Legal Assistance Centre-Namibia

OTHER AREAS OF WORK
GENDER RESEARCH & ADVOCACY PROJECT

ADVOCACY
Have you ever wanted to convince Parliament to pass a law on a particular topic?
Ever wanted to persuade your regional council to provide better services for the elderly, or to pressure your local authority to take steps against illegal shebeens?
Ever wanted to lobby your local clinic to stay open for longer hours, or to convince your school to introduce a new extracurricular activity?
Ever wanted to influence a decision by a government body such as the Social Security Commission or a Communal Land Board?
Ever wanted to convince your church to play a more active role in speaking out on HIV, to convince your employer to offer a better medical aid plan or to convince your traditional leader to involve more women in community decision-making?
If you have ever wanted to influence decisions like these, then you are interested in advocacy.

Advocacy is an effort to influence a law, a policy or some other decision. Advocacy can be directed at various levels of government, government bodies, or other institutions or individuals. And, if you are interested in improving your advocacy skills, then you might be interested in the GR&AP publication Advocacy in Action: A guide to influencing decision-making in Namibia.

Advocacy in Action is a 336-page manual aimed primarily at NGOs and grassroots-based groups who are interested in increasing their advocacy skills. It contains concrete, practical information about advocacy strategies such as petitions, press conferences, public demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns as well as detailed information on government structures and Parliamentary procedures - and how to influence decision-making bodies and processes. The manual is written in simple English, with many photographs, illustrations and examples. It includes actual case studies of advocacy efforts in Namibia. The manual is aimed primarily at civil society, but it will also be of interest to office-bearers at the local, regional and national level. It is best used as "textbook" for workshops on advocacy skills.

Contact the Gender Research & Advocacy Project if you are interested in obtaining a free copy of the manual. You can also request an advocacy training workshop for your organization. However, GR&AP has only limited funds for holding such workshops, so we may not be able to respond to your request unless your group can bear the costs of the workshop.

LABOUR ACT 2007 AND RELATED LABOUR ISSUES
The Labour Act 2004 (passed but never brought completely into force) was completely replaced by a new Labour Act which was debated in Parliament during 2007. GR&AP monitored the bill to ensure that the provisions we had previously advocated successfully on sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, maternity leave and family leave remained in place – which they did. We made submissions on these and other human rights issues to the Ministry of Labour, copied to the National Union of Namibian Workers, the Namibian Employers Federation, and the International Labour Organisation, and most of our concerns were addressed in the latest bill before it became final. The Labour Act 11 of 2007 was gazetted on 31 December 2007, but has not yet been brought into force as employers’ groups continue to debate some of its provisions.

GR&AP also made submissions to the Ministry of Labour on the draft Code of Practice on Sexual Harassment.

The Special Adviser at the Ministry of Labour requested input from GR&AP on the definition of “work of equal value”, which concerns equal pay for men and women. GR&AP carried out research on this topic and made suggestions for improving the definition to make it clearer and to allow for comparisons across the labour market instead of just between employees of a single employer when assessing comparable work.

The Discussion Document on Child Labour in Namibia published by the Ministry of Labour and Child Welfare in March 2007 cites LAC research and recommendations extensively, particularly on sex work, domestic work, trafficking and child justice. GR&AP subsequently made submissions to the Programme Advisory Committee on Child Labour (PACC) on legal issues which should be incorporated into the Action Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour that is currently under preparation. The document was presented at a committee meeting on 30 October and we conducted follow-up to ensure that the recommendations were adequately incorporated into the Action Programme.

GR&AP worked with Huricon and Advocate Esi Schimming-Chase to litigate a test case on sexual harassment involving a young woman who was allegedly harassed at the workplace by her immediate supervisor. This case was part heard by the court in September 2007, with its continuation scheduled for February 2008. Full details on the case will be reported once the case is complete.

SEX WORK :
In 2002, GR&AP published a major piece of research on commercial sex entitled Whose Body Is It?: Commercial Sex Work and the Law in Namibia. At the same time, GR&AP commissioned Quiet Storm Films to produce Not a Life You Ask For, a television documentary entitled on human rights and sex work based on some 30 interviews with sex workers in Windhoek and Walvis Bay.

These projects were intended to provide data to policy-makers as they contemplate law and policy reforms on sex work, particularly in light of the HIV pandemic, and to allow sex workers, as a vulnerable and marginalised group to communicate their concerns in their own words. The research findings were discussed at a workshop in December 2002 which highlighted the human rights issues facing sex workers in Namibia today. This meeting was aimed at policy-makers and groups which are engaged in relevant support work, and was attended by about 50 persons, including 12 sex workers. Two representatives of the Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Task Force (SWEAT) came from Cape Town to advise on support work for sex workers.

In 2005, the GR&AP gave testimony on sex workers to the National Council Standing Committee on Gender, Youth and Information as part of its investigation to investigate "the plight of sex workers, street kids and other vulnerable persons".

In 2006, the GR&AP will make legal and policy recommendations on the problem of children engaged in sex work and the trafficking of children.

SCHOOL POLICY ON TEENAGE PREGNANCY
Project staff and volunteers have spent several weeks of working time researching and drafting a short advocacy paper proposing reforms to the school policy on teenage pregnancy. The existing policy requires student mothers to leave school as soon as the pregnancy is visible and remain out of school for at least one year after the birth of the child. In theory, the policy applies equally to schoolboys who impregnate schoolgirls, but it is almost never applied to boys in practice. We conducted interviews with students at four schools (JA Nel, Senior Secondary School, Keetmanshoop; Suiderlig High School, Keetmanshoop; Okahandja Senior Secondary School, Okahandja; and Delta High School, Windhoek) to explore the views of the students on the current guidelines for pregnancy in schools and in particular the requirement that girl mothers to remain out of school for one year after the birth of the child, before readmission. The paper, which will propose a more flexible and supportive policy, is nearing completion and will be published and circulated in early 2008, after the draft is sent to a few key partners for final comments.

STALKING
Following on several reports of stalking incidents, GR&AP researched Namibian and comparative law on this issue. Comparative research is continuing with assistance from students at Harvard Law School working under a faculty-supervised programme, so that we can get assistance with locating “best practices” from existing legislation on stalking to incorporate into our draft paper on this topic. A monograph proposing law reforms in Namibia on this topic will be published in early 2008.

GENDER AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW
Article 144 of the Namibian Constitution incorporates international law into Namibia's domestic law. This means that Namibia is bound to follow the international agreements that it has formally adopted, in the same way as it must enforce the laws made by our own Parliament. Would you like to know more about Namibia's international commitments on gender? The Gender Research & Advocacy Project has developed a 230-page document on this topic, called International Human Rights and Gender.

The document covers the following conventions and agreements:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Convention on The Elimination All Forms of Discrimination against Women

Beijing Platform for Action

African Charter for Human and People's Rights and its Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa

SADC Declaration on Gender and Development.

The publication also has a chapter on international provisions relating specifically to violence against women.

Each international agreement is introduced and explained in simple language, along with information about Namibia's commitment to each agreement (such as the date when Namibia agreed to it). Full texts of most of the documents are included.

This publication is designed as a reference manual particularly for policy-makers. It will also be useful to lawyers and law students.