Since yesterday, the J Gen Senegal Network has been organizing the first national forum on reproductive justice and women’s rights. For social justice for women victims of rape or incest, he asks the State to apply the Maputo Protocol. To achieve this goal, women placed emphasis on communities.
By Justin GOMIS – The J Gen Senegal network is not giving up on its fight for medical abortion for women victims of rape or incest. “Step by step we will find the limits. Step by step, we reassure each other. Step by step, we will obtain justice for all human beings,” believes Maïmouna Sy Yade, Executive Director of J Gen Senegal. A conviction which led this network to organize, on Tuesday, the first National Forum on reproductive justice and women’s rights around the theme: “Consequence of clandestine abortions in Senegal between prevention, care and political-legal challenges.”
This two-day forum, organized in collaboration with technical and financial partners, aims to mobilize several categories of the population around this theme, namely stakeholders, partners and communities. “We have an obligation to listen and learn more about the perceptions of communities, particularly of the forces of the Nation who we already identify as people who are a little resistant to the possibility that women can resort to an abortion confidential and medicalized when they are victims of rape or incest,” she says.
For this fight that the women’s network has been leading since 2013, this time they intend to focus on communities in order to see their contribution and how they can carry this important concern for women’s rights.
Also believing that clandestine abortions are a real public health issue, the women think that we cannot differentiate on everything that concerns gender-based violence. “The issue of clandestine abortions, taking into account its causes and consequences, constitutes violence in our struggle strategies,” remarks Maïmouna Sy Yade. Enough for the Executive Director of the J Gen Senegal network to ask state authorities to apply the Maputo Protocol which, without reservation, authorizes medical abortion to be possible for women victims of rape or incest. “Since the adoption of this law, the State of Senegal has been very reluctant to apply it in order to harmonize it with international laws,” she denounces, while recalling that international texts are superior to national ones.
Today, it is the fight that the women’s network is leading to obtain social balance and justice for these women who are being harmed. “For us, balance also means fairness which means equality. Equality is the best illustration of truth. When there is equality and fairness, there is also balance. This balance is the sign of social justice,” she maintains.
And for the director of the J Gen Senegal network, “granting women who are victims of violence and who have contracted a pregnancy by force, for example girls aged 9 or 10, the possibility of aborting, allows them to decide whether they want to carry this pregnancy or not. This is the whole meaning of their fight by asking the State to move forward in advocacy and to have the courage to apply the Maputo Protocol. “It is not our strategy to provide abortions. We must not be made to take on battles that we did not take on. Nobody can do that. We are very clear. We are rigid in our position and we know what we are doing. We are not in the business of offering a service, nor encouraging anything regarding this medical aspect,” reassures Maïmouna Sy Yade, the women’s president.
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, also known as the Maputo Protocol, is a progressive legal instrument that provides a diversity of rights to women and girls Africans.
The protocol was adopted by the African Union (AU) in Maputo, Mozambique, on July 11, 2003. It entered into force in November 2005 after being ratified by 15 member states of the African Union. This is the shortest period between the adoption and entry into force of an AU protocol or charter.
The Maputo Protocol was born out of an African-led process. It is progressive because it reflects the challenges that African women and girls face on a daily basis.
The provisions of the protocol are diverse. It includes protections for older women, women with disabilities and women living with HIV/Aids. It also explicitly addresses issues such as violence against women in Article 4 and the right of girls and women to access sexual and reproductive health services, including child-related care. safe abortion.
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