News blog

Traditional customary law - the defence of what has always been done – around wife or property inheritance is patently unjust.

It’s a massive wrong perpetrated against women throughout many countries in Africa, so this article on the BBC News website saying that the Botswana High Court has overturned a customary law which prevented women from inheriting the family home is a welcome development.

The BBC reported that the judge ruled that the Botswana customary practice contravened the constitution, which guarantees equality for men and women.

Edith Mmusi and her sisters had fought a five-year legal battle after a nephew said he was the rightful owner of their house under Ngwaketse customary law that allows for the youngest-born son to inherit the family home.

Equality before the law is one of the 30 fundamental human rights enshrined under the Universal Charter of Human Rights and as the preamble to the charter states, the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

As people around the world mark the International Day of the Girl Child, we are reeling from the news that the Taliban tried to kill a 14-year-old girl because she spoke out to defend girls’ education. Malala Yousafzai was shot in the face as she was going home on the school bus and is now recovering in hospital.

Malala lives in Mingora in the Swat Valley, an area of Pakistan that was controlled by the Taliban until the Pakistan army mounted a huge operation in 2001 to wipe out the insurgents. During several months of fierce fighting two million people were displaced from their homes.

I visited the area in the winter of 2009 when the operation was over and local people were starting to return home. On the whole they were happy that the army had chased out the Taliban. The two main reasons they gave was that they wanted peace and a normal life and they wanted their daughters to be able to go to school.

When they were in power the Taliban had ordered all girls’ schools to close, but Malala had bravely spoken out, writing a blog about how the school ban had affected her life.

On my trip I spoke to women teachers who had been threatened by the Taliban. One told me: “The Taliban used to walk through the village and say to our men that the women must wear a burka. Then they said the women must wear gloves to cover our hands and socks to cover our feet. Then they said we must not leave the house at all or they would slaughter us. The Taliban had threatened people at my school. We stopped teaching because we were afraid of being killed.”

I also visited schools that had been damaged in the fighting - ActionAid was working to reopen them and to help get girls back to school.

In neighbouring Afghanistan the Taliban’s war against women is even more widespread. In July ActionAid released a report saying that attacks on women were becoming more frequent there.  Many Afghan women especially those living in the more conservative southern provinces still face restrictions and violence when working away from home and many do not send their daughters to school because of fears for their safety. There is also the increasing use of acid attacks.

 And women who enter public life do so at significant risk – female activists and professional women are facing assassination attempts that are often deadly. These include teachers, local council members and police women.

 An ActionAid survey of 1,000 women across Afghanistan in 2011 found 86% of Afghan women said they were worried about a return to Taliban-style government in Afghanistan, with one in five citing their daughters’ education as the main concern.

 We have to support women and girls across Pakistan and Afghanistan who are fighting for their basic rights to go to school or work or even go out of the house without fear of a terrible attack. As Fawzia Koofi, a female Afghan MP who has had death threats from the Taliban, says: “Our daughters are like the hope, the future of Afghanistan," she said. "I think women have to stand up, they have to raise their voice, demonstrate that they have equal abilities in this country like many other people have."

Baaba Maal. Emmanuel Jal.Tinariwen. Staff Benda Bilili. Just a few of the big names who’ve proven over the years that ‘world music’ (for want of a better term) often goes hand in hand with a strong social conscience and a natural instinct for global campaigning. And we’d bet that more than a few of you have some CDs by these guys lurking on your shelves somewhere.

So we were delighted when our friends over at the world music bible Songlines magazine got in touch with an amazing offer for ActionAid supporters.

If you take out a year’s subscription to the magazine over here, Songlines will donate a hefty £5 of your subscription fee direct to ActionAid’s work. So you’ll be helping us make a difference across Africa and beyond at the same time as broadening your musical horizons! The offer runs until the end of October, so get your skates on!

In this month’s issue alone, there’s a feature on the NASA Space Voyager’s musical playlist, a selection by theatre director Peter Sellars and musical postcards from as far afield as Korea, Jakarta and Tel Aviv.

Ivan Lewis MP is Labour’s Shadow Minister of International Development and at this week’s Labour Party conference he proposed extending elements of the Sure start education scheme for parents, their babies and toddlers to the developing world.

It’s a great idea. Sure Start comprises 3,600 children’s centres in England and brings together all the different support agencies to offer a range of services to meet parents and children’s needs, all in one place.

It was designed to help young children growing up in deprived areas but I’ve been told by friends that it is probably one of the most effective, helpful and useful schemes to help any new parent and their children – whatever their background - as well as a good place to meet other mums.

ActionAid from our long experience with education, knows just how effective early intervention that helps parents and children can be. In Rwanda our education centres for pre-school children are being replicated by the government across the country because they have been so successful. And in rural Malawi we’ve been given a grant by the Roger Federer Foundation to build eighty children’s centres that will eventually reach 54,000 pre-school children.

 In Malawi nearly half of all under-fives are chronically malnourished and in a 10-year project, each centre will have classrooms, education supplies and play areas and will provide a free lunch to each child. In additional each centre will have a vegetable allotment to grow their own food and will support small business and agricultural initiatives.