A number of African gender advocates in both government and civil society have put up spirited fight to have the United Nations create a Fund to address millennium development goal issues of reproductive health and gender empowerment. To be known as the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Fund, resources channelled to this Fund are to be used to lower the high maternal and child mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa and ensure gender empowerment and environmental goals are implemented with speed. But the United States, especially the Bush Administration and other pro-life advocates, are said not to be warming up to the idea, which they see as coded attempts to fund abortion related issues and increase procurement of condoms.
Values, Policies and Rights
Africa's Push for Reproductive Rights Fund Rubs U.S. the Wrong Way
Africa Women and Child Feature Service via allafrica.com
African civil society condemns the signing of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law
AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA): Windhoek, 26 February 2014
The Aids and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (ARASA) has strongly condemned Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, signed into law by Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in February. According to ARASA the new law is contrary to the provisions of Uganda’s own constitution and goes against its purported aim of protecting the country’s people. The alliance claims that provisions in the law place unacceptable limitations on the rights to freedom of expression and association and will undermine proven prevention, treatment and care efforts targeted at vulnerable populations, such as men who have sex with men, placing them at greater risk both of contracting HIV and of persecution, harassment, violence and even death. According to ARASA the law contradicts the recent recommendations of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, whose members included prominent African leaders such as Festus Gontebanye Mogae, former president of Botswana. The Global Commission report recommended that in order “to ensure an effective, sustainable response to HIV that is consistent with human rights obligations, countries must prohibit police violence against key populations. Countries must also support programmes that reduce stigma and discrimination against key populations and protect their rights”.
African Civil Society Statement on Universal Health Coverage
People’s Health Movement: PHM, December 2018
This statement from the People’s Health Movement (PHM) asserts a commitment to Comprehensive Primary Health Care and addressing the Social, Environmental and Economic Determinants of Health. To make health care accessible to all, African governments are considering or have implemented policy reforms with a focus on achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Examples include, the Community Based Health and Planning Services (CHPS) and National Health Insurance Scheme in Ghana; National Health Insurance Scheme in Uganda, expansion of the National Hospital Insurance Fund in Kenya, National Health Insurance in South Africa and Health Financing Policy and Strategy in Zimbabwe. These policy reforms in different ways aim to provide health financing to protect populations from impoverishing health care costs. Despite this momentum, many African countries still provide limited access to quality health services and only a small percentage of the population is protected from financial risks associated with health care costs. PHM identify that the dialogue on UHC in Africa is strongly influenced by the World Bank and other multilateral and bilateral donors, which promote UHC as predominantly a health financing mechanism. Issues of health equity, including a focus on access for the ‘uncovered’ poor, community participation and the strengthening of public health systems are largely ignored. Where UHC is framed as a health financing issue, rather than a human right or public good, and supports charging the poor for health coverage and the creation of health markets (privatisation). Instead PHM assert that PHC is the key to achieving health for all. Efforts to achieve UHC should prioritise reviving and strengthening public health systems in African countries within the Primary Health Care framework which permeates all levels of health care including addressing social determinants of health. The statement identifies actions needed towards addressing the social determinants of health, including: that policies for UHC need to clearly prioritise PHC at the primary and community levels. They argue that a whole of government approach must be applied to support UHC, including Health in All Policies, so that all ministries and departments of government are coordinated in promoting healthier working and living conditions and healthy lifestyles, preventing causes of disease and mortality, and supporting equitable access to health services. Further, governments should increase health sector spending to at least 15% of national budgets, as agreed in the 2001 Abuja Declaration. The PHM call for increased fiscal space by expanding and improving current tax collection measures; as well as implementing new taxes that ensure progressiveness and sustainability and strengthening prepayment mechanisms that pool resources.
African NGO forum passes resolution on the right to access to needed medicines
Human Rights and Access to Medicine Legal Education Initiative: November 2008
A resolution calling on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to recognise human rights to access needed medicines was passed at a meeting of African human rights organisations in Abuja, Nigeria. The NGO forum was composed of about 100 human rights organisations in Africa with observer status before the African Commission. The resolution calls on the Commission to recognise access to needed medicines as a fundamental component of the right to health and clarify the state obligations in this regard. It specifically calls on the Commission to fulfil its duty to respect, protect and enforce rights to access to medicines. This includes taking full advantage of all flexibilities in the WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) that promote access to affordable medicines.
African performance on human rights
Anambo Ongoche E: Pambuzuka News 730, 10 June 2015
Almost two decades after adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, the record of adherence to its provisions across the continent is mixed. Some countries have made notable progress, but others show persistent serious violations of human rights. African performance on human rights as spelled out in the Charter varies from one country to another. The author elaborates the situation in different countries on the continent against the rights set out in the Charter. The author concludes that Africa has a long way to go in the practice and upholding of human rights at out in the Charter. He urges that governments be made accountable to ensure that human rights are upheld.
African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa
African Union: 22 October 2009
This African international agreement has opened the door to a debate on the rights and protection of people displaced by natural disasters, with a nod to migration as a result of climate change. The African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, also known as the Kampala Convention, is a ground-breaking treaty adopted by the African Union (AU) that promises to protect and assist millions of Africans displaced within their own countries. Significantly, the treaty recognises natural disasters as well as conflict and generalised violence as key factors in uprooting people. In Africa, more people are likely to be displaced as the continent experiences more frequent droughts and floods brought about by climate change. The inclusion of displacement by natural disasters was informed by the global debate on the need to develop a framework for the rights of ‘climate refugees’ – people uprooted from their homes and crossing international borders – because the changing climate threatened their survival. The treaty also calls on governments to set up laws and find solutions to prevent displacement caused by natural disasters, with compensation for those who were displaced.
African Union model law on medical products regulation
African Union Heads of State: African Union, Addis Ababa, 2015
Member States of the African Union endorsed in 2015 the milestones for the establishment of a single medicines regulatory agency in Africa within the context of the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization programme. Concerned that the proliferation of Substandard/Spurious/Falsified/Falsely- labelled/Counterfeit medical products on the continent poses a major public health threat and noting that regulatory systems of many African countries remain inadequate the states called for legislation relating to medical products through Regional Economic Communities and the African Union to ensure access to medical products that are safe, efficacious, and of assured quality to the African population. They called for the adoption and domestication of a model law on medical products regulation in Africa for the creation of a harmonized regulatory environment on the continent; and adopted the African Union Model Law on Medical Products Regulation.
Africans’ DNA could be abused
Jordan B: The Times, 14 February 2009
South African researchers and traditional leaders are reported to have raised concern that scientists could patent the genes of local ethnic groups who have donated blood samples as part of a worldwide genome-mapping project. Several lawyers, researchers and community leaders have denounced an American patent application for unique gene mutations found in DNA samples collected in Tanzania, Kenya and Sudan. The applicants from the University of Pennsylvania, are reported to have collected more than 2,000 samples in East Africa and to have a blood bank of more than 5,000 samples in total, taken from 80 African ethnic groups.
After Habitat III: a stronger urban future must be based on the right to the city
Colau A: The Guardian, October 2016
Innovative and agile cities are better placed to solve major global challenges than national governments – in thrall to the momentum of the last century – but the fight must start now, argues Barcelona’s first female mayor. Colau argues that all the major global challenges – climate change, the economy, inequality, the very future of democracy – will be solved in cities. If nations want to succeed with their policies, cities must be counted as serious actors on the global stage. She argues that national governments are hostages to the momentum of the previous century – but that’s not the real world any more. We live in a world that functions by networking, by faster and more agile contact between cities. Colau notes that it is not possible to talk about a just, sustainable, equitable or inclusive city without speaking about the right to the city - a model of urban development that includes all citizens. She argues that the reference to it in the UN’s New Urban Agenda document ratified at Habitat III in Quito this week could be more ambitious. However it is necessary to recognise the problems overcome just to get this far. She comments that some global powers such as the United States and China resisted it completely; they didn’t want the right to the city in the declaration at all. Thanks to popular mobilisation in Latin America and in some European countries, this political movement has won its place on the agenda – and she notes it as a significant achievement. For the right to the city to become real, however, needs action to transform it into concrete policies and regulations. Colau notes that the most important tests will come after the summit finishes – when we find out whether all these statements can translate into commitments that create positive solutions for urban citizens.
Aid, resistance and queer power
Abbas H: Pambazuka News 580, 5 April 2012
Increased persecution of homosexuals in Africa has drawn the attention of international funders recently. Western external funders are reported by the author to be considering making aid to African countries conditional on decriminalising homosexuality and upholding the rights of homosexual communities. While intended to show support for an otherwise vulnerable minority, the author suggests that withholding aid would have adverse effects on all Africans, including homosexual Africans. Threatening to withdraw foreign aid, it is argued, only reinforces the argument that homosexuality is a Western construct and would result in a local backlash. Further aid itself cannot be a tool for social justice given its roots in imequitable power relations. In contrast the author calls for an emerging movement that seeks to locate gender and sexuality, including that of homosexual people, within the broad spectrum of social and economic issues that affect all Africans.