Navigating beyond the crossroads: A gendered approach to realising AU agenda 2063

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Citation: (2018) 5(2) Journal of Comparative Law in Africa 149
• Author: None
• Pages: 149-150
• Date: 16 August 2019
• Published date: 16 August 2019

149

Special Volume, Journal of Comparative Law in Africa

NAVIGATING BEYOND THE CROSSROADS:

A GENDERED APPROACH TO REALISING AU

AGENDA 2063

The International Research Collaboration 27 (IRC 27) of the Law and

Society Association’s panel for 2018 questioned the challenges that confront

gender empowerment and inclusive development in Africa. The African

Union Agenda 2063 aspires for an ‘Africa whose development is people-

driven, relying on the potentials offered by people, especially its women and

youth and caring for children’. Focusing on the role of women in realising

the aspiration, the panel examined the jurisprudence on various issues that

affect women in Afr ica. For instance, it explored questions such as:

• What roles have women played in the socio-political development and

constitution-making process in post-colonial Africa? and

• How can women effectively contribute to legal and socioeconomic

development in the era of African renaissance?

Understanding the sociology of the African custom and practices provides

bases to examine the jurisprudence on the role of women in the judiciary,

access to justice of women with disability, and the challenges that women

face in accessing socio-economic benefits in Africa generally. The panel

generally observed that Africa finds itself at a crossroad. The panel

concurred as has been argued in some quarters that African customs and

practices place an automatic subjugated role to the African woman. The

quagmire of what a liberated African woman should represent throws

further clog on the wheels of the resolution of this crossroad. In addition,

it discovered that religion bounds a number of women irrespective of

their social standing. The papers, therefore, discuss the issues raised above

with particular focus on the Agenda 2063, the Sustainable Development

Goals and human rights law. In sum, the special volume advances the

current scholarship on the Agenda 2063, human rights law and gender

policy by:

• engaging and extending beyond current discourses, debates, and bodies

of literature on sustainable development concerns of women rights and

inclusion policy;

• building upon existing rights-based frameworks and explicitly

connecting these to critical discourses to provide theoretical grist

toward inclusive development in Africa;

• foregrounding often ignored international, regional, sub-regional and

national aspects, considerations, and voices in gender and development

policymaking in Africa; and

(2018) 5(2) Journal of Comparative Law in Africa 149

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