wfn.org | Resend African Women at Pre Assembly Call for Justice, Equality

[cfouke@ncccusa.org]

For Immediate Release
AACC Media Team: (011) 237 966 3059 or 3063

AFRICAN WOMEN AT AACC PRE ASSEMBLY CALL FOR JUSTICE, EQUALITY

Yaounde, Cameroon. -- The meetings of the Women's Pre Assembly in the run-
up to the All Africa Conference of Churches 8th General Assembly in 
Yaounde, on November 20th, all called for justice and equality for African 
women.

Mrs. Battu Jambawai, the Executive Secretary of the AACC Women's Desk, 
said that the Desk focuses on empowering women for self-reliance and 
diversity. Ensuring that women are not learning in isolation, she called 
for cooperation between (young and old) in their respective communities.  

Being at the continental level and working with a large and diverse 
constituency, the Women's Desk functions as an enabler of intermediary 
level actors in the Sub-Regions, National Christian Councils and member 
churches.

"We also seek to make a connection between local social and justice 
issues, and international or global issues while seeking alternative 
gender sensitive approaches to development which are just, participatory 
and sustainable," she said.

The main objectives of the Women's Desk are:

* To facilitate the mainstreaming of gender perspectives into the AACC 
programs and policies.
* Facilitate women's training, skills development and acquisition, 
economic empowerment and resource material production.
* Increase and enhance the Women's Desk's opportunities for advocacy and 
networking with other agencies and organizations working on women's issues.

In line with this vision, the Working Group proposed the following 
programs for the implementation of the Assembly mandate:

* Peace Building Initiatives
* The issue of Violence against Women
* Women's Economic Empowerment
* Leadership Development and Acquisition
* Resource Material Development
* Health especially HIV/AIDS
* Child Survival
* Language courses especially English for the Francophone and Lusophone
	
High on the agenda of was the on-going crisis of HIV/AIDS in Africa.  Ms 
Jambamai said that the pandemic continues to decimate sub-Saharan Africa 
and has become a development problem of staggering dimension and is set to 
reverse the hard-earned development gains of the last three decades.

"Therefore, the AACC in collaboration with other partners including the 
Christian Aid and WCC, World Alliance of YMCA and MAP International, 
facilitated consultations of church leaders in Kampala, Uganda and Dakar, 
Senegal, in 2001 respectively, to facilitate church leaders' response to 
the pandemic. They further produced guidelines to help member churches in 
their response," she said

Referring to the oppression of women in Africa, Ms Jambamai affirmed the 
fact that the problem has bee identified, described, named and shared in 
terms of women's personal experiences in the family, sex, marriage at 
work, in the community, politics, etc.

While acknowledging that there is a need for women's collective actions, 
she said that such action must reflect mutual respect for cultural 
diversity based on specificity of histories and contexts.

"If we are all given the opportunity to express our differences based on 
our own agendas and priorities, as we gather here in Cameroon, I believe 
that we will accomplish a lot at this pre-Assembly meeting," she said.

						
	by Val Pauquet, AACC

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