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CNN Sunday Morning

Women's Rights Violated in Nigeria.

Aired March 17, 2002 - 11:14   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CALLAWAY: In Nigeria, young women are learning their place in the world. International organizations are helping teach the women about equal rights, and how to tell when those rights are being violated, and CNN's Glenn Van Zuffin (ph) has more on this empowering program.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GRACE OSAKU: We are women with today's girls in a attempt to see that Nigerian women tomorrow is different from the Nigerian woman of today.

GLENN VAN ZUFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Grace Osaku works with the Girl Power Initiative, or GPI. It's one of several organizations seeking to empower young girls in Nigeria by changing the way a typical girl views herself.

OSAKU: As she goes off, she's taught to be silent. A good girl should be seen and not heard.

VAN ZUFFIN: That's the notion Grace and others are trying to dispel, organizing regular sessions to teach young women how to recognize signs of abuse. Topics range from rape to female circumcision or genital mutilation. In Nigeria, as in many parts of Africa, discussing such topics with children is unusual, but women empowerment organizations are forcing a change in the social dictum.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Personally in my own family, my own tradition is that you have to go through genital mutilation. I was lucky I came to GPI when I was actually young, before the process. So when I was supposed to go through the process, I had to tell my mom no, I can't do this because (inaudible) and she side with me and I stopped them from doing it to my sister, my younger sister that's (inaudible).

VAN ZUFFIN: In the northern city of Kano (ph), the focus is on vocational education for young women. The Adolescent Health and Information Project, AHIP, runs a training center, teaching a variety of skills from tailoring to typing. The students include teenagers, high school dropouts, divorced mothers, and in some cases, married women.

OSAKU: We are teaching this young women vocational skills to make them more self reliant, to give them some skills so that when the go into society, they will have the ability to interact more with people to be able to partake in decision making in ways that they can negotiate for their rights.

VAN ZUFFIN: Such empowerment may be just what Nigerian women need. Although the country has a national policy on women and gender equality, experts say women still have a long way to go to gain equality. Of the 42 ministers in the federal cabinet, six are women, and there are only 15 women in the 469-member legislature.

Women empowerment organizations point to those figures as one of the reasons to expand many of the projects that they operate. But raising funds to sustain current programs is becoming a problem. Organizations like the Girl Power Initiative, and AHIP, are funded in part through the International Women's Health Coalition.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Actually, it does not look good. The work that we do is supported primarily by private U.S. foundations, and by some of the European governments, especially the Scandinavian government. But in the economic decline that we're now facing, many of the U.S. foundations have seen decreases in their portfolios, so there is a problem of private funding at the foundation level in this country.

VAN ZUFFIN: Both the GP and AHIP say that they're determined to survive the global economic downturn and somehow create an empowered Nigerian woman and a society that's more sensitive to the rights of women. Glenn Van Zuffin, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CALLAWAY: Human rights activists say that, Nigeria is just one of the nations where strict Islamic law can threaten the rights of women.

A Nigerian court is expected to hear the appeal of a woman who was sentenced to death by stoning. She was convicted of committing adultery and having a child from that relationship. The woman says she was divorced and was raped. Are some Islamic laws violating human rights? Let's talk to our guest about that. Richard Dowden, who wrote an article about the issues for New York Times magazine is joining us from London.

Zieba Shorish-Shamley is with the Women's Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan, and she's in our Washington Bureau this morning. Thank you both for being with us. Richard, I'd like to start with you.

RICHARD DOWDEN, "NEW YORK TIMES" MAGAZINE: Hello, good morning.

CALLAWAY: Good morning. I'd like to start with you, Richard, just to set the tone here and tell a bit of the story that you told in the New York Times magazine, an incredible article about this young woman in northern Nigeria who is sentenced to death by stoning, committed adultery, had a child. The child is actually the evidence used against her in this case, right? DOWDEN: That's right. She's from a very poor part of Nigeria where very few people can read or write even now, and she had been married. But she had divorced her husband because he was not wealthy enough to support her and that is completely allowed under Islamic law.

And then, she began to - this older man, about a 60-year-old man started to follow her around and show her some attentions, and then the story gets confused because she's given different accounts of it.

But she said that he tricked her into having sex with her and she got pregnant, and the next thing was the police were around arresting them and charging her with adultery. And under this tradition of Islamic law that they have in that area, in northern Nigeria, pregnancy is sufficient evidence for adultery and the penalty for adultery is death. So it looked a pretty closed case.

CALLAWAY: And this hearing that's coming up, what will happen then? Can she recant what she said and perhaps say it was her husband's child? Is there any way out of this for her?

DOWDEN: Well, the court last June sentenced her to death by stoning, but then the tradition, the Maleeki (ph) tradition which they use to interpret Sharia (ph) law in this area, the strict Islamic law, actually allows a pregnancy to last up to five years.

Clearly when these rules were drawn up, they weren't sure that pregnancy was only nine months, so they have this extraordinary loophole where she can claim that the father is, in fact, her husband who she divorced some three years ago and this seems to be her defense now.

CALLAWAY: Let's bring Zieba Shorish-Shamley back into this discussion. Zeba, how unusual is this type of sentence of stoning and, I know it's being related to the Quran, but does it really have anything to do with the Quran?

ZIEBA SHORISH-SHAMLEY, WOMEN'S ALLIANCE FOR PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS: No, the verse does not exist, anything like that in the Quran. However, there are some scholars argue that the early, at the earlier time, the verse may have existed, but it doesn't exist in the Quran now.

So, therefore, some of these archaic laws that are being used is, again as the gentleman said, is dependent on the tradition of that culture. Normal Islam, which is what is in the Quran and the authenticated (inaudible) of the prophet is totally different than what is practiced in most society.

For example, female genital mutilation is un-Islamic. There is nothing in the Quran that will state that. It existed in certain African cultures and it is considered Islamic, but it is not. Therefore, we have to make the distinction between what Islam and beauty that is the Quran and the (inaudible) of the prophet says versus what is practiced in the Muslim societies. Islam in each society is practiced differently, the exception is that the five pillars of Islam that are practiced all over the world. But regarding the other rules and other customs, it is intermixed with their old culture, which was highly patriarchal in the Muslim societies and the new culture, which was the Islamic culture that came to the Muslim world.

So this stoning to death, the Taliban did it as well in Afghanistan and happens in some other areas of the world is totally inhuman and most of the extremists use this in order to punish women and totally banish women from the public sphere of the society.

In case of adultery, for example, in order to prove that the woman has committed adultery, or for that matter men, because the law applies to both of them, four witnesses must see the actual act of intercourse taking place as well as the witness has to confess, which is impossible.

CALLAWAY: Well, let me get Richard back into this. We're talking about the interpretation as she just said. Zieba as you said, it's all about the interpretation of this, and what I found particularly disturbing in your article, Richard, was the dean of the law school there in northern Nigeria saying that he, himself, would take part in the stoning and that the woman would not have anything to say really about being stoned to death, because it would be "the will of God."

DOWDEN: That's right. That's what I found particularly worried about this case was that there was a group of people, who included the dean of the local law school at Sokato (ph) University, and also the attorney general of Sokato Province.

Both of them said to me, they would be very happy to take part in a stoning if asked to by the court, because it would be the will of God. They added that the woman herself would be happy because she had broken God's law and would now be paying the price.

I sensed here a society that really wanted something like this, as traumatic as this to happen. It was really quite a very nasty feeling at all that was in the air there.

CALLAWAY: Right, and the dean of the law school saying, describing to you the types of stones that would be used to kill her.

DOWDEN: Even that, when I was interviewing him, I just sort of tossed him a very easy question. Would you take part in it? He said, "yes, of course." And then I thought, well, so I asked him "well how do you stone someone to death?" And he said "well you could dig a pit so they couldn't run away or we could tie them to a pillar." And then I said, "how big are the stones that you would use" and he said "oh, you know, not too big, not too small, about the size of my fist." So they've obviously thought about this quite a lot.

And there was another case in January where a woman was condemned to death by stoning, but she did get off because she also claimed that her former husband had been the father. CALLAWAY: Well, we certainly hope that's what happens in this case, but also another disturbing aspect of this is that the judge said that she would be stoned as soon as she is able to wean her 10- month-old daughter, who she's nursing at this time. How optimistic are you that this will turn out as the other case did, Richard?

DOWDEN: I think - I spoke to some people in Socato this morning and they are fairly confident that this defense will work. There's also been a lot of political pressure, both from the federal government of Nigeria and externally as well, and they know how damaging this would be to the country if they went ahead with it.

CALLAWAY: Right.

DOWDEN: But I also sense they were very keen to pursue this line, the Sharia law. They've already cut some hands off thieves and whipped women in public for just having sex or brewing alcohol or something like that. I think there is a very militant form of Islam loose there at the moment, and they seem to really want this to happen.

CALLAWAY: Zieba, let me give you the last word here because he just mentioned the importance of the international agencies being involved in this and I'm sure you agree with that.

SHORISH-SHAMLEY: I think the entire world community should be involved. But, however, I want to point out that religious (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in the Muslim world and other religions as well have been controlled by men. So and therefore the integration of all of these cruel, inhuman acts toward women is not to be tolerated.

So we called for the interpretation of many of the issues that includes the stoning, but the stoning, the call for the stoning of adulterer does not exist in the Quran. So, the sad thing is that where Islam has given women the right, it's equal to that of men. But in the Muslim societies, unfortunately, in most Muslim societies it's not followed.

CALLAWAY: Right.

SHORISH-SHAMLEY: Women are not given the rights that they are given by God.

CALLAWAY: Zieba Shorish-Shamley, thank you so much for joining us, and Richard Dowden, incredible article, Richard.

DOWDEN: Thank you.

CALLAWAY: We can't thank you enough for both being with us and discussing this topic this morning. Good luck to you both.

SHORISH-SHAMLEY: Thank you.

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