UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / 21 August 2008 -- There is currently great interest in citizenship within the development community. Strong citizenship has come to be seen as a vital ingredient for good governance and development, and strengthening the citizenship of poor people is viewed as a way to ensure their rights and participation in governance.

However, one of the biggest challenges is how to strengthen citizenship for women in developing countries. In many African countries women have little contact with the formal state and their lives are governed by customary governance systems that seriously limit their rights and opportunities for political participation. This is particularly true for women in fragile states, where the formal state is weak and inaccessible.

Based on field research in Sierra Leone conducted by FRIDE and CGG, this Working Paper by Clare Castillejo examines how processes of post-conflict state-building have redrawn the boundaries of authority between the formal state and customary governance systems, and thereby provided new citizenship opportunities for women.

The paper explores the changes that are taking place in women’s rights, women’s political participation and women’s mobilisation in Sierra Leone, in the context of state-building. It also makes recommendations for how donors can support the strengthening of women’s citizenship within their support for state-building in Africa.

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Keywords

Development Gender Governance Human rights Institution building Justice Sierra Leone State building West Africa

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Bio author: Clare Castillejo

Clare Castillejo has a BA in Social Anthropology (University of Sussex) and MA in Anthropology of Development (University of London). Before joining FRIDE she worked as a Social Development Adviser for DFID. She has also worked for Amnesty International and UNDP, undertaking research, policy development and programming on a variety of human rights issues in Asia. She has published on issues of development, human rights, gender and inequality and has worked extensively across Asia, as well as in Southern Africa.

Labels: United Nations, U.N., MaximsNews, Sierra Leone

 

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