The Kioble case is dismissed in the Supreme Court

In a unanimous ruling this past Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the Kiobel case against Shell in Nigeria. The Kiobel case was filed by Esther Kiobel, the wife of a former activist, and alleges that Shell collaborated with the Abacha regime to violently suppress oil reform activities in the 1990′s.  The case brings claims for extrajudicial killing, torture, crimes against humanity, and prolonged arbitrary arrest and detention.

CorpsWatch argues that the ruling effectively blocks other lawsuits against foreign multinationals for human rights abuse that have occurred overseas from being brought in U.S. courts. Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (Shell) was brought under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), a U.S. law dating back to 1789, originally designed to combat piracy on the high seas – that has been used during the last 30 years as a vehicle to bring international law violations cases to U.S. federal courts.

Lawyers began using ATS as a tool in human rights litigation in 1979, when the family of 17-year-old Joel Filartiga, who was tortured and killed in Paraguay, sued the Paraguayan police chief responsible. Filartiga v. Peña-Irala set a precedent for U.S. federal courts to punish non-U.S. citizens for acts committed outside the U.S. that violate international law or treaties to which the U.S. is a party. Almost 100 cases of international (often state-sanctioned) torture, rape and murder have been brought to U.S. federal courts to date under the ATS. The new ruling limits the law to U.S citizens and entities.

“Corporations are often present in many countries and it would reach too far to say mere corporate presence suffices,” wrote John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, in the majority opinion. “There is no indication that the ATS was passed to make the United States a uniquely hospitable forum for the enforcement of international norms.” Stephen Breyer, another of the nine judges, agreed with Roberts in the decision but left the door open for some lawsuits. “I would find jurisdiction under this statute where (1) the alleged tort occurs on American soil, (2) the defendant is an American national, or (3) the defendant’s conduct substantially  and adversely affects an important American national interest,” wrote Breyer in a separate legal opinion. “(T)hat includes a distinct interest in preventing the United States from becoming a safe harbor (free of civil as well as criminal liability) for a torturer or other common enemy of mankind.” Shell – in Breyer’s opinion – did not qualify as a U.S. entity. “The defendants are two foreign corporations. Their shares, like those of many foreign corporations, are traded on the New York Stock Exchange,” Breyer wrote. “Their only presence in the United States consists of an office in New York City (actually owned by a separate but affiliated company) that helps to explain their business to potential investors.”

Other such cases have been filed against Chiquita and Halliburton. Chiquita was sued by surviving victims of brutal massacres waged by right-wing paramilitary squads in Colombia. The paramilitary, who killed thousands of civilians during Colombia’s dirty war of the 1980s and 1990s, were on Chiquita’s payroll in the 1990s. Now-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended Chiquita in the case and won a plea bargain for them of $25 million and five years of probation. Kellogg, Brown and Root, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, has also been sued under the ATS for allegedly trafficking 13 men from Nepal to Iraq against their will to work on U.S. military bases. The men, 12 of whom were killed, believed they were going to work at hotels in Jordan and elsewhere.

The Obama administration backed Shell last June after abruptly changing sides. In its submission the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the suit against Shell. The brief’s authors stated that the ATS was not appropriate for Kiobel or other lawsuits involving foreign corporations accused of collaborating in human rights abuses with a foreign government outside U.S. territory. U.S. courts “should not create a cause of action that challenges the actions of a foreign sovereign in its own territory, where the [sued party] is a foreign corporation of a third country that allegedly aided and abetted the foreign sovereign’s conduct,” the Justice Department wrote.

Many activists say that the decision will set back human rights causes. “This decision so severely limited a law that has for decades been a beacon of hope for victims of gross human rights violations,” says Elisa Massimino, president of Human Rights First, a New York based NGO. “Abusers may be rejoicing today, but this is a major setback for their victims, who often look to the United States for justice when all else fails.  Now what will they do?” However, other lawyers drew a measure of hope from the fact that the Supreme Court decision did not exclude all lawsuits against multinationals overseas in U.S. courts.

 

Remarks on social services in the Niger Delta

A newborn in the Niger Delta

 

An NGO researcher just conducted an interview with me regarding the state of service delivery, i.e. social and government services, in the Niger Delta. Below are a few of the transcribed questions and answers.

 

1. How would you describe the current state of service delivery[1] for most communities in the Niger Delta? 

Service delivery is non-existent in most areas, and sporadic or haphazard in the remaining ones.  I think that part of the reason communities so often look to oil companies to offer social services and build basic infrastructure is that the state has been so wholly unable to do any of these things since independence.  It is as if communities have given up on their own government ever acting as a government should, which requires providing basic services to its population. As is common in countries with rampant corruption, projects often begin but then are abandoned because funds disappeared or there was a change in management of that project. In the Niger Delta there are half-finished bridges, classrooms without roofs, and empty hospitals that don’t even have electricity. Additionally, a lack of human capital and maintenance of services mean that as soon as any project is finished, it will only be a matter of time until it is useless because no one can perform maintenance.  It seems that almost as soon as a road is finished, poor construction materials mean that it needs to be fixed again but there is mechanism in which to have that road repaired. This lack of maintenance is an issue that only capacity-building can address.

2. Whose responsibility do you believe it is to improve service delivery in the region, e.g. government agencies like MNDA or the NDDC, or oil companies operating in the region?

It is responsibility of government agencies to improve social services.  The basis of democracy is that citizens pay taxes to their government, vote for their leaders, and then those leaders use those taxes in a responsible manner to provide necessary collective goods that improve everyone’s lives.  Because the Nigerian government can rely on oil profits rather than taxes, and corruption makes elections less meaningful, there is no accountability of state actors towards the citizenry. Part of this government duty is to monitor the behavior of private economic actors like oil companies. Although I believe staunchly in corporate responsibility, it is impossible for a corporation to fully monitor itself; by definition monitoring must come from an outside party, like a government agency.

3. What impact do you think the current state of service delivery has on peace and conflict in the Niger Delta region? 

Lack of service delivery has increased rates of poverty and negatively impacted quality of life, which gives people “nothing to lose” when it comes to engaging in violence.  It also creates a dynamic in which too many people are competing for scant social services and resources, leading to increased tensions. Poverty and lack of services drives rural dwellers into cities like Port Harcourt and Yenagoa, where they may come into conflict with residents already living there, be forced into crime out of necessity, and and don’t have kinship or community networks that would otherwise mitigate their propensity for violence.

 4. Do you think that improved service delivery would increase security in the region?

Yes. Mostly obviously, it would remove violence caused by need, in other words, conflicts over obtaining basic goods.  Additionally, it would remove the incentive for rural Nigerians to move to new areas in search of such services, thus minimizing the conflict that occurs among internally displaces populations and between new urban dwellers and older ones.

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[1] ”Service delivery” means the quality and availability of essential services, such as health care, primary education,  and basic infrastructure such as reliable access to water, electricity, and road networks.

Reports | National Reports | Africa | Nigeria | Human Development Reports (HDR) | United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Reports | National Reports | Africa | Nigeria | Human Development Reports (HDR) | United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Dutch court rules mostly in favor of Shell

Four Nigerian farmers of the Goi and Oruma villages, supported by the Dutch NGO Friends of the Earth and the local Environmental Rights Action, sued Royal Dutch Shell in the Dutch District Court of The Hague for four oil spills between 2004 and 2009. This past Wednesday, the court ruled that the oil spills were caused by sabotage, and that Royal Dutch Shell is not liable towards 3 of the 4 farmers. It dismissed the claims of the Friends of the Earth. The court’s decision would support the idea that much of the Niger Delta pollution is caused by criminal activity carried out by locals, which has been the argument of  oil companies defending their role in the environmental damage there.

The court did find that the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC), a Nigerian subsidiary, could have prevented the sabotage in one case by plugging up the well but then acknowledged that the SPDC subsequently contained the leak. Nevertheless, Shell has been ordered to pay compensation to one farmer and has agreed to do so.

The verdict is not necessarily a total defeat for Niger Deltans.  Although the farmers did not prevail, the case does establish that cases against Dutch companies for misdeed abroad can be heard in Dutch courts. Friends of the Earth announced that the case was intended as a test and that the organization is satisfied by the precedent. The case been followed closely by those who have been interested in the Saro-Wiwa and Kiobel rulings.

Read details of the ruling here.

Related articles:

• Dutch court: Shell partly responsible for Niger Delta pollution (reuters.com)
• Dutch court finds Shell guilty of oil pollution in Nigeria (vanguardngr.com)
• Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary responsible for spill in Niger Delta, says Dutch court (explorationanddevelopment.energy-business-review.com)

 

Uganda’s Christmas Present.

Uganda’s Christmas Present..

Gay rights in Uganda

Fortunately, the issue of gay rights in Africa, in Uganda specifically, seems to be cropping up more frequently. Uganda has a reputation (with Nigeria following close behind) for being one of the most oppressive and dangerous countries for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Africans. Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill that proposed death for H.I.V.-positive gay men and prison for anyone who didn’t report a known homosexual was aside for now, but politicians are currently drafting a new version. An impetus behind their decision to table it was the brutal murder of famed LGBT rights activist, David Kato, who was bludgeoned after a local tabloid calling for the murder of gays published his name, photo and address. He was head of SMUG, or Sexual Minorities Uganda.

His story was covered fairly well in the Ugandan and domestic media, with The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Economist highlighting the crime. There was such much attention that two Americans debuted a documentary about Kato and the Ugandan LGBT, or “kuchu,” struggle called “Call me Kuchu.”

 

Most prominent international non-profits, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Oxfam publicly decried his murder and the Anti-Homosexuality Bill as one would expect. Surprisingly though, while doing research on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations’ Subcommittee on African Affairs, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that helping improve LGBT rights in Uganda is on the agenda for the U.S. Congress in the upcoming year.  Hillary Clinton has made public statements voicing support for improved protections for the LGBT community in Uganda, a pleasant compliment to Obama’s watershed reference to gay rights in his recent Inaugural address. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has immense sway in coloring some aspects of public policy in sub-Sahara, and hopefully their focus on this issue will be an example of positive influence.

Despite such an effort at improving human rights in Uganda, an immense challenge comes from staunch conservatives in the U.S., specifically Evangelical Christians. According to filmmaker Roger Ross Williams and Ugandan religious leaders who support human rights, fundamentalist Christian churches are investing huge sums of money into backing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, supporting pastors who preach anti-gay sermons, and financing revivals and classes with heteronormative messages.

 

 

In researching human rights in Uganda, I couldn’t help comparing the situation to observations I made in Nigeria about anti-homosexuality legislation (and fundamentalist Christianity imported from the U.S.). The Nigerian Anti-Gay Bill that passed in the fall of 2011 prescribes 14 years imprisonment for convicted homosexuals.  I was less surprised by the legislation than by the widespread support it seemed to enjoy among my neighbors and friends. Truly, I didn’t meet anyone who didn’t seem to advocate it, usually based on totally erroneous ideas about what same-sex relationships are all about.  When I would bring up sex-related rights issues that seemed pressing for me, such as rape and child prostitution, the Nigerians I spoke with felt that homosexuality was far more alarming.  I couldn’t imagine how a consensual relationship between two adults could be troubling, let alone more troubling than child sex trafficking, but for many I spoke with it was.

Gbagbo supporters entering the ICC clash with police

As mentioned in my previous two posts, last week’s start of the International Criminal Court‘s case against the former President of Cote d’Ivoire was historic.  He is the most high-profile defendant to date, and the first head of state to face charges.  Many Ivorians and members of the Ivorian diaspora are following the case closely, and emotionally.  According to those I spoke with on Tuesday, so many people hoped to attend Gbagbo’s pre-trial that there was a sign-up list online in order to fill the 75 seats in the public viewing gallery fairly.  In the 30 minutes before the start of proceedings, police escorted in groups of half a dozen people or so, and many hopeful attendees began to complain that police were using a different list than that online.  The ICC’s front desk employees had told me earlier that morning that it was first come first serve, and that whoever lined up soonest would enter.

However, there was no semblance of any orderly line, and people began to argue with others waiting to enter, and then some hostility began to be directed at the police. One tearful woman approached an escorted group as they passed through the ICC’s street entrances, yelling at them that they were criminals and murders.  Others began pushing their way to the front of the line, claiming a friend was saving them a place.  As police tried to gently usher people away from the buildings entrance, demonstrators who had been at the pro-Gbagbo rally across the street became agitated and screamed at the police officers.

Across the street from the Court, near the rally, perhaps a hundred riot police emerged from armored vehicles, although no riot ended up taking place.  From my vantage point, the Dutch police were impressive in their professionalism.  They remained exceedingly calm and respectful, even when Gbagbo supporters were not. I did not observe any excessive violence on the part of the police, and comparably speaking, I can’t imagine police in any other country showing such restraint. I noted that perhaps 1/3 of the riot officers were female, a much higher percentage than I think would be present in the U.S. in such a situation.

Right around the time when Gbagbo’s hearing was supposed to start, I looked across the street to see a young Ivorian man getting physical with another man, and then saw him take a full swing at a police officer when the officer tried to break up the fight.  As soon as he tried to punch that officer, any hope of getting in to the hearing was over for all of us.  The doors to the Court were immediately locked, police brought out German Shepherds, and then they began to close off the sidewalk.

Here are two clips I took of the “line” to enter the Court.  The first shows the arrest of the man with the yellow bag above, and the second clip is of Gbagbo supporters getting frustrated when they were not permitted entrance. See:

Related articles

• Laurent Gbagbo fit to stand trial (bbc.co.uk)
• Former Ivorian leader Gbagbo fights ICC for freedom (vanguardngr.com)

Pro-Gbagbo Rally Outside of the International Criminal Court

Last week was historic for the International Criminal Court. It marked the pre-trial of the case against Laurent Gbagbo, the first former head of state to ever face charges in the ICC. I arrived on Tuesday simply hoping to see the inside of the building, but instead spent the afternoon watching demonstrators clash with Dutch police, and each other.

I was familiar with the Gbagbo case before I arrived and it was a simply a coincidence that my visit coincided with the first day of his pre-trial, which he did not attend. I knew that Gbagbo was installed as President of Cote d’Ivoire in 2000 and was in power during the 2002 civil war that split the country into politically contentious north and south regions. He served for a decade, based mostly on his continual stalling of his second election, and when Alassane Outtara was declared the winner of the 2010 elections Gbagbo refused to step down. He and his supporters argued that Outtara rigged the election (which is really hard to do unless the candidate is the incumbent) and Gbagbo swore himself into office again, despite that international observers called the voting more-or-less fair and that Gbagbo had already serve the equivalent of the constitutional limit of two five-year terms. Cote d’Ivoire became an even more volatile place in November 2010 when both Gbagbo and Outtara began to use violence to ensure their respective presidencies. The post-election conflict received the most media attention when a mass grave was discovered containing the bodies of known Outtara supporters.

According to the Case Information Sheet on “Situation in the Cote d’Ivoire: The Prosecutor v. Laurent Gbagbo” provided to me at the ICC’s front desk, pro-Gbagbo forces purportedly used widespread and systematic attacks against specific ethnic or religious communities that were supporting Outtara. The ICC is alleging that murder, rape and other sexual violence, persecution, and other inhuman acts were committed over an extended time period and over large geographic areas (I’m using the ICC’s wording). Gbagbo is being called an indirect co-perpetrator for four counts of crimes against humanity. Although Cote d’Ivoire is not party to the Rome State that founded the ICC, it accepted its jurisdiction in April 2003, which was ironically under Gbagbo’s regime. Outtara reconfirmed the country’s acceptance of this jurisdiction and at the end of last year the former President was arrested in the capital of Abidjan and transferred to The Hague. He has been fit to stand trial, and after being found indigent, the Court has borne the cost of his Defense.

Based on the violence that has occurred in Cote d’Ivoire over the last decade and the 2010 election strife, I was not totally surprised to see a rally outside the ICC on Tuesday. I became confused though when I approached the demonstration to see participants wearing t-shirts saying “Free Gbagbo” and holding banners calling Gbagbo a political prisoner. I initially assumed the 200+ demonstrators were there to see justice served against a tyrant, but on the contrary, they were loyal to Gbagbo and had come to support him.

I spent an hour or so talking with various protesters. Although a good number lived in the Netherlands, most seemed to have come from all over Western Europe, telling me they spent the night on buses from London, Paris, Berlin, and Milan to attend and would turn around and get back on the bus that same afternoon. I heard a litany of reasons for their presence there, with the most simple being that Gbagbo was a family friend or that he was born in the same community as the protester. Some said they came out because they felt he would be a better ruler than Outtara, while others felt he had been a scapegoat for an out-of-control military that acted of its own accord. Many voiced anger that Gbagbo’s inner circle have all been imprisoned under Outtara, including the former First Lady Simone Hehivet Gbagbo, his son, Michel Gbagbo, and former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan. Many chanted about one-sided justice, in which both sides had committed violence yet only Gbagbo was arrested. I was handed a leaflet calling the 2010 election a France-backed coup, a form of neocolonialism. A different leaflet I received showed graphic photos of dead bodies from a massacre that allegedly occurred on July 20, 2012, captions stating that Ouattara used the military to burn opponents alive and that he had established concentration camps. Another Ivorian-French man at the rally gave me an information sheet that had nothing to do with the 2010 election violence at all, but rather was demanding an answer as to who was responsible for the November 2004 bombing of a French military camp in Bouaké, which killed 9 French soldiers, one American civilian, and injured 38 others. The pro-Gbagbo demonstration simply gave him an audience and platform he needed to get his message across.

Here is some footage I took of the rally in its early hours when it was at its calmest:

 

How to visit the International Criminal Court

ICC logo

A recent day at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands was one of the most professionally interesting experiences I have had.  A Dutch friend took care of the logistics and in hindsight, I realize it was a surprisingly easy thing to do and and any foreigner could also visit. The Hague is the government seat of the Netherlands and just a 45-minute train ride from Amsterdam.  At the main station in The Hague, we rented bikes and peddled over to the Court using the maps functions on our smart phones. We found a surprisingly humble building, but later learned that the current building is an interim premises. Scheduled to open in 2015, the permanent premises designed by a Danish architectural firm will be located at Alexanderkazerne (Alexander Barracks), which will be closer to the detention center and be part of the International Zone of the Hague.

The Court’s lists their schedule on their website, http://www.icc-cpi.int/Menus/ICC/Home, and we chose to attend the hearings of Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo and were especially interested in that of Laurent Gbagbo.  Bemba is a Congolese former military commander on trial since 2009 for “crimes against the civilian population, in particular, rape murder and pillaging” in the Central African Republic from 2002-2003. The first former head of state to be charged in the ICC, Gbagbo was the President of Cote d’Ivoire and is accused of using murder and sexual violence to try to maintain power after he lost the 2010 election there. We were able to sit in on Bemba’s trial, but for reasons described in my post on the pro-Gbagbo demonstrations, we weren’t able to attend the latter’s pre-trial hearing.

I had expected a busy building, full of shuffling lawyers, judges, and other legal professionals, but that was so in the morning during Bemba’s hearing.  It was virtually empty except for the single guard at the security checkpoint and three employees at the front desk.  A Dutch man and Ghanaian woman greeted us after the security point. They instructed us as to the proper decorum in the public viewing gallery of the court. The rules were what anyone should expect them to be inside a courtroom, including no talking, gesturing, pointing, or use of recording devices. Visitors must also rise when the judges enter and leave the courtroom.

After depositing our bags and valuables in the lockers between the reception and the public viewing gallery, a security guard led us into the gallery.  It was so small, and more exciting for me, we could sit right in the front row just 30 feet from Bemba himself, with nothing dividing us but a wall of glass.  He is a physically huge man, and sat back in the very corner of the room wearing a seat and tie, looking extremely bored. When the two of us sat down he looked at us, probably wondering why we were there.  It happened to be a closed session, so we could watch but could not hear anything (Gbagbo’s later afternoon session was open with audio). For anyone who plans to visit, if you take a seat nearer the door to the gallery, that will put you near the prosecution, and if you walk further into the room, that puts you near the defendant.  I am not sure if that means we were symbolically supporting Bemba since we sat nearer the defense side of the room, support which we obviously had not intended to give, but the far side is certainly a more interesting vantage point to view the accused. Here is the layout of the courtroom that the front desk gave us, and we sat in the top left corner of the Public Gallery squares to see Bemba up close:

It was heartening to see that the three presiding judges were all female and from different regions of the world.  In fact, I was quite pleased with both the gender and geographic balance of the Court. The ICC’s staff of judges seems to be exactly half male and half female, and there is a good number of judges and other legal actors from the global south and smaller countries working at the ICC. (There are no American judges since G. W. “unsigned” Clinton’s signature on the Rome Treaty that founded the ICC and thus the U.S. is not a party.) The prosecution and defense teams, as well as the legal representatives for the victims, are lead by sub-Saharan Africans. The lead Prosecutor is a Gambian named Fatou Bensouda, who also worked on the Rwanda Tribunal, while Aime Kilolo-Musamba heads the Defense Council (paid for by stipends out of Bemba’s frozen accounts).

Admittedly, we observed Bemba’s trial for less than an hour because there wasn’t much to take in because of the lack of audio. For anyone else who would like to see international human right law at work, I would suggest making sure that the case is “open” with audio.  Another piece of advice is to really take advantage of the expertise of the ICC employees at the front desk.  We chatted with an extremely helpful Ghanaian woman in charge of disseminating information on the court to visitors, and she was a trove of information that just can’t be found anywhere else.

I went, I saw, I learned.

Sira Syndrome among the Ogonis

During my field research in Ogoniland I came across a cultural practice I haven’t encountered anywhere else in Africa. In some Ogoni communities of Rivers State the oldest or only daughter in a family is not permitted to marry or leave her father’s house, and she is socially (not physically) wedded to her father for life. She produces offspring with one or several male community members, offspring who take her own father’s name and become his heirs. The purpose of this is for her to have as many children as possible so they can work the family’s plot of land. Children are labor, labor generates income, and so fathers’ keeping their daughters at home is an income-generating practice. The tradition is called “Sira” and these daughters are described by some as having “Sira syndrome.”

I have spent some time thinking about the origins of Sira. I briefly hypothesized that perhaps in past generations male mortality rates were so much higher than that of women that there simply were not enough men to go around as legal husbands for single women, which is the historical explanation for the implementation of Islamic polygamy after many Muslim fighters died in religious battles in the 7th century. But if this was the case, why didn’t the practice spread to neighboring communities with a similar sex imbalance? Also, I think it is safe to say most men would like more family income, so why is it a uniquely Ogoni tradition? I haven’t found any answers to this question of how it originated.

Currently, the dynamics of the Sira households with which I am familiar vary. The woman may or may not have say over with which men she procreates, and the woman’s own father may be the one to make the decision. In some instances Siras freely take on one informal “husband” who fathers all or most of her offspring, while in other homes Siras have different fathers for each of her children. It is my understanding that in some communities, men may bring an offering or there can be a ceremony when a Sira “matches,” while in others it is strictly a numbers game in which the greater the sexual partners the greater the chance she will have many labor-producing progeny. Since such courtship is a delicate matter to discuss so I wasn’t able to learn much about how Siras match with their sexual partners.

It did seem fairly clear to me however that the practice is slowing dying out. Like most social changes I observed in Nigeria, rapid urbanization undermines such a tradition. Women moving into the city of Port Harcourt for work would be logistically unable to maintain the institution of Sira, and such a life experience would possibly alter their views of their filial obligations to stay as the social property of their fathers. I have noticed that rural-to-urban migrants also may distance themselves from traditional practices they consider too “bush-like” (their term, not mine). The gender differential in rural Rivers State, in which men have left farms in droves to seek city employment, may also affect how Sira is practiced, as women outnumber men in rural areas. Additionally, some I spoke to described the Sira practice as unchristian, as in, “This village stopped practicing Sira because we are Christians and the Bible says one man and one woman should marry.”

The practice of Sira presents a paradox in which culture is simultaneously a constricting but in a sense almost (but not quite) privileging force. It fundamentally violates the daughters’ right to choose their partners and have autonomy over their bodies. It is an oppressive practice because it infantilizes adult women. Being socially married to their fathers limits their choices, and for students of development theory, choices = development. Having their fathers’ determining their sexual partners violates their dignity, and for students of human rights theory, dignity = human rights. Yet at the same time, being a Sira did not appear, to me anyway, to be considered shameful. Ogonis did not speak of Siras in derogatory terms, nor did Siras complain to me about their status (although a life without many life choices often teaches us to accept our lot). I have met Siras with university degrees, some who work white-collar jobs, and others who have led protests and are politically conscious. Could these particular women have actually experienced more personal freedoms because they did not have a legal husband making demands on them? It also occurred to me that being a Sira could be a partially beneficial status because it is a purely Ogoni practice, so perhaps this status makes such women symbols of their ethnic group’s character, unique bearers of collective identity in their communities. As a self-identified feminist I maintain that the practice is detrimental to the status of women and I look forward to a time when the institution no longer exists; however, I have to admit that there are plenty of women in Africa and across the globe who have freely chosen their husbands and currently live under more subjugating conditions than some of the Siras I encountered.

The lesson for me: The tradition of Sira and similar practices of controlling women’s sexual behavior does not oppress such women on its own, but rather poverty, lack of education, misogyny and patriarchy combine to oppress women, and such practices are actually an effect of such oppression and not a cause.

No weddings for Siras…

Thoughts? I would love to learn more from my Nigerian readers who might be able to add any detail or illuminate any of the questions I asked above.