Miss World and the power of female protest

You don't have to take the beauty contest too seriously to realise a boycott can be an effective symbolic act

As soon as the organisers of the Miss World contest decided to hold their contest in Nigeria, they must have realised that there might be a mismatch between the lighthearted glitz of the competition and the situation for some women in the host country. In northern states of Nigeria, where Sharia law has recently been imposed, women are facing barbaric forms of injustice.

Two years ago, a teenager was publicly flogged, for the crime of adultery, after being raped by three men. Last year the first sentence of stoning for adultery was handed down on Safiya Husseini. She was pardoned on a technicality, but now another woman, Amina Lawal, is living under sentence of death by stoning because she gave birth to a child after having sex with a man who promised to marry her. When her daughter, Wasila, is weaned, Amina has been told that she will be "buried up to her neck and pelted with heavy rocks until she dies".

The Miss World contestants who have decided not to go to Nigeria have realised that Amina Lawal's experiences make the tussle for a paste crown and a tinsel sash look, at best, meaningless. The contestants from Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Costa Rica have decided to pull out, and many others are apparently considering similar action. Sylvie Teller, who was to go as Miss France, said: "When a woman faces the most agonising death, there are more important things in life than winning a crown for being beautiful."

It is easy for sceptics to brush off this boycott. For a start, it is hard to give serious attention to anything to do with Miss World. The only people who do take the contest seriously are probably those who still see it as the purveyor of demeaning stereotypes; which hardly makes it the easiest context to mount a vanguard action on behalf of oppressed women.

Most people, however, are unable to take the contest remotely seriously, seeing it merely as camp entertainment dressed up in absurd language about "beauty with a purpose". Which also makes it an odd stage to launch an international protest over human rights. And Miss Denmark, the most forceful of the boycotters, makes an unusual feminist heroine. Masja Juel is a hairdressing student from a small Danish town with a smile that could launch a thousand toothpaste advertisements.

But should we judge this campaign merely on appearances? These women have made a heartfelt effort to inform themselves about the case of Amina Lawal and to act in her support. I believe we should applaud them. Even if Miss World looks like a joke to many of us, for some women it looks like a prize that was hard to throw away – but they did it. As Masja Juel has said in one interview: "I knew I had to make a choice. It was hard; I had high hopes for what the competition would bring me. But I know I made the right choice."

Still, many people who have sympathy with the boycotters have been asking what kind of effect such a protest can have. Sharia law in Nigeria is being enforced only in northern states, not by the central administration, and President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is a Christian, has announced that he is not in favour of the sentence handed down on Amina Lawal. If her appeal makes its way to the supreme court, the verdict will almost certainly be overturned. Some observers have said that where a democratically elected president is trying to face down extremists, other countries should proffer support, not more knocks. Amina Lawal herself does not, apparently, support the boycott. "Let them come," she was reported as saying to one charity. "I know things will work out because people are coming from all over the world to support me."

But women in Nigeria, who can read the situation in their country better than most well-meaning commentators in the West, have said that they believe that the boycott should have a positive effect. I talked yesterday to Hurera Akilu-Atta, who is one of Amina Lawal's lawyers and who works for Baobab, a women's human rights organisation in Nigeria. "When we heard that participants were boycotting this event, we felt happy and hopeful," she said. "We believe that the action should help Amina Lawal."

Since Amina Lawal is an illiterate, powerless individual living in hiding under threat of death in a volatile country, it is hardly surprising that she has not spoken out in favour of a boycott. But, as Ms Akilu-Atta says, the point of such a boycott is that it should increase pressure on President Obasanjo to overturn the sentence. "The support has been growing internationally. But it is important that women throughout the world go on bringing people's attention to the case. At the moment, the President is being cagey about whether he will overturn the verdict, because he is soon facing an election and he is looking for votes in the north."

This is the point of such a protest. You don't have to take Miss World too seriously to realise that the boycott can be effective as a symbolic act, to mobilise attention for a case that was in danger of slipping off our radar. Like the petition on behalf of Amina Lawal that was organised by Amnesty International and gathered over a million signatures from all around the world, a high-profile boycott reminds governments throughout the world that their people do want them to keep up the pressure on the Nigerian government.

Glad though I am to see this international support growing for Amina Lawal, let's remember that the real support that she can count on comes from women inside her country. Sharia law is a recent introduction into Nigerian states, and thousands of people have died in civil unrest against its imposition. Lawal can count on support throughout the country, and so far, her life has been saved by Nigerian women who are protecting her and bringing her appeal through the courts.

If you listen to these women, you realise how absurd it is to suggest, as some people do, that the ideal of human rights is incompatible with certain cultures. Hauwa Ibrahim is the female lawyer who has led Amina Lawal's defence and who has kept her in hiding for the last few months to protect her from extremists who want to take the law into their own hands. Ms Ibrahim is a devout Muslim from the north, but in an interview with a Nigerian newspaper last month she said: "The moment we emphasise religion we lose focus. The focus is not religion. The focus is the rule of law."

Such women speak a language of rights that is the same language that women speak throughout the world. As Ms Akilu-Atta said to me: "What is essential is not just to attack one sentence, but to start to change the lives of women who live in these areas, so that they can have access to education. If women can read and be educated, they will not allow Islam to be used as a tool against them." These women will still be fighting for their ideals when international attention has drifted away. They are the real heroines of this struggle for women's rights. As Ms Ibrahim said: "This is a fight for womanhood, a fight for the rule of law."

n.walter@btinternet.com