Our women are back with demands

Women’s rights advocates in Nigeria are pressing again for commitments that place women at the center of governance and national security, three decades after the landmark 1995 Beijing conference.

That conference produced powerful declarations, including Hillary Clinton’s insistence that women’s rights could no longer be treated as separate from human rights. But the momentum faded, the column argues, because some governments and corporations signed the commitments without genuine conviction.

The Abuja Inclusion and National Security Summit on Aug. 21 sought to revive that demand. Held under the theme “Advancing Women’s Leadership for Inclusive Governance and Security,” the event lasted more than six hours and followed months of planning. I Teach Africa, a nongovernmental organization, convened the gathering.

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It is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as different from human rights.

Ministers, lawmakers, senior security officials, judicial officers, traditional and religious leaders, development partners, civil society groups, women’s organizations, people with disabilities, journalists and diplomatic representatives attended. The gathering’s broad representation created confidence that its resolutions would not simply be filed away and forgotten.

The summit argued that meaningful participation by women in governance, peace-building, public policy and national security remains essential to a peaceful, stable, inclusive and resilient Nigeria. Speakers agreed that women must be recognized as active participants, decision-makers, leaders and contributors to national peace and security, rather than only as recipients of development and security interventions.

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If there is one message that echoes forth from this Conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.