The African and Canadian Women's Human Rights Project (ACWHRP)

The African and Canadian Women's Human Rights Project (ACWHRP) is an innovative initiative designed to advance women's equality through strategic research and activities. The ACWHRP is a collaborative partnership of African women’s human rights NGO’s and academics from Ghana, Kenya and Malawi working with Canadian human rights experts. It is an innovative applied research and education initiative designed to support strategic equality activities that will result in meaningful reform, and address some of the most appalling human rights abuses in the world today. Of particular concern is the feminization of HIV/AIDS resulting from women’s legal inequality.

The ACWHRP offers law students, academics, and human rights advocates from across Canada and Africa the valuable opportunity to contribute to the development of international human rights law in an innovative and practical way. The project’s main goal is to advance the human rights of African women and girls. A corollary goal of the project is to infuse the Canadian equality initiative with new, creative thinking through collaboration with African colleagues. This infusion of fresh thinking will be especially useful with respect to issues such as Aboriginal women’s property rights on reserves, the reconciliation of women’s rights and religious rights, and the feminization of HIV/AIDS amongst Aboriginal women.

For further details or more information, please contact Fiona Sampson, Director of the ACWHRP project.

The ACWHRP project works in conjunction with the following partners:

The Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) | Kenya
FIDA is a non-profit organization that aims to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women in Kenya. FIDA-Kenya was established in 1985 and has 360 registered members (all lawyers and law students). FIDA-Kenya has a long history of monitoring and documenting human rights abuses, and developing reports on the status of women’s (in)equality.

Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA) | Malawi
WLSA is a non-profit organization whose main objective is to improve the legal status of women in Malawi. WLSA was established in 1988 and has offices in seven countries in southern Africa, including Malawi. WLSA-Malawi has a long history of researching and networking with respect to gender based human rights violations. Women's property rights are the priority focus for WLSA Malawi.

For a detailed outline of the projects WLSA-Malawi is engaged in, click here. To read about WLSA-Malawi National Coordinator Seodi White, click here.

Women Integrated Development Organization | Ghana
WIDO is an independent non-profit, local non-governmental organization located in the rural Upper West Region of Ghana. WIDO was founded in 2004 to address the prevailing social and economic inequalities experienced by women in the rural Upper West Region of Ghana, with a focus on livelihood, health and education. WIDO is a capacity building organisation, and seeks to integrate field work with advocacy on women's rights issues and livelihood security. WIDO’s objective is to promote the realization of the human rights of women and children.

Women in Law and Development Africa (WiLDAF) | Ghana

WiLDAF is a pan-African, non-governmental, non-profit organisation that brings together individuals and organisations to promote a culture for the exercise and respect for women’s rights in Africa through a variety of tools, including law. WiLDAF-Ghana was formed by a group of women who participated in a women’s rights Africa meeting held in Harare, Zimbabwe in February 1990.

WiLDAF-Ghana seeks to increase women’s participation and influence at the community, national, and international levels through initiating, promoting, and strengthening strategies which link law and development.  WiLDAF-Ghana employs the rights based approach in its legal and development work. Its advocacy leans strongly on human rights provisions of international conventions and treaties, as well as national legislation including the Constitution. It provides opportunities to strengthen the voice of the poor through participation and assistance to uphold their rights and entitlements. WiLDAF has been instrumental in the adoption of the Protocol on the Rights of Women to the African Charter.

WiLDAF has a membership of over 50 individuals and organisations; a staff of 16, including lawyers and over 70 core literacy volunteers working with its Legal Awareness Programme. For more information please click here.

Project Sponsors

ACWHRP News

March, 2010

The ACWHRP customary law and marital rape workshop was a huge success, and was defined by the extraordinary energy and collaborative teamwork of the workshop participants. Valuable progress was made at the workshop relating to the reconciliation of customary law and women’s rights, and the development of comparative, substantive equality analyses of the legal treatment of marital rape. The Canadian experience provided the starting point for the discussions at the workshop. Visits with Judges, M.P.’s, and grass roots men and women, and survivors of marital rape brought invaluable insight into the issues under review, and provided excellent inspiration for the need to advance women’s rights and achieve the criminalization of marital rape. One survivor of marital rape boldly stated: “Women are being abused by their husbands, raped, and killed like chickens. Making marital rape a crime will save the women.” The workshop papers are in the process of being completed and will be posted on line when they are finalized. The first installment of the documentary film about the ACWHRP marital rape project is in production. Next steps on the “3 to be Free” project include a public legal education campaign relating to the need to criminalize marital rape from a human rights and women’s health perspective; the campaign will address the customary law issues that arise in this context. Special thanks to our Kenyan hosts for helping to make the workshop such a success - Winnie Kamau, University of Nairobi, Faculty of Law, and Jane Serwanga, Senior Legal Counsel, FIDA-Kenya. ACWHRP is extremely grateful to the funders who supported this workshop: the Stephen Lewis Foundation, Department of Justice Canada, International Development Research Centre, and Fasken Martineau. For photos from the workshop please check out our Flickr page.

February, 2010

As a result of the ACWHRP’s work developing strategic equality research initiatives, the ACWHRP’s African partners have identified the legal treatment of marital rape as an issue of priority concern. Legal impunity for marital rape means that men can rape their wives without facing legal prosecution. Legal impunity for marital rape means that women are treated as chattels, leaving them vulnerable to other kinds of violence. This fosters a broader social acceptance of violence against women and legitimizes sexual assault as a form of political violence or social punishment. Legal impunity for marital rape fosters a culture in which violence against women is state-endorsed or at least quietly accepted. Criminalizing marital rape means that in taking marriage vows, women are not abdicating control over their own bodies, and that married women have the right to say “no.” Equality within the institution of marriage is a prerequesite of equal citizenship.

The ACWHRP Customary Law and Marital Rape subcommittees will meet in Nairobi at the end of February, 2010, to strategize about how to achieve the criminalization of marital rape in the ACWHRP partner countries. Marital rape is allowd under the Penal Codes in the ACWHRP's three partner countries - Kenya, Malawi, and Ghana. The ACWHRP marital rape initiative will examine the issue of legal impunity for marital rape in our partner countries through the lenses of customary law, domestic law and practice, and regional and international human rights intstruments. The consideration of the Canadian experience of criminalizing marital rape will provide significant insights (marital rape was criminalized in Canada in 1983). The legal analyses developed through the Project's research work will be used to inform the development of equality activities, such as legal education, policy reform, and litigation. These actitivies will be implemented with the goal of challenging the legal impunity for marital rape in our partner countries, and achieving the criminalization of marital rape.

With the criminalization of marital rape, women will achieve increased equality under the law and in their marriages. Women will be recognized as persons, not property. The criminalization of marital rape will help to establish a culture of accountability for women's human rights, and to improve  the physical safety and security of women. It will contribute to the creation of societies that respect women's rights, and will help to reduce the vulnerability of women to other forms of violence. The recognition of the right of married women to live lives free of sexual violence will constitute an historic landmark achievement in the advancement of women's rights.

After the ACWHRP Nairobi workshop, research papers on the relationship between customary law and women's rights, and the legal treatment of marital rape, will be finalized. The research papers and annotated bibliographies being produced for the ACWHRP Nairobi workshop will be available to the public when they are finalized. The ACWHRP is also making a documentary film about our work relating to our 3 to be Free marital rape initiative. Updates about the documentary will be forthcoming.

We are enormously grateful for the support of the following funders: the Department of Justice Canada; International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Fasken Martineau, Quench Trip Design, and the Stephen Lewis Foundation.

December, 2009

On Thursday, December 3rd, Fasken Martineau hosted its Women's Networking Dinner, with guest speaker Sally Armstrong, at which the ACWHRP launched its 3 to be Free initiative. The goal of this initiative is to achieve freedom from the legal impunity for marital rape in the ACWHRP's three partner countries Kenya, Ghana and Malawi, in 3 years, using 3 different strategies: public legal education, policy reform, and test case litigation.

(left to right) Jan Divok, ACWHRP Supporter, Fiona Sampson, ACWHRP Director, Sally Armstrong, international award-winning journalist and guest speaker; May Cheng, Co-Chair Fasken Martineau's Women's Networking Dinner

Guests mingle at the Fasken's Women's Dinner, prior to dinner and hearing Sally Armstrong and Fiona Sampson speak.

Guests mingle at the Fasken's Women's Dinner, prior to dinner and hearing Sally Armstrong and Fiona Sampson speak.

International award-winning journalist Sally Armstrong captivated the crowed of 125 women with her presentation about her work covering stories of women's inequality and empowerment in developing contexts. Sally inspired everyone with her eye-witness accounts of how the law can be used to transform women's lives, and voiced her enthusiastic support for the work of the ACWHRP's 3 to be Free inititative - Sally's compelling presentation brought the crowd to its feet! Sally will be travelling to Kenya with the ACWHRP in February, thanks to the generosity of Fasken Martineau, to cover ACWHRP's marital rape knowledge exchange and strategy workshop.

The ACWHRP and CLA are extremely grateful for the generous support of both Fasken Martineau and Sally Armstrong; the critical work of the ACWHRP, advancing the human rights of women and girls in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana would not be possible without this kind of support.