7 - Women's Rights in Postconflict Constitutions

Summary

The most important thing is to lay the foundation of peace.

– Ethiopian proverb

Several changes in opportunity structures during and after conflict created new openings, particularly for women in countries where conflicts were ending. Peace agreements, which were discussed in the previous chapter, paved the way for later constitutional, legislative, and electoral reforms. As numerous conflicts came to an end in Africa after 1995, women's movements sought to influence constitutional reform processes, particularly in areas of equality, customary law, antidiscrimination provisions, violence against women, quotas, and citizenship rights. Countries that came out of major civil conflict and violent upheaval in Africa after the mid-1990s, but especially after 2000, have made more constitutional changes with respect to women's rights than other African countries.

While these constitutional reforms were most evident in countries that had experienced civil war, even countries like Kenya, which experienced massive election-related violence in 2008, subsequently saw the conclusion of what had been a protracted and acrimonious constitutional process in which women activists were able to insert key provisions.

Since the mid-1990s we have seen an increase in constitutional provisions addressing gender concerns in Africa. Most of these changes, especially the most far-reaching ones, are found in postconflict countries. The decline of conflict after 1995 led to political opening, even if limited. Nevertheless it was often sufficient to allow for the autonomous women's organizations to press for constitutional changes.

Virtually all African countries have rewritten their constitutions since 1990. Many of these changes were precipitated by the shift to multipartyism. Since 1995, forty-four constitutions have been rewritten in sub-Saharan Africa (or are in the process of being rewritten), and of those, nineteen have been countries embroiled in conflict and fourteen in countries where conflicts were high in intensity and or long in duration. The only postconflict constitution that has not been rewritten since 1990 is Liberia's, which is in the process of being rewritten. The remaining five are nonmajor postconflict countries (Botswana, Guinea Bissau, Mauritius, São Tomé e Príncipe, and Tanzania, which has yet to ratify its revised constitution).