary law
A key factor in the abuse of Islamic law is that people’s understanding of it is influenced by what is know as customary practice. In the Gambia this is also recognised in the Constitution under The Law of England Application Act, which provides that ‘customary law is part of the laws of The Gambia in so far as it concerns members of the community to which it applies.’ In other words - over 90% of the population.
Customary practice underpins the traditionally accepted roles and relationships between men and women in African society. This is where the practice of FGM comes from, the dowry system whereby young girls are sold into marriage as a transaction between two families and the practice of living with (read belonging to) her in-laws. Even in Uganda, which has made real progress in the political participation of women, these customs still inhibit their personal freedoms.
Another example of customary law is the treatment of widows. If a man dies, his wife is not entitled to his property unless and until she agrees to be inherited by his family. ‘This means that under customary law, a woman is (again) treated as a chattel.’ The fact that this practice is upheld by the Church of Nigeria (the largest Christian community in the world) as well as by the sharia court, is evidence that it predates any religious law.
In short, as the President of FEMNET puts it: ‘the big problem in Africa is that a woman doesn’t belong to herself.’
The public domain
This has a particular bearing on women’s (non) existence in the public sphere. Under customary practice, women do not speak out in the public domain, it is ‘not their place.’ The social pressure for a woman to ‘keep her place’ (that is, indoors) comes from both men and other women. The exception applies to older women who are awarded respect and given a public voice ‘providing they have behaved themselves properly as young women’ (as I am reliably informed).
So when male African parliamentarians argue that the 30% quota (or whatever) in ‘unconstitutional’ and goes against ‘custom’ what they are really saying is that women should still be subject to age-old customary law, while men continue to enjoy the rights of modern legislation.
They simply don’t want women to share the influence and autonomy that comes with participation in the public domain.
No wonder that some men don’t want to take the Maputo Protocol on board, since it proposes that women have the right to a ‘positive cultural context’ rather than the ‘culture that has been wrongly and selfishly used by men to perpetuate serious crime against women.’
Among those enlightened and educated African men and women who do want to see the system change, customary law is widely recognised as the barrier to women’s advancement in African society, barring them from an equal role in decision-making and peace-building processes.
That veiled question
Africa’s hot and dusty, it’s still in the process of modernisation and often the internet server doesn’t work, so we might expect that there to be a few glitches in respect to the law here.
But, in fact, the same concentric system of law applies in the UK. International laws are ratified but not legislated for, European human rights law is disregarded and Muslim women are still subject to aspects of sharia and customary law even though these might not be officially recognised – because, as in The Gambia, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 prohibits discrimination against women in the public domain (employment, education) but does not touch on ‘personal law’.
When Jack Straw made his now infamous statement about the veil, he is said to have offended ‘Muslim opinion’. This is, unsurprisingly, voiced by mainstream male Muslim religious leaders, speaking, of course, with their face uncovered. The reason the British government has to be seen to be listening to their views is because of the increasing threat of terrorism.
As always in any conflict, women’s bodies are caught in the crossfire between warring male factions.
This whole mad max chain of events – the Bush Doctrine, the rise in Islamic fundamentalism and related terrorist acts, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Hamas, Israel-Lebanon – has adversely affected the status of women across the Arab world.
Yes, and down into the Muslim populations of sub-Saharan Africa, where, for example, ambassadors of fundamentalism from Pakistan have been busy since 9/11 encouraging Touareg leaders in the north of Mali to take their girls out of school and their women out of politics – and to take up the practice of FGM which was never part of their traditional culture.
The same forces have been at work on the Mandinka population of the Gambia. So it’s not unreasonable to suggest that a similar process has been happening in the UK. In addition, when any minority group feels beleaguered in society, the response is to retrench, defend, protect and this invariably impacts on the freedom of its women.
Yet, while we rightly invoke international law to condemn the actions of the US (not that it makes any difference) we are content to let British Muslim women continue to live under customary law – because that is where the veil comes from, not the Q’uran.
Only liberal intellectuals could seriously suggest that Muslim women have a free choice about wearing the veil. The choice they make, within their community, is between bowing to social pressure and suffering social ostracism, at best, psychological or physical punishment at worst, as many studies in the UK have documented.
Young women taking the veil as a political protest in the UK might seem to be the exception, but in reality they are still confusing customary practice with Muslim identity.
No woman who truly belongs to herself (who is the subject of her own world and not an object in others’) would choose to make herself invisible (commit an act of self-negation) when she goes out in public.
As my strong-minded Muslim colleague in Banjul puts it: ‘All women are beautiful. Why should we hide it?’
She has just learned that her husband of 12 years has acquired a second wife, he wasn’t happy with his first marriage because my friend is ‘too independent.’ Already the in-laws are closing in, trying to pressure her into not making a fuss, not to file for divorce in the high court and not to fight for custody of their five children. It’s tough, she’s devastated, but at the same time she says: ‘I don’t accept that anything a man says or does should make me feel bad about myself.’
This is not a philosophical debate about ‘dislocation’ and the ‘other’ – it’s a question about the fundamental rights of women to walk and talk and work freely. Do we accept that in UK society, as elsewhere in the world, Muslim women enjoy fewer rights than Muslim men or Western women? I know that, in the end, ‘only yourself can set you free’ (Bob Marley) - but a little help from the rest of society wouldn’t come amiss.
The veil over the public participation of Muslim women contravenes the internationally agreed Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, so why don’t we legislate against it?
Who knows? If Jack Straw had stuck to his guns, one of his female constituents may someday have been able to turn round to her in-laws and explain sweetly: ‘Under British law I am required to speak face to face, as an equal, to my MP.’ And if she was very lucky, she might get away with it.
November 2006
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