¹ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 1979/1981, G.A. Resolution 34/180, UN Doc. A/RES/34/180 (1980); The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 1981/ 1986, O.A.U. Doc. CAB/LSEG/67/3 Rev. 5, (1986); Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1976); Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, G.A. Res. 217A (HI), UN Doc. A/810 at 71 (1948).

² Mikell, Gwendolyn, African Feminism: Towards a New Politics of Representation , Feminist Stud., vol. 21, no. 2, Summer 1995 Google Scholar. Human Rights And Governance In Africa (R. Cohen et al. eds., 1993

³ Civil Society And The State In Africa (John Harbeson, Donald Rothchild & Naomi Chazan, eds., 1994).

⁴ Welch, Claude E. Jr., Human Rights and African Women: A Comparison of Protections under Two Major Treaties , 15 Hum. Rts. Q. 549–574 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Howard, Rhoda, The Human Rights Background, in Human Rights In Commonwealth Africa 1–14 (1986)Google Scholar.

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⁸ See Mikell, G., Introduction, in African Women: States Of Crisis (G. Mikell, ed., forthcoming 1996)Google Scholar for a discussion of several traditional cultural models.

⁹ Human Rights In Africa (An-Naim, Abdullah Ahmad & Francis Deng, eds., 1990).

¹⁰ Mikell, and Skinner, E. P., African Women and the Early State in West Africa , Women In Development (1989)Google Scholar.

¹¹ See Pearl Robinson, Approaches to the Study of Democratization: Scripts in Search of Reality, presented at the African Studies Association meeting (December 5, 1993).

¹² In the attempt to achieve macroeconomic adjustment, African SAPs attempted to: (1) liberalized exchange rates using FOREXs; (2) increase producer prices for agricultural exports; (3) cut state subsidies (housing, health, agriculture) and allow market forces to regulate agricultural input prices; (4) trim state employment rolls; (5) privatize parastatals; and (6) remove trade restrictions

¹³ Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology Through The Looking Glass: Critical Ethnoqaphy In The Margins Of Europe 123-124 (1987).

¹⁴ “Equity” here refers to notions of justice and fair treatment which are intrinsic to African social behavior and moral systems. Although individualism is discouraged, African systems purportedly guarantee fair treatment to categories of persons, therefore to women, by rituals of rebellion or by allowing space for injured parties to make complaints against the family, the community, or the state if these are at fault.

¹⁵ Lele, Uma, Women, Structural Adjustment and Transformation: Some Lessons and Questions from the African Experience, in Structural Adjustment And African Women Farmers 46–80 (Christina Gladwin, ed.)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Mikell, G., Using the Courts to Obtain Relief: Women and Family Courts in Ghana, Poverty In The 1990S: The Responses Of Urban Women 65–86 (Fatima Meer, ed., 1994)Google Scholar.

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¹⁸ In other words, urban PHC health, education, roads, infrastructure, etc. Programme of Actions to Mitigate the Social Costs of Structural Adjustment (Executive Summary and Profiles), Government of Ghana, November 1987, p. 11

¹⁹ Kanji, Nazneen, Structural Adjustment in Zimbabwe: The Way Forward for Urban Women? in Poverty In The 1990S: Responses Of Urban Women 87–116 (Fatima Meer, ed., 1994)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Rwezaura, Balthazar A. and Wanitzek, Ulrike, Family Law Reform in Tanzania , Int’L J. of L. and the Family, 2, 1988, 1–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manuh, Tekyiwaa, The Interstate Succession Law [1985] and Children in Ghana, in African Women: States Of Crisis (G. Mikell, Ed., forthcoming 1996)Google Scholar.

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²² The most famous recent case involves a wife’s statutory rights versus customary legal rights is the Wambui Otienno case (1987). See Harden, Blaine, Kenyan Buried in Village He Hated , Wash. Post, May 25, 1987 Google Scholar.

²³ Nina Mba, Kaba And Khaki: Women And The Militarized State In Nigeria, Women in International Development, Working Paper #150 (1988).

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²⁵ Robeson, Elsbeth, Breaking the Silence: Women Against Violence, in Women And Violence (1993)Google Scholar. For Ghana, see Ofei-Aboayge, Ofeiba, Altering the Strands of the Fabric: A Preliminary Look at Domestic Violence in Ghana , Signs, 924–938, Summer 1994 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁹ See Abel, Richard, Western Courts in Non-Western Settings: Patterns of Court Use in Colonial and Neo-Colonial Africa, in The Imposition Of Law 167–200 (Sandra Burman and Barbara Harrell-Bond, eds., 1979)Google Scholar.

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³¹ See the work of Tekyiwaa Manuh.

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³³ “Rape and sexual abuse were afflicted on women as a means of extracting confessions from those suspectedof participating in the anti-colonial resistance. The same treatment was meted out to the wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of men who were suspected of being members of resistance movements or simply to humiliate them.” (WIN, 1993:9.)

³⁴ “Liberia was divided, with the Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU) headed by President Amos Sawyer administering Monrovia the country’s capital, and its environs; the National Patriotic front of Liberia (NPFL) led by Mr. Charles Taylor, controlling the majority of the country; and the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) led by Mr. Alhaji Kromah, having taken control of the remaining areas.” See United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL), Un Actions On Liberia, 30 April, 1994, p. 136.

³⁵ The UNOMIL operation lasted from September 1993 to 1995, although ECOMOG (the Military Observer Group of the Economic Community of West African States-ECOWAS) has operated from 1990-1995.

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