A call to action: Protecting women’s rights in Sub-Saharan Africa during COVID-19 pandemic
Posted: 20 April, 2020 Filed under: Juliet Nyamao | Tags: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, coronavirus, Cote d'Ivoire, COVID-19 outbreak, equality, gender-based violence, Ghana, human rights, informal employment, International Health Regulations (2005), international obligations, John Hopkins University Corona Virus Resource Center, Kenya, pneumonia, protection of human rights, public health emergency, rule of law, Senegal, South Africa, stringent policies, tax relief measures, unemployment funds, WHO Regional Office for Africa Report, women, women's rights, World Health Organization, Wuhan City Leave a commentAuthor: Juliet Nyamao
Human Rights Attorney, Kenyan Bar
On 31 December 2019, The World Health Organisation (WHO) was alerted to several cases of pneumonia in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. One week later, on 7 January 2020, Chinese authorities confirmed that they had identified a novel coronavirus as the cause of the pneumonia. Following this discovery, China witnessed unprecedented increase in morbidity and mortality rates of victims of the virus. Ultimately, the Director-General of WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the COVID-19 outbreak a public health emergency of international attention under the International Health Regulations (2005), following recommendations from the members and advisers to International Health Regulations (IHR) Emergency Committee for Pneumonia. Although measures were taken to halt international travel the virus had already spread to other regions of the world including Africa. According to the John Hopkins University Corona Virus Resource Center, the pandemic has had devastating effects in Europe, Asia and the Americas with mortality rate of more than 100,000 people, with a total of more than 1.7 million confirmed cases worldwide.
Democracy in times of COVID-19: a time for introspection?
Posted: 8 April, 2020 Filed under: Eduardo Kapapelo | Tags: Angola, basic services, China, COVID-19, democracy, global pandemic, government, health systems, human rights, Hungary, inequality, Institutions, lockdown, massive corruption, militarised society, national lockdowns, pandemic, political system, politics, WHO, World Health Organization Leave a commentAuthor: Eduardo Kapapelo
Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
My father used to say ‘politics must be conducted in a country which is open, a country which has the space for deliberation and opposing views’. He added that ‘politics must be conducted in a country which is mature’. We find ourselves in challenging times, times in which the openness and maturity of our countries are being tested.
A scale we can use to test the openness and maturity of our institutions is to interrogate (i), the nature our institutions; and (ii) the quality of our institutions. In regards to their nature we can reflect on how they are structured, what they look like on paper, and how they actually function in reality. As regards quality, we can reflect on how institutions respond to stress – how they respond to the demands of the people and whether they are mature enough to understand that when individuals take to the streets in the exercise of their human rights demanding better quality of life, they are not challenging the State, but rather exercise their constitutional right to be heard.
The AU’s initiative on silencing the guns and human rights: the missing link
Posted: 2 April, 2020 Filed under: Ayalew Getachew Assefa | Tags: African Union, AU, AU Constitutive Act, AU Master Roadmap, AUMR, conflict, conflict-free Africa, human rights, human rights violations, peace, peace and security, Peace and Security Council, PSC, silencing the guns, Solemn Declaration Leave a commentAuthor: Ayalew Getachew Assefa
African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child
The African Union (AU) has designated its theme for the year 2020 to be on ‘Silencing the Guns: Creating Conducive Conditions for Africa’s Development’. The theme is informed by prior initiative that the Union has established mainly during the occasion of the OAU/AU 50th anniversary, where the Heads of State and Government adopted a Solemn Declaration, in which they expressed their determination to achieve the goal of a conflict-free Africa by ridding, among other things, human rights violations from the continent. Following the commitment expressed through the Solemn Declaration, the Peace and Security Council (PSC), in 2016, developed an AU Master Roadmap of Practical Steps to Silence the Guns in Africa by Year 2020 (AUMR), which eventually was endorsed by the Assembly of Heads of States and Governments (Assembly) in 2017.