remains to be addressed in practice, including a
national approach to family law reform, increased
political participation of women at all levels, and a
concerted effort to include women in development
planning and economic development. The histori-
cally secular women’s movement and Sudanese
feminists have been critical of the recent drives
toward greater Islamization. With a peace agree-
ment close to being signed in 2004 a national
approach to the Sharì≠a and the status of women
becomes a priority in a country in which a third of
its population is non-Muslim.
Bibliography
C. Fluehr-Lobban, Islamic law and society in the Sudan,
London 1987.
R. Lobban, R. Kramer, and C. Fluehr-Lobban, Historical
dictionary of the Sudan, Lanham, Md. 2002^3 , see
Sudanese women’s movement, 282–3.
N. Toubia, Female genital mutiliation. A call for global
action, New York 1995.
Carolyn Fluehr-LobbanSub-Saharan AfricaWomen engaged in law in Africa, and Muslim
women in particular, have a long history of partici-
pation in the over 19 currently existing general pro-
fessional organizations for lawyers and judges.
Some of these same professional women have also
organized themselves around their Muslim identity.
Women’s rights as human rights came into their
own in preparations for the Vienna World Human
Rights conference sponsored by the United Nations
Commission for Human Rights (now the Office
of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) in
- The move reflected the spectacular progress
made in global consciousness of women’s rights
since the last world meeting on human rights in
Tehran in 1968, when the women’s rights move-
ment was still in an embryonic stage. The 1993
conference resulted in the creation of a new office,
that of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against
Women.
The Regional Report from Africa prepared in
Tunis in 1992 for the 1993 Vienna Conference
made an appeal to African governments and the
international community to rapidly eliminate “all
forms of discrimination against women” in Africa
by allocating resources for the provision of legal aid
services with a view to the promotion and protec-
tion of human rights. The African states were also
called upon to encourage non-governmental organ-
izations (NGOs) to participate in the advancement
of women. The effects of religion on women were
sub-saharan africa 279specifically highlighted. African states were to take
“all appropriate measures in order to promote the
rights of women, to put an end to discrimination
based on sex and to protect women from all forms
of violence and traditional practices of intolerance
and extremism, particularly religious extremism,
affecting their rights and freedoms” (UNCHR
1992).
In 1990 the Ford Foundation provided funding
for the Women in Law and Development in Africa
(WILDAF) network. With a boost from the Vienna
resolutions in 1993, the Ford Foundation pushed
women’s rights to center stage, leading to an expan-
sion of WILDAF into regional centers in eastern,
southern, and most recently western Africa. These
NGOs combine research and advocacy for women’s
rights as human rights. Individual Muslim women
experts have joined. Various WILDAFs have also
paired up with local national professional organi-
zations, for example, with the Tanzania Media
Women’s Association in East Africa, which has key
Muslim members, in order to assure a broad dis-
semination of research findings. WILDAF’s strat-
egy is to get women’s rights legislation passed and
to initiate litigation challenging gender adverse
laws. Women’s issues are not divided according
to religion or ethnicity. Test litigation in African
courts has been supported by the International
Women’s Rights Action Watch (IWRAW, based in
Minnesota, USA), founded in 1985 at the Women’s
World Conference in Nairobi with the aim of mak-
ing the United Nations Convention on the Elimina-
tion of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW) a global reality. The IWRAW newsletter
established strong links with women in Africa who
sent information on all discriminatory customs and
laws, whether secular or religious. The WILDAF
legal support has been supplemented in South
Africa since 1999 by a religiously neutral organiza-
tion called the Women’s Legal Center, which has
litigated cases in order to advance equality for
women under customary and Muslim laws. It is
funded in part by the Ford Foundation and the
International Commission of Jurists.
Alongside women’s human rights NGOs in
Africa, in which Muslim women participate, are
organizations that are founded by Muslim women,
but that do not have a Muslim identity as such. One
example is Amanitare, a well-known organization
focusing on health, sexuality, and reproduction as
women’s human rights issues, and the elimination
of violence against women. Amanitare, which is
coordinated by the Research, Action and Infor-
mation Network for the Bodily Integrity of Women
(Rainbo), was founded by a Muslim Sudanese