Activist Discusses Human Rights Abuses

by Troy Weatherford. OU Daily 9/24/09

The majority of African women face discriminatory, dehumanizing derogatory and harmful traditional and cultural practices on a daily basis, women’s rights activist Franciska Issaka said at the opening lecture of the “Women’s Rights Activists Voices from Around the World” Tuesday in the Scholars Room of the Oklahoma Memorial Union.

Issaka’s lecture, titled “Realizing Women’s Rights in Africa: The Interface Between Cultural and Universal Rights,” touched on human rights abuses and inequality for women in Africa, but focused primarily on Ghana.

The Women’s Rights Activists Voices From Around the World series continues at 7 p.m. Oct. 12 in the Kerr Auditorium of the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History.

Africa’s history led to a confusing system of laws where cultural rules, which are inherently detrimental to women’s rights, sometimes conflict with government laws, she said.

“Culture contributes to the continued discrimination of women as second-class citizens,” Issaka said.

According to Issaka, in Africa, marriage is about a man acquiring a wife, not about a union between the couple. Women are excluded from the marriage discussion. Men must provide gifts and an expensive dowry to the bride’s family, which makes the women commodities.

Thinking of women as property often results in the husband thinking that he has the right to beat his wife, Issaka said.

Because of the treatment of women in marriage as property, women have had trouble obtaining rights to property. There are many UN declarations requiring that women be allowed to own property, but they aren’t enforced because cultural laws override them, Issaka said.

Women are often forced into marriage when they are as young as six years old. These early marriages also result in many women being forced to drop out of school, Issaka said.

Another inequality in African culture involves widowhood rites, she said. Women often must bear dehumanizing rites if their husband dies. In some cases this involves shaving the widow’s head, stripping her naked, tying a rope around her neck and then confining her in a room without food or water. Afterwards, she is brought out naked and subjected to a ritual bath by the villagers. If she complains, she is beaten, Issaka said.

Elderly women are also victims of abuse, sometimes being banished to witch camps if someone believes that they may be a witch, Issaka said.

Despite the horrors that are allowed to go on, not everything is bad about African culture, she said.

According to Issaka, African culture has strong communal values and a respect for elders. Some places have women chiefs and allow women to own land.

Issaka asked a question near the end of her lecture: “How can we bring it back to what it was, how can we make it right for women?”

The solution can be found to women’s inequality by finding a balance between cultural tradition and government regulation, she said.

“It was a different perspective, one that I hadn’t heard before,” Tyler Nunley, international area studies senior, said. “The idea is not that culture is bad, but that ideas have changed.”

Issaka received a bachelors in geography and economics from the University of Cape Coast. She received her masters in business administration from Durham Business school and taught at the University of Denver, but she doesn’t consider herself a scholar.

“I’m not really an academic ... I have been in the trenches working,” Issaka said.

Issaka was the Deputy Minister for Local Government and Rural Development in Ghana between 1988 and 1992. A former elected official and a sub-cabinet member, she is also a human rights and community development activist.

She also founded and serves as director of the non-governmental organization Center for Sustainable Development. She is spending a week in Norman as an activist in residence.