Do conferences have tangible benefits for ordinary people

From left: Femnet executive director Dinah Musindarwezo, Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki and EU ambassador to Kenya Stefano Dejak at a women's conference in Nairobi on May 3, 2017. PHOTO | DENNIS ONSONGO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • For sure, costly international conferences held in the glitter of five-star hotels are truly beneficial for the economies of the host countries.
  • It is, however, time to ask if they have any tangible benefits for ordinary people.

As the World Press Freedom Day was marked on Wednesday, Nairobi hosted two conferences: one on law and the other on women’s rights.

Among participants at the law conference, which brought together more than 400 delegates from 47 Asian and African governments, were 12 justice ministers and eight attorneys-general.

It was actually the 56th annual session of the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization, whose first session was in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955.

At the Bandung meeting, states committed to forge Asian-African cooperation “in the quest for an egalitarian and just international legal order”.

The Nairobi conference was expected to focus on contemporary matters such as violent extremism and terrorism and to deliberate on burning issues like the status and treatment of refugees.

Other agenda items were immunity of state officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction under the Vienna Convention, environmental matters and the international law in cyberspace.

The other conference was hosted by the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (Femnet).

Femnet executive director Dinah Musindarwezo said the meetings would provide a platform to reflect on the role of women’s rights organisations.

The assembly brought together rights drivers from 150 women’s organisations from 35 countries. Delegates discussed among other things, governments’ delivery on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

The meeting also sought to find ways of pushing African governments towards defining the path to achieving sustainable development, bearing in mind the UN agenda 2030 on sustainable development goals.

URGENT ATTENTION

Without doubt, the two assemblies focused on pertinent issues that need urgent attention. They will hopefully not turn out to have been mere “gabfests”, as a columnist calls similar events.

Regrettably, however, such impressive international events are usually high on rhetoric and low on delivery of results, hence the need for queries about whether the deliberations will benefit ordinary people.

Given that African women have for centuries been relegated to the role of fetchers of water and hewers of wood, is their status likely to change?

High rhetoric about threats to women and girls is all very good.

So is the perennial discourse about physical, sexual and psychological violence against women and girls, child marriages, FGM and women dying while giving birth.

As for the “egalitarian and just international legal order” that the law conference deliberated on, did delegates take stock of the blatant denial of basic rights that ordinary Africans have to contend with daily?

For sure, costly international conferences held in the glitter of five-star hotels are truly beneficial for the economies of the host countries.

It is, however, time to ask if they have any tangible benefits for ordinary people.