OPENING REMARKS
BY DR. JULITTA ONABANJO, DIRECTOR
UNFPA EAST AND SOUTHERN AFRICA REGIONAL OFFICE
AT THE
2013 WOMEN PARLIAMENTARIANS CONFERENCE OF THE
PAN-AFRICAN PARLIAMENT
THEME: RESPONDING TO VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
AND GIRLS IN AFRICA: FROM LEGISLATION TO
EFFECTIVE ENFORCEMENT
HELD AT
PAN – AFRICAN PARLIAMENT
MIDRAND, SOUTH AFRICA
01 NOVEMBER, 2013
The Chairperson of the Pan African Parliament Women’s Caucus, H.E Hon.
Bernadetta Mushashu
Guest of Honour, H.E Amb. Gertrude Mongella
AWEPA Representative from the Swedish Parliament, Hon. Ms Bodil Ceballos,
H.E. Mrs. Baleka Mbete
H.E. Kasingo, Deputy Speaker, National Parliament of Namibia.
The Second Vice President of PAP, H.E. Suilma Hay Emhamed ELKAID
Honourable Members of Pan – African Parliament
Members of the Bureau of the PAP Women’s Caucus
Honourable members of national parliaments
Representative of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Ms Sue Mbaya
Representatives of Civil Society Organizations, including the MNCH Coalition
The Media colleagues
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning and welcome.
It is a great honour for me to be here this morning and to be asked to deliver a few
remarks on behalf of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) at the opening
of the annual 2013 Pan African Parliament (PAP) Women Conference, the 5th
Conference of the PAP Women Caucus, under the most critical and important
human rights theme: Responding to Violence Against Women and Girls in Africa:
from Legislation to Effective Enforcement.
I thank the PAP and its organizing partner for inviting me to be part of this opening
session and I bring you all warm greetings from UNFPA East and Southern Africa
and the entire UN Family.
UNFPA very much appreciates the partnership with the Pan-African Parliament on
the important issues Gender Equality and Women Empowerment, Women’s and
Children’s Health and the needs of our African young people.
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In 2010, the Pan African Parliament adopted the Parliamentary Action Plan to
support the implementation of the decisions of the July 2010 African Union
Summit on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health that took place in Kampala,
Uganda.
In 2011, the PAP third Pan African Speakers Conference adopted a strong
resolution in support of Youth Empowerment and Maternal and Child Health. Just
these two commitments, among others, demonstrate how the Pan African
Parliament is uniting Africa to support Women’s and Children’s health in the
continent.
I am happy to note that UNFPA has been a consistent partner of the PAP in these
efforts.
In 2009, the African Union Commission in partnership with UNFPA and other
agencies initiated the Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal and
Neonatal Mortality in Africa (CARMMA), commonly known as CARMMA.
CARMMA is an initiative to promote and advocate for renewed and intensified
implementation of the Maputo Plan of Action for Reduction of Maternal Mortality
in the Africa and for the attainment of the MDG 5 – improving maternal health,
through reducing maternal deaths and ensuring universal access to SRH.
Honourable Mama Mongella, Distinguished Delegates
CARMMA is about Saving our Mothers, Saving our Children. To date, 40
countries have launched national chapters of CARMMA with specific
commitments to improve maternal and newborn health.
With the above commitments and efforts, Honourable delegates, I am pleased to
note and celebrate the 41% reduction in maternal mortality within the region over
the last two decade. This achievement is one we should include in in our 50 years
celebration of the African Union, celebration of the lives of women and girls in the
continent. But as we celebrate, we must take warning that still 165,000 women
continue to die annually in Africa due to pregnancy and related causes, deaths that
could be prevented! One death of a mother due to pregnancy is simply death too
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many. We also know that 1 in 39 sub-Saharan African women aged 15 – 49 years
will die in the process of giving birth! In Sweden, the life time risk is one (01) in
14,100 women! As such the continent that we celebrate today continues to carry
the brunt of global disparities and vulnerabilities.
And even more tragic, and I say this because on Wednesday UNFPA launched its
annual State of the World’s Population Report with focus on Teenage pregnancy,
titled: Motherhood in Childhood. We know that our continent, and in some of our
countries as much as one in three girls are forced into marriage before the age of
15, thereby starting motherhood as children. Evidence tells us that 30% of the
teenage pregnancies end up in teenage deaths.
I have chosen to highlight the issue of maternal deaths and especially deaths and
disabilities among young adolescents in our remarks to you this morning, because
many maternal deaths are due socio-cultural barriers that can be categorized as
violence against women and girls.
Aside from obvious physical violence against women, that Honourable Bernadetta
has mentioned, there are many unrecognized violence against women and girls that
negatively affect their health outcome in pregnancy and childbirth, such as, denial
of education, poverty and lack of economic empowerment and land ownership,
early and forced marriage, depriving women and girls of their choices to use
family planning and to determine number of children they will like to have, and the
spacing of their children.
With less than 900 days to the 2015 milestone of the MDGs, and still with less than
a handful of countries able to confidently say they will reach this MDG5 goal by
2015, this remains very much an unfinished agenda that we would like to remain
high on PAP’s agenda, Africa agenda and the Post 2015 development agenda, and
to be championed by all Parliaments on the continent as part of their commitments
to African Women and girls transformation.
We know what works to reduce maternal, newborn and child deaths. For instance,
use of family planning alone could reduce maternal death by 33%. Making sure
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that every pregnant woman is delivered by a competent and supported midwifery
service provider would reduce maternal death by 75%. But supervised delivery is
less than 50% in Africa. The failing and gaps for inadequate action is therefore not
in the knowledge of proven interventions.
We need parliamentary support not only to put in place appropriate national laws
and policies that promote gender equality and women empowerment, and prevent
every form of violence against women and girls, but we need to go the extra mile
to ensure implementation and enforcement of such laws and policies.
We need parliamentary support to ensure appropriate budgeting for the
enforcement of laws and policies that prevent and address violence against women
and girls in our respective countries.
We need parliamentarians who will champion the enforcement of the legislations
that respond to violence against women and girls beyond the national parliament
chambers to their respective communities. We need parliamentarians, men and
women, who will mentor and encourage women and girls in their communities to
rise up against violence and demand their rights.
We know Parliamentarians can champion this cause and they must.
In a number of countries, we have seen parliamentarians bring to the floor of the
house, voices of women and children from their constituencies, and cases which
have received parliamentary resolutions. Many parliamentary groups mobilize the
population in their constituencies to demand for their rights, health and related
services.
For UNFPA and the UN System as whole, parliaments and parliamentarians are
both natural and strategic partners on issues of prevention of violence against
women and girls, and promotion of the enforcement of legislations against
perpetrators of violence against women and girls, and promotion of maternal,
newborn and child health. The UN Secretary Generals has this issue as one of his
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top most priorities, and his campaign global UNITE to end Violence Against
Women (VAW), calls on all players to break the silence and Act against VAW.
UNFPA specifically pledges to continue partnering and working with you on these
issues. While working with you, we recognize the challenges and that is why,
UNFPA at the regional level is partnering with Inter-Parliamentary Union to
design an orientation manual on maternal, newborn and child health for
parliamentarians. At Country level, UNFPA Country Offices have already worked
with their national parliaments and conducted orientation of parliamentarians on
how to use such a manual. We hope to see even greater actions on your part after
such an orientation.
I am pleased to announce that UNFPA is working through other platforms to
engage with parliamentarians, including national parliaments, the International
Parliamentary Union (IPU), Africa Parliamentary Forum on Population and
Development and many other parliamentary groups to support gender equality,
women empowerment and increasing opportunities for the girl-child.
Honourable Delegates, we continue to look to parliaments to:
(1) Provide resources to increase access to quality health services for Women and
their children, for investment in education of the African girl child, and for
gender equality and women empowerment.
(2) Promote implementation and enforcement of legislation that respond to
violence against women and girls as indicated in the theme of this Conference,
(3) Monitor and ask for accountability from the Judiciary and law enforcement
sector on how resources are being used and the results;
(4) Make sure that voices of women and girls remain key in your constituency
representational roles in parliaments; and
(5) Mobilize your population so that any act of violence against women and girls
becomes unacceptable to everyone.
We are, individually and collectively, responsible as we work together to make our
communities safer for our women and girls, our mothers and daughters, and our
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sisters and aunties. These we must do, because African women and girls not only
constitute half of our current and future population, but they also give birth to the
other half!
Thank you all for listening to me.
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