Table of Contents - East and Horn of Africa Human Rights ...

Regional Workshop on Women and Minority Human Rights Defenders
� FIDA members take a leading role in human rights protection by challenging inequality, repression
and traditional gender roles in our patriarchal society.
� Lack of clear divide between personal lives and professional work of women human rights defenders.
� Work is usually connected to political gains.
� Women human rights defenders are sometimes vulnerable to hostility and reprisals. They are
targeted as ‘aggressive and unmanly.
� They are liable to sexual harassment and violence to test whether they are not like other women.
� Some women experience threats of divorce or disownment by their husbands and families for
associating with FIDA.
� This work requires courage, creativity and commitment, but it all too often meets a wall of
indifference from other human rights defenders, the public and fellow lawyers.
� Few people recognize the work of women rights defenders and this can be seen from the attacks from
fellow women who feel that the government has ‘given’ to women their rights.
� Leadership – how to inspire and retain a new breed of human rights defenders.
� Recognise and affirm women human rights defenders as equal partners and leaders;
� Seek acknowledgement and understanding of the gender-specific concerns of women human rights
defenders;
� Strategise on how to protect all women human rights defenders in accordance with the 1998 UN
Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and other international instruments and mechanisms;
� Exploit the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders (Mrs.
Margaret Sekaggya) in supporting and defending women human rights activists in Uganda.
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