Empowering Women: Picture It!

Published Mar 9, 2015

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The African Union website, www.au.int, tells of its celebration of International Women’s Day at its headquarters in Addis Ababa under the theme “Empowering Women – Empowering Humanity: Picture It!”.

It says this is in line with the 2015 theme of the AU “Year of Women’s Empowerment and development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063”.

AU commissioner for political affairs Aisha Laraba Abdullahi told the gathering: “Africa is concerned and engaged to fight against gender discrimination. Achieving the Agenda 2063 aspirations depends on the establishment of a society where men and women are treated equally. The continent cannot achieve any significant development without significant representation of women and youth.”

But there was little on what is to be done practically, in spite of many fine speeches. Take for instance the plight of the more than 200 Nigerian girls that Boko Haram terrorists abducted and held captive in April 4 last year.

We state again, it is a scandal that more than 200 girls could be abducted in the first place, then held for almost a year.

The mind boggles at what is going on. How is it the terrorists can take such a large number, then keep them from being rescued in Africa’s biggest economy?

Some of those girls have been returned, pregnant, to their parents. That means we have stood by while the mass rape of our children has taken place. And we do nothing. The AU does nothing.

Fine speeches at grand gatherings, the participants dressed in their finest, but without meaningful outcome make a mockery of the plight of those girls and, indeed, of so many African women and children subjected to rape as a means of war.

AU Commissioner Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has been noticeable for her lack of initiative, although tasked with hauling Africa’s image away from the Organisation of African Unity days when but 2 percent of resolutions were ever implemented.

Dlamini-Zuma has been rather quiet. Yet she has had the golden opportunity, as the first female head of Africa’s mother body, to advance the rights of girls and women in Africa.

And to think the 2015 theme of the AU is “Year of Women’s Empowerment”.

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