The Beijing Platform for Action, an outcome of the 1995 Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, recommended the creation of mechanisms to monitor gender equality and the advancement of women. Accordingly, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s African Centre for Gender and Social Development (ACGSD/UNECA) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme’s Regional Gender Programme for Africa (UNDP/RGPA) launched the African Women’s Rights Observatory.
The African Women’s Rights Observatory (AWRO) aspires to be the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of information about African women’s rights. Its objective is to create a knowledge base that will enable various stakeholders to monitor the progress in and challenges of advancing women’s rights in Africa.
In particular, AWRO aims to monitor the implementation and enforcement of regional and international instruments, including but not limited to the African Women’s Protocol and CEDAW, as well as resolutions and declarations adopted by various regional and international bodies. AWRO retrieves, documents and keenly monitors progresses and constraints in the areas of legal reform, domestication of international laws, litigation involving women’s rights, availability or lack of women’s access to justice and measures taken towards promotion and protection of women’s rights at the national, sub-regional and regional levels.
In pursuit of this goal, AWRO gathers data, publications and news on the status of women’s rights in Africa. Data is collected from national statistical reports, United Nations and other intergovernmental sources, research and academic institutions as well as women’s rights NGOs. The African Gender Development Index (AGDI) also provides both qualitative and quantitative data for the Observatory. In addition, AWRO collects primary data in collaboration with other national stakeholders. Lastly, AWRO systematically consolidates data from secondary sources to highlight the information that is specific to Africa or to women’s rights.[1]
AWRO’s information-gathering focuses mainly on three thematic areas: participation of women in public and political decision-making, violence against women and women’s economic rights with a specific focus on the right to land. Despite these focuses, AWRO will indiscriminately retrieve and upload information relevant to African women’s rights, so AWRO’s news, publications and other resources will not be limited to the three thematic areas.
For Specific Roles and Planned Outputs, visit the ‘About Us’ section of the website.
[1] AWRO wishes to sincerely apologize for any and all potential errors in provided data or dates. Its staff works hard to avoid such errors. If you notice an error, please alert the staff at awro@uneca.org.