 Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure for me to be here and to discuss the topic of women and how to exchange at different levels. When I was asked to speak about this topic, I thought that what I better to start this presentation and discussion than to share my own personal story, especially my own life has been in fact impacted by ordinary women. And these women are two women. One is my mother and another is my big sister. So, growing up a household that is typically an African family with many household members in it, at every given time, at least in the household where you grew up, it had over 10 people in that household. And I saw my mother taking care of each and every person in that household and ensuring that everyone is up in that household. She didn't care so much about her own needs and her own happiness, but she constantly talked about the dream she had for her children. She didn't have much formal education herself, but she had one dream and that dream was that her own children, and especially her daughters, would get a formal education. But somehow she understood the importance of education and quality education. And growing up I kept hearing her negotiating with my father about prioritising my own education and not just any education but quality education. And it's because of that that I am who I am today. And when my family, my father and mother couldn't continue to perform my education, my big sister, who was a student at that time and only had a part-time job, enabled me to pay my education throughout secondary school but also undergraduate university. And so for me it's like, you have very limited resources, but you are able to use those resources to make an impact in one's life. And for me that is really women making change, women making extraordinary, doing extraordinary things. And as Nora said, I'm a Rwandan, but I grew up and born in Uganda. And when I turned it into Randa in 1995, after the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that I'm sure most of you have heard about, I saw women, at that time women were 70% of the Rwandan population. And I saw women, ordinary women with very limited resources, with limited opportunities, in fact transforming and restructuring their own families, their own communities, but also their nation. Today Rwandan Parliament has the highest women of members of parliament that are women globally. So they have the highest number of women in parliament. And for me it did just happen. It happened because of the potential that women showed. There's a slogan in Randa that people always say that women can't do it. You know that, whatever. Whatever one can do, how one can do. So just remove the stigmatization and discrimination against women, especially in the area of politics. So with that I'll turn to my presentation. And my presentation really is going to focus on the work that I'm doing with the Feminate and through working with different women, what we've been able to achieve and impact the change in different areas of Africa. So Feminate is an African women's race organization. It's a regional organization. It held a secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya, but we have members in over 40 countries in Africa, in all the subregions of Africa, Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, Central Africa, Northern Africa and Western Africa. So we have a representation of women's race organization in different countries. And how we work is a network. And so we depend on each other's capacities and experiences and different expertise to build a network that is vibrant, that we can count on each other in terms of having a stronger voice to advocate for women's rights and gender equality issues at different levels, both at the regional, at the national level, but also at the global level, as you are going to see in my presentation. So this picture is just a demonstration of how kind of women work with, in fact, at the first group of women coming from different communities, different countries in Africa. And if you hear about Africa, at least you are going to hear that Africa is raising, but also you are going to hear that Africa is young. It's raising because of different characteristics that are happening on the continent right now. We have been having an increased GDP for the past years in all different countries of Africa, an increased GDP in terms of economic growth, but seeing very little in terms of shared benefits of growth. So we have a situation of increased GDP that does not necessarily mean that there is increased well-being of citizens, but women in particular. So what that means is that we have increased GDP, but increased inequalities also, where poorer are becoming poorer and the richer are becoming, and the rich are becoming even richer. And the women tend to call the category of those that are becoming poorer. We have about youth demographic dividend. And the situation is that, you know, we are seeing this youth bulge as an opportunity for Africa, in fact, to use these young people as a resource to ensure that there is development in Africa. There is a lot of focus on creating jobs for young people, but very limited space for the youth to thrive and to have a voice and do whatever they want to do. That component is very limited. And especially with the Arab Spring that you know about, where the youth are the ones that led that revolution. And now there's a lot of caution in different African countries to be very careful on what youth can bring about. And as a result, we are seeing different, even laws put in place to limit voice, to limit freedom of speech, freedom of association, and those kind of things. There's also a lot of focus on economic empowerment. And we are seeing this also when you talk about women empowerment, that in fact, what we are seeing, especially from the government, is that they tend to look at empowerment from a narrow kind of perspective that is different from how we look at empowerment. Because for us, we look at empowerment to be more holistic, to include not just economic aspect, but social aspect, political aspect, the environment, environment, that in fact is holistic in nature and empowers a person as a whole. However, we tend to see more focus on economic empowerment versus other kind of empowerment. And I worry about that further in other slides. But also we have seen a lot of this cover of minerals in different parts of Africa, in different countries like Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, and many others. And so I think what we can ask ourselves is to what extent are these discover of minerals, which is such a big resource, to what extent are they impacting the lives of African citizens or African people. And so what we are seeing is that in fact, it tends to be impacting the lives of the private sector and mainly foreign investors who get tax exemptions, for example, are the expense of small business owners who mean women, are the expense of small farmers, but also it tends to benefit a few politicians in different countries. So turning to the women as agents of change, one of the key things that we do to impact the change as a feminine, with different African women, is policy advocacy. And so with policy advocacy, we have been able to achieve our thought and we do policy advocacy at the regional level, mainly working with regional bodies such as African Union. And as a result, we have been able to ensure that we influence African Union at that level to pass policies that are favourable for women's rights and gender equality, but also working at ensuring that this then translates into the policy change at a national level. So for example, one of the things that have come out of the work that we do in policy advocacy is my protocol in short, which is in full the African charter on people and women's rights in Africa. This is like the version of CIDO, because CIDO is something that talks widely about women's rights at a global level, but then this focuses on women's rights in Africa. It's homegrown, so it is easier to use as a tool to hold the government accountable on addressing gender inequalities and women's rights issues because it is homegrown to as passed and adopted by African heads of states. And FEMNIT played a big role in terms of ensuring that the adoption was the drafting of the policy was effective and in fact took into consideration issues affecting African women, but also ensuring that different heads of states ratify and sign this protocol. So as we speak, we have 36 ratifications, which is the highest African union convention that is ratified by many governments. And it is because of the work that FEMNIT, together with other coalitions and organizations have done in advocating for this specific policy, but also some of the questions mainly seeks to address issues of gender discrimination and inequalities, seeking for gender parity at a different level. This is again an important tool that is being used to promote gender equality and women's rights, but also a plan of action on sexual and productive health and rights. This is also something that was passed that specifically focuses on addressing issues around sexual and productive health and rights of women and girls. So using these regional policies that have been passed, we were able to in fact go to the national level, work with different members to ensure that in fact these get to be translated to the national level through, for example, ensuring that the national constitutions are engendered. So if you see that the constitution that have been passing lately, at least each one of them will have a clause that talks about non-discrimination based on any identity including gender, ethnicity and age and other differences, but also almost all countries have laws on ending men's against women and girls. Again, how we have been impacting the change is through speaking out for change where especially things happen that we feel that are in fact discriminating or marginalizing women and girls. And for example, you might know what happened in Nigeria where over 200 girls were abducted and after now are still missing. So FEMNIT was one of different organizations that mobilized at the continental level and had a series of speaking out, protesting going to the different embassies, going to governments in Nigeria. What does this mean in Nigeria? To advocate to ensure that girls are returned home safely. Not much has been done, but we believe that just with this kind of campaign and advocacy, something similar will not happen in the future. Another situation is another campaign that we call Justice for Lease. This is a 16-year-old girl who was gun-repped in a community in Kenya called Boussia. This girl was gun-repped when she was coming from a valley of her family member. And she went to report to the police and she was able to identify the people that raped her. And the police only told the boys to slash grass and live. And that was a punishment in our understanding. So when we learned about that, it was such an acceptable issue and we started a campaign where we... In fact, it went on vows. I don't know if you have heard about vows which is like an online network that amplifies campaigns and ensuring that many people not across Africa but globally sign the petition. So we had over one million signatures that we corrected. And we delivered those to the Inspector General of Police in Kenya. And he said, this is unacceptable. A girl cannot be raped and the punishment is to slash grass. So we did a lot of campaign around that. And as a result, at least one of the perpetrators has been arrested. The case is in court. But also they have formed a committee of inquiry to do more research about... And they've used to get this case. Before it was in fact neglected. The girl had developed a fecital out of this rape. Her spinal cord was broken out of this. She couldn't access any treatment from the hospital, from the public hospitals in Kenya, a country that in fact has a law that says that survivors and victims of rape will get free access to medical care. But when it comes to practical ways of doing that it is not in fact the case. So she couldn't even access medical care. And so it was an NGO in Kenya called Gender Recovery Centre that in fact then took that case and provided medical care for that. So it is after this campaign that in fact this case started getting a lot of media attention, other stakeholders taking it up. And as we speak, she has recovered. She was in a wheelchair when that happened. But now she's walking, she's able to walk, she has recovered, the history has been treated and the case is in court. So for me that is change. My Dress, My Choice is also another campaign that has, we studied recently as a result of girls being stripped naked in Kenya, in Malawi, in Tanzania, in Uganda, in different countries because they were wearing short dresses. So for us, we thought that is an attack on women's and girls' bodily integrity and their freedom to choose what they want to wear. And so we started this campaign to say it's my dress, it's my choice and really no one should strip another person. And how come the men don't strip women, but men are stripping women or girls. And for example, when this thing happened in Kenya, in a country that I thought is very democratic and for choice, I thought if these things would happen maybe they are going to happen in Sudan or another country, but I would suppose that they were actually happening in Kenya and one of the girls that were stripped naked after a few days committed suicide, much of they don't want to admit that this contributed to that act but I believe that in fact it is such shame because once you are stripped naked, when you go home, there's a lot of victim blaming that even your own parents might tell you why did you go home wearing that short dress? Why did you go out wearing that tight trousers? And that kind of victim blaming can in fact lead to an act such as committing suicide. But with advocates that were doing and also it collided with the time of 16 days of activism that in fact we did a lot of we went on the street and started protesting, we have used the social media in terms of Twitter, Facebook we have treated the president, we have treated the minister that is in charge of gender issues and when the president came to launch the 16 days of activism one of the things that he said was that people have a right to, every person or every citizen has a role to play in protecting marginalized groups of people including women and children and we're saying how come people are able to show videos of people that are stripping women but they're not doing anything about it you are just watching which was good I really liked that kind of statement the only disappointment I had was the fact that he did not talk about the role of police the role of his government in protecting women and girls so again we continue tweeting him we continue addressing him and writing articles in newspaper saying he needs to take responsibility and his government is taking responsibility for the security of women and girls and as a result we have seen that some of the people that have addressed the girls and women have been arrested so again there's progress in addressing this issue influencing decisions of heads of states again like I said from the beginning one of the things we would do is to influence the African Union and the outcome of the African Union summits so for example in I think 2003 I don't remember the year exactly but the theme of the African Union summit was on maternal health and through that we were able to have East African Caravan because the summit was taking place in Uganda and we were able to in fact do a lot of advocacy collect a million signatures talking about maternal health of women and you can see here it reads that no woman should die while giving life and that was the strong slogan that we carried throughout which was really to talk about the fact that many women are still dying while giving birth from curable complications which is really unacceptable but also the Great Lakes region heads of states summit which was on section database violence again Feminite played a very important role in ensuring that we give key recommendations to heads of states in the Great Lakes region to address section database violence and that included in fact ensuring that we bring women themselves that have faced this issue to speak to heads of states, to speak to the first ladies and talk about the issue that affects them how sexual violence affects them and what they want their governments to do so this again was such a game changer and we saw that most of the community that we put forward are in fact were adopted in the conclusions of the summit I want to speak about how in fact women at the grassroots, women at the regional level have been able to influence global agendas and I will just give a few examples for example Feminite was the focal point for Africa when NGOs were advocating for establishment of UN women from UNIFEM as you know UNIFEM was smaller it wasn't as big as other UN who are agencies such as UNICEF and others and we wanted a UN agency that is in fact the strongest is World Resource to adverse the issues of women's race and gender equality in the UN system but also at the global level so we played a key role in ensuring that UN women gets established and it did in fact get established and so what we are doing currently is also to ensure that UN women is held accountable to serve the roles and responsibilities that we are expected them to do when we are advocating for its establishment for example I am on the advisory committee of UN women regional office that is best in Nairobi Kenya and so through that advisory role I am able to advise the UN women on key issues that we see and how they should carry out their planning their programming their advocacy in terms of women's rights and gender equality issues the Belgian platform for action which was adopted in 1995 as we speak we are in the process of the regional reviews for this for 20 after 20 years but this is something that has been reviewed every 5 years and something that has been playing an important role in mobilizing women across Africa to see that the Belgian platform for action remains relevant it is delivering its promises but also with their two gaps we come up with specific recommendations on how those gaps can be addressed so with the 20 years we just had the review actually about 2 weeks ago and we were able to come up with key specific emerging issues that are still affecting African women and we have we developed those as women's race organizations and individuals from different countries and we were able to carry them with us where the government is doing its own review so from the to influencing the government discussions and we saw that most of the recommendations again from our convening from our consultations informed the outcome of the government regional discussions so again that was changed because it is those regional agreement that are going to go at the global level of global outcome ICPD that's international convention on Population and Development which was adopted in 1994 in Cairo and again this issue talks so much about women especially on issues concerning sexual and productive health and rights and so again you have influenced this adoption you have influenced the different reviews that have been happening including the recent one that took place last year then the post-2015 development framework I don't know if you have been involved in this discussion but there have been a lot of discussions around post-2015 development framework a development framework that is going to replace the MDGs as they come to the end in 2015 which is next year and so Femnet is the first organization women's race organization but also a social organization in the general that in fact was the first one to see that the consultations are still taking place and the role of women African women in particular to define their own priorities and to influence that the global development agenda in fact puts into consideration the issues affecting African women and girls and so we started mobilizing African women, we started organizing organizations, we started mobilizing other social organizations engaging with different policy makers the UN system engaging with a high level panel of eminent people that the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon put in place to work on issues of consulting different constituents and come up with a report on post-2015 and our aim was really to ensure that the issues affecting women and girls in Africa are in fact part of the conversation and also they inform the next development agenda and because of that advocacy we saw that the high level panel report included a specific goal on addressing gender equality and overcoming gender inequalities and issues of also women's rights also some attempted to mainstream gender in other goals in their report we have also seen that the open working group that has been happening also played an important role in mobilizing African women to be part of that conversation it was difficult because these conversations were happening in New York but we mobilized both resources and human resources to ensure that in fact every time those conversations were happening some of the African women went to the UN in the headquarters in New York and spoke about their own experiences and spoke about what they want to see in the development agenda and because of that then we are seeing that at least the report that are coming out they are putting into consideration the issue that we have advocated for and we have been really advocating for a transformative approach to development that focuses on improvement of a world being that in fact the human being is at the center of this development agenda but ensuring that in fact when you talk about development what does it mean to us is it just about GDP increase is it just about is it really empowerment and improving the world being of citizens including different diversities of citizens being able to do all that it has not been done without challenges and the current challenges that we are facing in the area of advocating for women's rights and gender equality some of the challenges we face one is fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism as I have already shared I think you saw it up in Nigeria the Baku Haram abducting girls it has been happening in Uganda you know that Uganda we are calling again abducting girls and women it is happening in Kenya, Sudan and many other countries and of course the majority that are being affected by all these women and girls as I spoke about before the general focus of empowerment and this is shaping and influencing African position in global negotiations in the post-relifting women's framework if you look at the Africa agenda which is called Africa Agenda 2063 which is Africa vision for the next 50 years and this came in place last year in May when African Union was celebrating in 50 years and it is very clear that you know there is a conversation on the continent to see that Africa has its own vision and it is driven by its own vision but there is a tendency to focus a lot on economic empowerment which I think then is a missed opportunity considering that economic empowerment is important but it is not the only thing that is important especially when you talk about women empowerment the issues of patriotity continue and matters who have been trying to change this kind of system but it is still well and alive you know and we are seeing this through attack of women girls bodily integrity being affected but also the shrinking spaces for civil society and we are seeing this in different countries for example in Ethiopia if you talk about advocacy for women's rights just mentioning that that is a crime and in fact you are going to be arrested and persecuted as a terrorist so it is that serious that is just one example but in Kenya also there has been conversations around a civil society a law that will limit civil society's operation in terms of you cannot get more than 30% of your finances from outside and yet we know that most NGOs in fact continue to operate and do what we do through support from outside so by putting a law in place that states something like that already you are saying that most of the NGOs will not continue to operate so it will be difficult to operate in such a kind of legal framework but has it yet passed anyway we are advocating that it doesn't pass but who knows just what is below here is just a demonstration of how patriarchy continues to affect women you know and I have just given different examples of that for example there was an indecent dressing bill in Nigeria in 2008 there was a miniskirt law in Uganda in 2014 the traditional court bill in South Africa the anti-homosexuality act in 2004 in Nigeria that was passed and also in Uganda the same bill was passed in 2014 although lawyers were able to go to court and challenge this bill in Uganda and in fact they won the case so that's a victory just watching the time and I think this is the last one this last slide where we talk about different opportunities in the existing framework and this demonstrates you know a political way to adverse women's rights for example 2020 period was declared by African Union as African women's decade and there are a lot of opportunities with that the thematic area of heads of states for 2015 is going to be the year of women empowerment and movement towards African again in 1963 we are seeing this as an opportunity that African Union is entirely focusing the entire year just to discuss issues affecting women's empowerment and we think this will be the opportunity for us to unpack what women empowerment means but also the post-2013 women process is also another opportunity where we can in fact unpack what development means for African women and girls the emerging process as I spoke about earlier is also another process that provides opportunity to advocate and to ensure that the emerging issues of women's rights and gender equality are taken into consideration and also I wanted to just highlight that Kenya and Ireland actually are going to be co-facitating the post-2015 negotiation that are starting next year and I'm seeing that as an opportunity to invest in Kenya so we have access to Kenya police makers but I'm here in Ireland making connections with new people and you have access to your police makers here and if you want the agenda in terms of approaching the person who is going to be co-facitating the post-2015 and just pushing the issues affecting women and together we can work together to ensure that these two co-facilitators are joining the discussion towards a favourable, transformative sustainable post-2015 women's framework and you know I just wanted to know that change begins with me together we can end it and we build our agency and the struggle continues and we work together to do that thank you