Weblog: Mary Robinson visits four African States

I’ve just returned from a week long visit to four African countries where it was encouraging to see positive developments across a number of key issues - good governance, the right to health, climate justice and women’s leadership – all of which relate to our work at Realizing Rights.

In South Africa I joined my colleagues on the Board of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in Cape Town to mark the 25th Anniversary of AWEPA the organization linking European and African Parliamentarians in promoting strong parliamentary leadership in African countries.

Mo Ibrahim spoke about the Ibrahim Index on good governance we were launching and Graça Machel gave an eloquent speech as chair of the Eminent Persons Board of AWEPA, as she accepted an award on behalf of Archbishop Desmond Tutu who was unable to be present for health reasons. I felt at home in this company, as I was a member of AWEPA in the early years as an Irish Senator when it was opposing apartheid in South Africa, and I am now a member of the Eminent Persons Board.

During the Mo Ibrahim Foundation board meeting we met with the group of experts, mainly African academics and researchers, who had been working with the Foundation’s team on the Ibrahim Index. The 2009 Index had been reshaped with a wider set of indicators and now covers all 53 countries of Africa. There was no significant change in the countries rated in the top or bottom 5 of the Index, but trends of countries improving – such as Liberia, or going down rapidly – such as Zimbabwe, were quite clear. The fact that the Index is the product of an African Foundation has made it an acceptable tool for journalists, academics and wider civil society to measure the performance of their government and note the ranking of their country under different categories.

While in South Africa I took part in a tribunal organized by Oxfam and local partners to hear testimony from five front line climate change witnesses from around Africa. It was very moving to sit with farmers from Kenya, Mali, Malawi, Uganda and South Africa and listen to their accounts of the difficulties their communities are facing with the repetitive cycle of drought and flooding which has been affecting them. Farming communities know their weather patterns for about 200 years, so I asked each of them if this was just a bad patch of weather or something new. Each said they had never experienced, or heard of parents or grandparents experiencing such occurrence of drought and flooding.

As Constance Okollet, a community mobiliser and farmer from the Tororo district in eastern Uganda put it:

"Before 2007 we had two harvests every year, but now there’s no weather pattern. Floods like we’ve never seen came and swept up everything. We went back when the waters left and there was nothing left: our houses, crops and animals were gone."

Constance explained how the receding flood waters led to outbreaks of disease because the waterholes had become dirty, which made them breeding rounds for malaria carrying mosquitoes. "People are getting only one meal a day, so many are dying. Some times five or six each day are dying from disease and starvation."

"It was not until I went to a meeting about climate change that I heard it was not God, but the rich people in the West who are doing this to us."

Omar Jibril, a pastoralist cattle farmer from northern Kenya had a similar tale to tell. The pastures in his region were devastated by serious drought in 2005 and the grasslands have not recovered due to a continued lack of rain. "I had 200 cows then but now I have only 20 left. They have all died."

“In the past our land was able to recover from drought, but not any more.”

“I used to sell animals so I could afford to send my children to school, but now some have had to drop out. Because of the food shortage, people are forced to resort to deforestation to survive. You will not see trees where I am from,” he said.

It was a delight to see Archbishop Tutu – or Arch as he likes to be called – in good form, as following our recent Elders visit to the Middle East he had injured his back. We spoke together briefly and met members of the press, then we went out to where the climate witnesses had gathered for a photograph. I watched their faces light up as Arch addressed them in local languages and made them laugh.

I also took part in the FIGO Congress, bringing together some 8000 obstetricians from around the world. I had been invited by the President, Professor Dorothy Shaw, to join her on a panel on 'Key Links between Women’s Rights and their Health – Perspectives on Progress'.

The panelists included Thoraya Obaid of UNFPA, Daisy Mafubelu of WHO and two Professors from Canada and South Africa. We focused in particular on how to tackle maternal mortality more effectively, and I was pleased to see that the project on Health Systems Strengthening for Equity, the Role of Mid Level Providers in Maternal Health, which Realizing Rights has participated in, had been well-received and commented on at the Congress.

My last meeting in South Africa was convened at the office of the South African Human Rights Commission by the Chair Pregs Govender. Pregs had served with me on an independent panel of eminent persons established by the Swiss Government during 2008 to ensure practical follow-up to the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The panel adopted an initial report Protecting Dignity: An Agenda for Human Rights [41 pages, 741kb] and since its launch in Geneva in December 2008 the Swiss Government has been encouraging other governments and civil society groups to bring the proposals forward.

One strong recommendation was to develop a human rights strategy to address the challenge of poverty and to link more closely with the planned High Level UN meeting on the MDGs in September 2010. Pregs brought together a small group, including former Archbishop Ndungane of African Monitor and representatives of the Department of Justice, the Commission on the Status of Women and trade union representatives, together with the CEO of the Commission and key staff to plan a meeting in South Africa in the spring of next year which would focus on human rights, dignity and poverty, with a view to having a strong input to the High Level meeting on the MDGs in September 2010.

The next stop on my journey was Lilongwe, capital of Malawi, where I met up with my Realizing Rights health team colleagues. We were there to promote the outcome of the project Health Systems Strengthening for Equity, the role of Mid Level Providers in Maternal Health, and we were warmly greeted by the Irish Ambassador Liam McGowan and his colleague Vincent O’Neill who had been supportive of the project.

Our first meeting was with the Minister of Health, Moses Chirambo, and his Deputy Mrs. Theresa Gloria Mwale, with whom we discussed the project and the possibility of working closely with the Ministry on tackling maternal mortality in a holistic way. We explained that Realizing Rights is supporting Amnesty International, which has launched a Demand Dignity campaign which focuses on issues including maternal mortality. We also described the Gates-funded project Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide is involved in both in Malawi and Sierra Leone, which involves promoting ideas to fill gaps and have innovative strategies on infant and maternal health.

We also met Vice President Joyce Banda, who in addition to her official duties is also Goodwill Ambassador of the African Union on Safe Motherhood, a responsibility she takes very seriously. Earlier that day she had visited a rural clinic where there were 80 women lying on the floor because there were no beds available.

Ambassador McGowan had organized a reception at the Irish Embassy that evening, which was a welcome opportunity to meet other government officials, the Chief Justice, Attorney General and members of Malawi civil society. I was delighted to meet Irish priests and nuns who had worked for many years in Malawi, and Mary Donohoe of the Rose Project and her family and friends. This group included Rev. Professor Enda McDonagh – or Enda as he is to my wider family – who had come especially from Ireland for the opening of the maternity wing of Bwaile Hospital.

I had known of the work of the Rose Project in Kenya and elsewhere, and was honoured to accept the invitation to be a special guest along with the Vice President for the formal opening of the fine new maternity wing. It was a splendid occasion, with nurses dancing to greet the guests. When Vice President Banda arrived we were taken on a tour of the maternity wing, and I heard her say several times in delight “I just cannot believe this – it is so magnificent.” Indeed, the new maternity wing has state of the art facilities, which is a great tribute to the fundraising efforts of the Rose Project in Ireland, together with support from Norway. In her fine speech at the opening Mary Donohoe rightly emphasized the need to ensure that the Maternity Wing is manned by trained personnel so that it fully lives up to its potential.

The next part of our trip brought us to Tanzania where we began our visit by meeting with President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete. We briefed him on our work to study and support the important role mid-level providers play in improving maternal health, but in fact our discussion covered the broad range of health challenges in Tanzania. I was impressed with the depth of knowledge of the details of the health service which President Kikwete had, and he clearly has a very good relationship with his Minister of Health and Social Welfare David Mvakyusa.

Our next visit was to the offices of Famina Hip, a health information project on HIV/AIDs and reproductive health which I had visited 3 years before. Famina Hip is a successful media outlet, producing FEMA Magazine among others for schools and youth outlets, and has become interested in alternative technologies and youth employment. It had linked with D Light Design which was producing solar battery reading lights and lights for clinics as a wider project of Rework the World, a partnership of the Tallberg Foundation (Sweden) and YES Inc. (a global network of youth-led movements in 55 countries).

We were shown the reading lights and larger clinic lights with their solar batteries, and how the FEMA Magazine was inviting youth in Tanzania to come up with entrepreneurial ideas of how to use this solar lighting. This was a practical example of the notion of climate justice which I have been supporting, and I hope to link it with a high level seminar in Dar in mid-November, one of the topics of which is 'Climate Change, Climate Justice in Africa'.

My colleagues and I were invited to a working lunch at the Irish Embassy with David Mwakyuse, Minister of Health and Social Welfare, and other Tanzanian health experts. This enabled us to continue our discussion of human resources to tackle maternal mortality more effectively. Before leaving the Embassy we enjoyed an informal tea with the wider staff of the Embassy, together with Ambassador Anne Barrington and her husband, and then it was time to bid farewell to my colleagues and travel on alone to Ethiopia.

I was met on arrival at the airport by Irish Ambassador Sile Maguire, who took me straight to the restaurant where the women participating in a regional workshop for Women’s Leadership for Peace and Security in the Greater Horn of Africa had gathered. This workshop was under the auspices of the Club of Madrid, together with its partners, the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa Network (SIHA), the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and Isis Women’s International Cross Cultural Exchange (Isis -WICCE).

I learned that each of the women participating in the workshop represented a local women’s network, so that the meeting was in effect a network of local networks. They had issues both with the UN and the AU, about the lack of resources for women at local level, and their lack of voice in decision making to resolve conflicts. I spoke at the break with some women from Somalia who told me the situation there was the worst they had known, and that foreigners linked to Al Qaeda were gaining a base there. Having expressed some criticisms, the women were keen to continue to work together at regional level, and expressed interest in working on a regional Plan of Action under UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on the role of women in peace and security issues (LINK). I assured them that Realizing Rights, through the Women Leaders Intercultural Forum (WLIF) would be ready to help on this.

After a closed session there was an open dialogue with representatives of some governments of the region and donor governments who supported the workshop. Sadly some of the women leaders left the room before the open meeting out of fear of retribution when they returned to their own countries. We met them later and it was clear that these courageous women, who work at grassroots level in often difficult circumstances, felt encouraged and energized by the meeting.

It is clear that gender issues are being given much more priority in the African Union, and a high level meeting on women and gender issues will take place in Addis on 22/23 January before the African Union Summit which will hopefully build on the momentum.

Late that night I caught the flight back to New York via Frankfurt, and slept as much as I could en route after a long but energizing week. Despite the significant challenges, it is clear that a growing number of strong African leaders are committed to making positive change in their countries. This means it is all the more important that they feel supported and have partners engaged with them in the work to promote good governance and human rights for all.