Article April 12, 2004 Issue

WOMEN'S RIGHTS Not just a Utopian idea

By Françoise Mianda

Françoise Mianda lives in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, and works for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Recently she shared some thoughts about women's rights with the French magazine Le Heraut de la Christian Science.

Women's rights have always been a strong personal interest of mine because, first of all, I am a woman, and, secondly, because Congolese women, and African women in general, face many challenges right from birth. Here, when a family gets a baby girl, they are happy—but when they get a baby boy, they're really happy. They feel the boy is the heir who will perpetuate the family's name. One of the consequences is that fewer girls than boys are sent to school, and the literacy level tends therefore to be greatly unequal. In addition, there are still teenagers who are forced to marry, and custom deprives a widow of her husband's possessions in favor of the husband's family.

Altogether, the value of a woman in Africa seems to be dependent on her father or her husband, and on the fact that she has or will have children. You could say that she is defined by the men who surround her, and that she lives in the shadow of their status. My work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has caused me to be involved directly with women's rights for several years now, and I've been able to follow closely not only many individual cases but also the general situation. I have had a chance to conduct training programs about women's rights and to work with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on specific women's issues.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

ETERNAL LIFE is not just a platitude