Africa’s male rulers were accused yesterday of ignoring a year-old commitment to end inequalities condemning women to violence, ignorance and disease.

The African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), a collective of women’s groups, said in a statement women were still second class citizens in Africa, denied equal status with men in marriage, work and property and at unequal risk of AIDS from perennially straying partners,

“The Protocol for the Rights of Women in Africa is a piece of paper without any force,” activist Faiza Jama Mohamed said in a statement at an African Union summit in Ethiopia, referring to measures adopted at last year’s summit in Mozambique.

Only one of the AU’s 53-member countries – Comoros – has ratified it. The protocol will only become binding on ratifying states – who make it part of domestic law – when 14 more governments have followed suit.

“In the Africa of wars and poverty there is a place for the rights of women, because women who enjoyed all their rights would play the role of peacekeepers,” says Morissanda Kouate, a campaigner against female genital mutilation from Guinea.

“Uncircumcised girls who are schooled and educated, legitimately married at the right age, free from violence, participating fully in decisions, these are some of the results expected by the implementation of the protocol.”

FEMNET said most African women work longer and do more caring for the family than men, yet get almost no education and little income and have no real legal protection from violence and abuse including infection with AIDS from unfaithful husbands.

The protocol extends a range of rights and protections to women and among its measures are a ban on female circumcision and the right to abortion when pregnancy results from rape or incest or endangers the life of the mother.

FEMNET says more than 90 million African women and girls are victims of female circumcision or other forms of genital mutilation, a practice found in many parts of Africa.

The protocol says men and women must have equal rights in education, marriage, divorce, inheritance and property and women must have the right to be protected against sexually transmitted diseases.

Women’s groups say that in sub-Saharan Africa women run 60 percent of informal businesses, provide 70 percent of farm labour and produce about 90 percent of the food, but they receive less than 10 percent of total farm income.

“Physical violence, vulnerability to life-threatening diseases, most notably HIV/AIDS, poor educational opportunities and legal barriers around rights to property combine to keep women in Africa as second-class citizens,” FEMNET said.

Some nations, especially in Arab North Africa, have reservations on women’s marital rights and have joined several sub-Saharan counties in rejecting the provisions on abortion.

They also say some of the rights in the protocol are already guaranteed in a human rights protocol ratified by all 53 states.

Activists say only Mali and Namibia appear near ratification. South Africa says it will not ratify the protocol as, officials maintain, domestic law already provides more protection for women than it does.

<I>William Maclean</I>