The African Women's Protocol: Harnessing a Potential Force for Positive Change

Evaluating the impact of the African Women's Protocol, this important study focuses on three African countries—South Africa, Zambia, and Mozambique—and presents a map for the road ahead. Through careful research and in-depth investigation, the guide explores in practice the rights ratified for women by the protocol, such as reproductive rights, the prohibition of female genital mutilation, and economic and social welfare rights. The rights of particularly vulnerable groups of women, including widows, elderly women, disabled women and “women in distress”—which includes poor women, women from marginalized population groups, and pregnant or nursing women in detention—are specifically recognized.