Women advocates: Long way to go

Good article by Roselyn Musa [http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/panafrican/46518] but I think African advocates of women's rights have a really long way to go and must work more using a results based approach rather than the 'satisfy the donor' approach. While the former will help us sincerely adress our problems with a preparedness to make appropriate sacrifices capable of recording change, the latter tends to tie us down with the atittude of struggling to merely carry out an activity and reporting back to donor that the activity has been implemented. In this latter situation, we tend to 'sleep again until some other donor advances more money for another activity'. So we just keep going round and round in the real sense of it!

To what extent are African women's rights activists prepared to endure pains and stresses that necessarily come up in the sincere struggle for the realization of women's human rights? To what extent are members of the women's human rights community willing to lay aside differences and struggles for personal recognition & power which we so often exhibit at the expense of the overall interest of women's cause?

We need to address all of these issues to be able to move faster along the already tight rope to the realisation of women's rights. Experiences from being a part organizer of a just concluded 'Kaduna State Women's 2008 Peaceful Walk', in demand of respect for women's human rights organized in Kaduna State of northern Nigeria, convinced me that women need to go back to the drawing board in their vision, strategy and purpose in actvisism.

Look out for a detailed report of this activity which happened on 11th March 2008: A lot to learn indeed!