AU summit pledges to promote women's rights

African leaders on Wednesday pledged to place women at the heart of their development agenda, and to intensify the fight against disease.

In an 11-point action plan agreed at the African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, they set out a strategy for improving the women's rights on the continent.

The newly elected AU chairman, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, told leaders that many African countries still held negative attitudes towards women. The leaders agreed that women must play a greater role in conflict resolution and in the steps taken to ensure that they obtained equal access to education.

A campaign to be launched in the coming year to highlight the abuse women suffer during conflict will also focus on child brides and "sex slaves". Also to be launched will be an African Trust Fund for Women to promote skills training for women, with a special focus on improving their lives in rural areas.

They leaders also pledged to ensure that new laws to protect women in Africa would come into force by the end of the year.

Women's pressure groups have accused leaders of turning a blind eye to their plight by failing to ratify the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. To date, only one of the AU's 53-member countries - the Comoros - had ratified it. The protocol would only become binding when 14 more governments have followed suit.

Women’s groups say that in sub-Saharan Africa women ran 60 percent of informal businesses, and although they supplied 70 percent of farm labour and produce about 90 percent of the food, they received less than 10 percent of total farm income.

African leaders have now pledged to implement legislation to strengthen women’s rights to land, property and inheritance.

The leaders also said they would intensify the fight against disease and implement new laws designed to combat stigma.

The AU had warned that Africa was losing the fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, which claimed millions of lives each year. A report presented at the summit, revealed that barely half of African countries had adopted legislation to prevent discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS. In its 22-page report, the AU also revealed that only a handful of countries had complied with international guidelines to defeat the spread of tuberculosis.

Some 48 heads of state were attending the summit, which focused on conflict, development, and for the first time ever, debated gender issues.

The chairman of the AU commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, spelt out his vision for Africa's future, placing before the leaders a US $1.7-billion blueprint for change. Dubbed the African road map, it aims to promote expanded continental integration and expresses support for key institutions such as the pan-African parliament and court of justice.