The international association No Peace Without Justice, in cooperation with the National Union of Women OF Djibouti (UNFD) and the Nonviolent Radical Party, and under the auspices of the Presidency of the Parliament of the Republic of Djibouti, is organizing a parliamentary workshop on FGM legislation, to be held on 8-9 October 2008 at the Parliament of Djibouti. The workshop is an integral part of a project, conducted with the financial support of Italian Cooperation and in partnership with UNICEF, which aims at the development of a legal, political and social environment to promote and protect the human rights of women and girls and the abandonment of FGM.
The main objective of the workshop, involving parliamentarians, government representatives and civil society activists from Djibouti, is to assess the impact of existing legal instruments to fight FGM and to identify options for enhancing their effectiveness within the framework of the National Strategy for the abandonment of all forms of FGM, adopted by the Djiboutian Ministry for the Advancement of Women in July 2008.
The workshop will also be an occasion to follow up the recommendations from the Sub-Regional Conference on Female Genital Mutilation “Towards a Political and Religious Consensus Against Female Genital Mutilation”, which was organised by NPWJ in partnership with the Djibouti Government and the UNFD, in Djibouti, on 2-3 February 2005, and during which Djibouti presented the instruments of ratification of the African Union Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), of which Article 5 explicitly prohibits the practice of FGM.
For more information, contact Alvilda Jablonko, Coordinator of the FGM Program, on ajablonko@npwj.org or Nicola Giovannini on ngiovannini@npwj.org or +32 (0)2 548-3914.
