Nyale Institute Executive Director, Godfrey Kangaunde
* Many CSOs and other stakeholders struggle to navigate SRHR-related laws and policies, limiting their ability to advocate effectively
* The workshop equipped the participants with the legal knowledge and practical tools needed to strengthen advocacy efforts to improve program implementation
* The Advocasy Manual emphasises the significance of the Gender Equality Act (2013) which explicitly guarantees SRHR under Malawi’s legal framework
By Duncan Mlanjira
Taking cognizance that many civil society organisations (CSOs) and other stakeholders struggle to navigate sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR)-related laws and policies — thus limiting their ability to advocate effectively — Nyale Institute for Sexual & Reproductive Health Governance engaged youth-led CSOs to enhance their understanding of legal frameworks governing SRHR by unveiling an Advocasy Manual.
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The Advocasy Manual emphasises the significance of the Gender Equality Act (2013) which explicitly guarantees SRHR under Malawi’s legal framework
The workshop, held on Friday at Grace Bandawe Conference Centre in Blantyre — under the theme; ‘The legal basis for the right to access safe and legal abortion under Malawi law’ — equipped the participants with the legal knowledge and practical tools needed to strengthen advocacy efforts to improve programme implementation.
Nyale Institute’s Executive Director, Godfrey Kangaunde impressed on the young leaders — drawn from all districts of the Southern Region — the importance of being at grips with SRHR-related laws and policies in order to effectively push for theTermination of Pregnancy (TOP) to be enacted into law.
NGOs that are advocating for SRHR-related laws and policies keep pushing the Malawi government to enact the TOP Bill in order to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality.
The Bill was reviewed and completed by Malawi Law Commission and gazetted as a government Bill way back in 2016 and is gathering dust after it was submitted to the Ministry of Health in 2017.
Kangaude thus said advocates need to impress on legislators the need to enact the TOP Bill, saying the process is delaying because of stigma attached to calls for women’s full bodily autonomy to allow them carry out abortions from unplanned pregnancies.
According to the law, abortion in one way is illegal but termination of pregnancy is legal — but it goes with it some restrictive conditions, which deny women and girls the liberty to abort unplanned pregnancies that lead them to seek clandestine and unsafe abortion.
Kangaude emphasised that stigma attached to the sensitivity of abortion is blocking the legislation of the TOP Bill since it needs a brave legislator to push for its enactment.
Just like other human rights organisations, Nyale Institute highlights that no woman can be stopped from terminating an unplanned pregnancy — thus opting for clandestine abortions, which at the end of the day, the same law provides that that they receive post-abortion care in public hospitals.
“The government is spending millions of kwachas on post-abortion medical care, which is an open indication that abortion is taking place at a large scale,” Kangaude said, while calling for CSOs to work together with Malawi Human Rights Commission and other legal policy makers to impress on the government to enact the TOP Bill.
Kangaude took the trainers through the legal framework governing access to abortion care in Malawi, whose key legislation in the Constitution of Malawi includes ‘rights to life and non-discrimination’; ‘women’s rights’, ‘children’s rights among others.
He cited the Gender Equality Act, Sections 19 & 20, which recognises everyone’s right to SRHR, creates duties for services providers, which “implicitly includes post-abortion and abortion services”.
However, the Penal Code regulates the conduct generally, including termination of pregnancy (Sections 149-151, and 243), and that “explaining legal abortion is not be straightforward — it requires reading several legal instruments and interpreting them”.
To address the legal barriers, the rationale is to decriminalise abortion by removing penal sanctions on access to safe abortion so that girls and women would access abortion related care without fear.
It is also to allow medical service providers not to fear the penal consequences for misinterpreting the legal boundaries and the strategy is to engage Parliament to create new law or reform the law.
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Another rationale is to provide legal and safe abortion in accordance with the law and policies — that all girls with risky pregnancies should access safe and legal abortion if they choose.
The government must ensure that all facilities are equipped, and providers empowered to deliver the required standards of care and its strategy is to engage the Executive to ensure provision of quality abortion services according the law.
Redress/remedies should be provided where a person’s legal right to access services is frustrated and where the law is not clear, there is need for authoritative interpretation.
Where the person’s rights are violated such as being refused services without a legally valid reason, the strategy is to engage the Judiciary to interpret application of the law and provide remedies for violations.
Kangaude explained that the manual aims to do explain and equip CSOs the legal basis for SRHR advocacy including that for safe and legal abortion.
The manual provides guidance on advocacy approaches to align with the three branches of government — the Executive, which implements the law; Parliament, which reforms laws and the Judiciary – interpreters of laws and providers of remedies for violations.
It also raises awareness of the important role of the Malawi Human Rights Commission on implementing the abortion law and disseminates accurate information about legal abortion while empowering CSOs to engage in impactful advocacy on legal abortion.
Kangaude impressed on the young leaders that “grounding abortion advocacy on law has potential to empower people to seek, claim and demand the right to legal abortion and to enhance implementation efforts by the Executive”.
It also enhances Parliamentary oversight functions by contributing to law reform through the august House, the courts as well as the executive.
“Basing strategies on the Gender Equality Act has several advantages — it catches attention of the government; it is more difficult for the opposition to argue against the law and it opens room for creativity.”
Kangaude concluded by saying there are multiple ways to attain the goal of safe and legal abortion, adding that the role of the Malawi Human Rights Commission is key — as it can be “a mediator between civil society and government and has power to facilitate transformation”.
When joining the world to commemorate the International Safe Abortion Day on September 28, human rights media organisation, Centre for Solutions Journalism (CSJ) pleaded with Malawi government to enact the TOP Bill to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality.
CSJ indicated that statistics from medical facilities regarding the number of women and girls experiencing complications from unsafe abortions show that the nation’s abortion law, which was passed in the colonial era in 1930, “is not only out of date but has also utterly failed to lower the number of unsafe abortions”.
In its statement, CSJ emphasised that as seen by the rising number of women seeking post-abortion care in government health facilities, the current law has only succeeded in pushing over 141,000 women and girls seeking abortions in Malawi to herbalists, witchdoctors, and certain traditional birth attendants where they suffer grave complications.
The human rights media organisation further indicated that statistics for the first half of 2024 show a persistently high number of women and girls experiencing complications from unsafe abortions with Lilongwe recording 1,041 women and girls required treatment for complications related to unsafe abortions.
In Dedza, 830 women and girls sought post-abortion care during the same period, while health facilities in Dowa provided services to 381 women and girls.
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“This alarming trend of women sustaining injuries from clandestine abortions and subsequently arriving at hospitals in critical condition, some with ruptured uteruses, is evident across all districts and cities in Malawi.
“The issue of unsafe abortion remains significant, and the establishment of Post Abortion Care Units in every government district hospital is one of the testimonies of this problem.”
Thus CSJ contended that the “solution to the problem of maternal mortality and morbidity caused by unsafe abortion is well-known and is articulated in Law Commission Report No. 29 titled ‘Report of the Law Commission on the Review of the Law on Abortion’ published in the Malawi Government Gazette of 15th March 2016.
“The solution is to enact the proposed Termination of Pregnancy Bill. We, at CSJ, urge the Malawi Government to walk the talk on the commitment it made by signing and ratifying the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Maputo Protocol).”
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