8th AFRICAN UNION GENDER PRE-SUMMIT ON
“2016 AFRICAN YEAR OF HUMAN RIGHTS WITH PARTICULAR FOCUS ON THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN”

REMARKS BY HE THE SPECIAL ENVOY ON WOMEN, PEACE AND SECURITY

Addis Ababa, 19 January 2016

Your Excellency Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission,
Honorable Ministers in charge of Gender and Women Affairs,
Your Excellencies Commissioners,
Your Excellencies Permanent Representatives to the African Union and Head of Diplomatic Missions,
Mr. Lebogang Motlana, Director, UNDP Regional Services Centre for Africa
Dr. Khetsiwe Dlamini, Chief of Staff, UN Women,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me start by wishing you a Happy and Prosperous New Year 2016 and thank you all for taking time to participate in this 8th Joint Gender Pre-Summit. Welcome to this Hall named after one of the most illustrious sons and leaders of Africa, the Nelson Mandela Hall; Welcome to your Home.

I wish to thank in particular Her Excellency the Chairperson of the African Union who, through her constant support and institutionalization of the Gender Pre-Summit Forums has provided Women of Africa with a unique space to reflect, assess and reinvigorate the resolve to carry forward the march to transform the lives of women and communities in Africa.

Madam Chairperson,
When I look around in the room, there are more than four hundred women present here today. This is no longer a Gender Pre-summit, it is summit. Women of Africa are holding their summit, thanks to your leadership and unwavering engagement on issues of women in Africa. The evidence lies in simple maths. Today we are talking of the 8th Gender Pre-summit. Yesterday, we closed the 27th session of the Gender is my Agenda Campaign (GIMAC). Where is the difference?
Indeed, it is no coincidence, that under her leadership, Africa has dedicated two subsequent years to themes with special focus on Women.
The Year 2015 was declared “Year of women empowerment and development towards Africa Agenda 2063” while 2016 is the Year of Human Rights with special focus on women rights”.
The year 2015 was a pivotal year for women agenda, as we looked back at twenty years after the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and platform for Action as well as the fifteen years after the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 that brought to the forefront the struggle to recognize the role of women and integrate their priorities in all conflict prevention and peace building undertakings.
What this review told us is that “though important progress has been registered in during the last twenty, the great majority of women are still facing the challenges of a world of inequalities, poverty and violence”.
In Africa, we must also agree that our member states have adopted vanguard instruments such as the Protocol on the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, commonly known as “the Maputo Protocol, The Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, The African Women Decade, the Fund for African Women, but that the implementation is lagging behind.
This diagnosis brought the women of Africa to say clearly in 2015 that Africa must gear up and move the pace of action. And indeed, we are seeing our continental body shaping up more to action! As Special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security, I had the privilege to accompany Her Excellency the Chairperson when went to Burundi at the very beginning of the current crisis to meet with the leaders and women of Burundi in efforts to avert total breakdown. For the first time the African Union established a commission of inquiry to investigate human rights abuses in one of her member states and released the report on South Sudan, for the first time the Africa Union investigated allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by its own peace keepers, and Africa established a Multi task Force to combat Boko Haram.

Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,
This Year 2016 offers us another opportunity to put on the table the quest, I should say, the demand by African women for their rights to be recognized as Human rights, to be upheld and to resolutely take the path of implementation, a path to transformation. And Indeed Africa has defined the road to that transformation through Our Agenda 2063, an agenda for today and tomorrow, as solid future can only be achieved through wise investment today.

We, Women of Africa, must seize this opportunity as we all know that Africa will not achieve its Agenda without the women and youth of this continent.

In the last two days, the civil society under GIMAC umbrella met for its 27th session under the theme “Looking Towards 2020: Securing Women’s Rights through Gender Equality and Silencing the Guns in Africa” that demonstrated that Women of Africa are concentrating their efforts on finding solutions. Today we are meeting in the 8th Joint Gender Pre Summit with Ministers in charge of Gender and Women Affairs, Regional Economic Communities, Development partners to consolidate our efforts and accelerate the pace.

I take his the opportunity to salute and welcome the New Director of the African Union, Gender, Women and Development Directorate, Mme Mahawa Kaba-Wheeler, whose mandate is critical in synergizing the efforts of women in Africa. Through her dynamism, openness and focus in the very weeks since taking her position, she has cleared demonstrated her capacity and determination to move the women agenda. I want to assure her of our full support as women of Africa and that we are all here to join hands in the undertakings.

Indeed, the time is ripe for us to catalyze our efforts, reinvigorate our commitments and raise once more our voices, loud and clear to say that Africa needs action, that Africa must walk the talk so as to break the cycle of violence on women and deprivation that ultimately continues to hold Africa in poverty and instability.
I thank you