Violence against Women and Childbirth Harms African Women, Girls – Global Issues
NAIROBI, Jul 31 (IPS) – International African Women’s Day on 31 July honors the contribution of African women to political, social, and economic freedom on the continent. But gender equality is still not a reality for many African women.
Many countries still have retroactive laws, and progressive laws in some countries are often poorly implemented. There is a lack of supporting structures to promote and protect the equality of women and girls, such as research on rights violations and public education on gender equality and the rights of women and girls.
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, or the Maputo Protocol as it is known, provides a framework for achieving and promoting the rights of women and girls.
It identifies various areas where women and girls are denied equality and calls on governments to take legal, institutional, and other measures to combat all forms of discrimination.
Forty-four out of 55 African countries have ratified the Maputo Protocol and others have advanced in the enactment of the law in the twenty years it has been in force.
But the lack of sufficient progress is a reminder that governments have not fulfilled their responsibility to meaningfully address the ways in which laws, policies, and practices perpetuate patriarchal systems that discriminate against women and girls and entrench gender inequality in all aspects of life.
Article 4 of the Maputo Protocol respects the rights of women and girls to life, integrity, and security of their person, other basic, fundamental rights. However, violations of these rights are common and manifest in many forms including femicide – gender-related killings of women and girls; so-called obstetric violence – mistreatment of women and girls when seeking reproductive health care; and lack of access to safe, legal abortion care.
In 2022, the United Nations identified Africa as the continent with the highest number of femicides. More than 20,000 women and girls on the continent were killed by intimate partners or family members that year, an estimated 54 deaths per day – the highest of any continent.
However, only the South African government regularly collects data on femicide or makes any efforts to develop laws, policies, or programs that address femicide, such as the National Strategic Plan on Femicide and Femicide. Some governments, such as Kenya, fail both to collect adequate data and to effectively investigate and prosecute femicide.
African countries have also been slow to respond to the mistreatment of women and girls during pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal care, including verbal and physical abuse, neglect, and inappropriate and medically unnecessary procedures.
Insufficient data hampers conclusions about the extent of the problem but international studies have found that, depending on the country, between 15 and 91 percent of women are maltreated during childbirth. There is also a lack, globally, of data on the abuse that occurs when women and girls seek alternative maternal health services, including abortion services.
In Malawi, a 2019 report from the Office of the Ombudsman documented various forms of torture and ill-treatment during labor and delivery, including aspects of forced labor and confinement.
The causes include the negligence of overworked and underpaid health workers and the lack of medicines and emergency obstetric care. After five years, Malawi is failing to implement the report’s recommendations.
Article 14 of the Maputo Protocol respects the right of women and girls to access abortion care in cases where the pregnancy is the result of sexual violence or where the pregnancy endangers the physical or mental health of the woman, or the health of the woman or fetus. But less than half of the countries that have ratified the Maputo Convention have incorporated this right into their domestic law, and even fewer have done so.
Due to the lack of legal abortion care, 75 percent of all abortions on the African continent are unsafe. This results in maternal deaths and complications that require more than 1.6 million African women and girls to seek post-abortion care each year.
In Zambia, considered to have one of the most liberal abortion laws on the continent, unsafe abortion remains rampant and accounts for 30 percent of maternal deaths in the country.
The law restricts the availability of facilities and health providers that can legally provide abortion services, contrary to guidance from the World Health Organization.
On top of this, the government has not taken enough steps to address the stigmatization of abortion or to raise awareness of the country’s laws on abortion, leading to the majority of women, girls, and even health professionals wrongly believing that abortion is illegal.
If Africa aims to achieve a milestone under the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development or the African Union Agenda 2063, the continent’s strategic framework to achieve inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development in a period of 50 years, countries need to urgently commit to carrying out the development. issued the Maputo Protocol. That includes taking immediate action to address femicide, obstetric violence and the lack of access to safe, legal abortion care.
Shwi Nomtekhala is a women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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