wfn.org | AFRICAN WOMEN AT AACC PRE ASSEMBLY CALL FOR JUSTICE, EQUALITY

["Pat Pattillo" <wpattillo@ncccusa.org>]

For Immediate Release  --  21 November 2003
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, AAC

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