Family Laws that Promote Gender Equality & Women’s Rights in Africa Launched

By Amin Kef (Ranger)

In a Press Statement issued by an organization known as Musawah, dated 6^th October, 2022 and captioned “Status of Family Laws in Africa” it was stated that discriminatory family laws continue to deny and rob millions of women and girls in Africa access to the full realization of their human rights.

Musawah continued that most of the countries on the continent have family laws that discriminate or imply discrimination against women and girls and prevent them from accessing and enjoying various rights including economic rights, access to health, protection from violence against women and girls, gender based violence among others.

It also stated that additionally, over 45 countries in the world have codified or uncodified Muslim family laws which legitimize inequality and discrimination against women.

Citing Kenya for instance, Musawah maintains that Muslim women are not protected by the Matrimonial Property Act while non-Muslim women are barred from holding on to their matrimonial property when they remarry. Additionally, it stated how marital rape is exempted from being a crime.

According to the organization, countries such as Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, and The Gambia have discriminatory inheritance laws that deny women and girls equal access to familial property. These laws, it said, range from customary laws that exclude women from inheriting their deceased husband’s property or after the dissolution of marriage to girls being barred from inheriting their parents’ property.

The entity is of the strong conviction that the continent also continues to record high rates of unsafe abortions and child marriage with countries such as Tanzania legitimizing the practice by placing the minimum age of marriage for boys at 18 and 15 for girls, despite a court decision that upheld the minimum age of marriage at 18. It said also that Marriage of girls aged 14 is also permissible with the consent of the court.

These inequalities, Musawah stated, are further exacerbated by various human crises including pandemics and climate change. The COVID-19 pandemic for instance was not only a health crisis, but also an economic and social one that negatively and disproportionately impacted and aggravated the lived realities of many women and their families, according to the organization.

Musawah says advocates know that these crises have gendered impacts as the rate of domestic violence surges, child and forced marriages continue, amongst other abuses. However, they as an entity believes that without real equality and urgent reform of discriminatory laws and practices, women will continue to bear the consequences both in their private and public lives.

According to them, it is for that reason and their collective desire to hold their Governments to account that they launched the Africa Family Law Network as a result of three years of consistent efforts by women activists on the ground.

The Network, it was said, has been designed to galvanize their energies around the need to adopt and implement Family Laws that promote gender equality and women’s rights in Africa.

Their shared vision is an Africa where family laws and practices guarantee equality in line with regional and international human rights standards.

As a Network, they are therefore calling for the following: To Ratify, domesticate and implement  the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Maputo Protocol) without any reservations;  to Enact and enforce family laws and practices that abide by international human rights standards including, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and it’s Optional Protocol without reservations; Criminalize harmful practices such as child marriage and forced marriages, widow inheritance, and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) which impede women and girls from accessing their rights;  Recognize and ensure equality in religious, customary and civil marriages; Guarantee substantive equality between men and women pre, during a marriage and in the event of the dissolution or separation of a marriage;  Protect and safeguard all women and girls, from inhuman, humiliating or degrading treatment and should be accorded the right to an equitable share in the inheritance and distribution of property;  Enact and implement progressive legislative framework that protects women and girls from all forms of violence particularly, domestic and intimate partner violence; We call all African state actors, religious and traditional  leaders to protect, promote and respect women’s rights by acting in line with the principles of international and regional human rights law and ensuring accountability where there have been human rights violations; Implement General Comment No. 6 on the Maputo Protocol focused on substantive equality on property distribution between men and women upon dissolution or separation of marriage; We call on African Governments to provide a safe and conducive work environment for women human rights defenders, particularly those working on family laws.

They further called on all media, journalists, and campaigners  to continue advocating for women’s rights and providing a voice to women’s rights defenders to continuously hold State actors accountable on their obligation to protect women’s rights’.

The Network also insisted on intergenerational dialogue and called other advocates of women’s and human rights to amplify the voices of the network; and called on all women’s rights’ advocates and defenders in the region to stand in solidarity and to amplify the voices of the network, and to reach out for partnerships as they continue to collectively strategize for family law reform.

About Musawah:

Musawah is the global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family. Since launching in 2009 in Malaysia, Musawah has built a knowledge-based global movement, bringing together activists, policy makers and scholars to challenge the ways Islam is used to justify discriminations against women in law and practice, and to offer a rights-based discourse and framework to advocate for equality and justice for women and marginalized groups living in Muslim contexts. You can check our brand guidelines and communications kit on this link. For media requests, kindly get in touch with Mariam: mariam@musawah.org