Ms Victoria Nakafero (R), a Buganda Kingdom official, and UN’s Elijah Wachiru (L) welcome queen mothers; Dramedo 1 Aflao of Ghana (2nd L), Jannet Kem (C) from Cameroon and Nanahemaa Awindor (2nd R) of Ashanti Kingdom in Ghana at Speke Resort, Kampala yesterday. The royals in Uganda to attend the African Queens and Women Cultural Leaders’ Network conference expected to be opened by President Museveni today.
Kampala
President Museveni is this morning expected to
officially launch the first African Queens and Women Cultural Leaders’
Network (AQWCLN) at the Commonwealth Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala.
According to organisers of the event, which will be held from today to
Saturday, more than 70 queens, princesses and women cultural leaders
will attend the function.
The AQWCLN conference will be held under the
theme: “African queens and women cultural leaders: A vehicle for social
and economic empowerment of rural women and youth in Africa – looking
beyond 2015, ‘the future we want.’
In an interview with the Daily Monitor about the
objective of the conference, Ms Solome Nakaweesi Kimbugwe, the chief
executive officer of the Nnabagereka Foundation, said: “This is another
key innovation that AQWCLN comes with to the development table. Tapping
into a social group that has hitherto been left out yet they yield
leverage, power and legitimacy bestowed upon them by their people either
by birth, marriage, or traditional authority is strategic.”
“In the new world we live in where legitimacy of
many leaders is being challenged, safeguarding gains made in women
rights is harder than before and there is scarce resources for
development work amidst mass burn-out amongst activists, networks like
AQWCLN are timely.”
“AQWCLN will leverage the cultural influence at
policy level and grassroots level of its membership to achieve results
in a number of areas that include: eradication of harmful traditional
practices and enhancing efforts to secure peace across the continent,”
Ms Kimbugwe added. She said the network is also expected to ensure that
women cultural leaders expand access to quality healthcare and improve
health outcomes for women and girls, promote women’s economic
empowerment and leadership.
All these will be geared towards poverty
eradication and providing solutions to promote food security. The
Buganda Queen (Nnabagereka) Sylvia Nagginda and Tooro Queen Mother Best
Kemigisa are co-hosting the AQWCLN conference.
AQWCLN was established as a response to the
“Harare Call to Action” adopted in May 2012 at the Global Power Women
Network Africa high- level meeting, which called for the creation of a
women’s cultural leaders union network, a forum to improve the lives of
women and children in Africa, in partnership with the African Union and
regional economic communities with support from the United Nations and
other partners.
This meeting recognised that harmful traditional
practices continued to suppress women and prevent their full enjoyment
of human, economic and social rights.
Evidently, women continued to be the poorest,
least engaged in leadership and decision making and more vulnerable to
HIV/Aids and its complex impacts. Because of this, the meeting called
for traditional African culture to be deployed in an effort to improve
development outcomes.
The female leaders pledged to undertake an audit
of the traditional practices that discriminate against women, to
identify best practices for change and to work with religious, cultural
and traditional leaders on the continent to implement programmes to
protect and promote the rights of
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