MEWC E-News
The MEWC eNewsletter is an online publication released once a month. The newsletter aims to be a quick resource highlighting important and interesting developments in our six gender topics: Women, Peace and Security, Violence against Women, Political Participation & Leadership, Economic Empowerment, HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Rights, and Human Rights of Women.
Additionally, the newsletter provides information for upcoming events, featured resources, and our interview of the month. The typical readers of our eNewsletter are individuals who want to have the highlight of the month’s news at their fingertips in one document, for those who want a quick version of longer news articles, and for those who are interested in events and resources.
As the MEWC begins to look back at the events affecting African women in preparation for our second annual African Women’s Decade report, we have noticed a very hopeful and important trend: Now more than ever, African women are participating in the political, economic and social leadership of their countries and their regions.
EDITORIAL:
The 2012 Review Conference of the UN Program of Action (PoA) SALW
Small arms are cheap, light, and easy to handle, transport and conceal. A build-up of small arms alone may not create the conflicts in which they are used, but their excessive accumulation and wide availability aggravates the tension. The violence becomes more lethal and lasts longer, and a sense of insecurity grows, which in turn lead to a greater demand for weapons.
EDITORIAL:
On May 26th Make Every Woman Count launched the first set of a series of workshops between May - September 2012 designed to empower Diaspora African women to play a stronger role as decision-makers in community development and to participate in all areas of social, political and economic development.The workshop opened by the Founder and executive director of Make Every Woman Count Ms. Rainatou Sow. Ms. Marie Claire and Ms. Sow critically discussed how violence against women is perpetuated at all levels of society from the individual level to the state level, through traditional, cultural, economic, social and institutional mechanisms. Read more...
EDITORIAL:
In April MEWC launched a new initiative, “Monitoring Gender Mainstreaming within the African Regional Organisations”. This initiative will monitor and document gender-mainstreaming efforts made by various African regional organizations and will focus on more than just participation.We want to make sure that the experience, knowledge, and interests of women are included in the development agenda, and that all organizations practice a gender sensitive approach in their hiring practices, and develop policies on sexual harassment in the work place. Read more
EDITORIAL:
On March 8th 2011, in order to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, we launched the MEWC website. The MEWC team worked tirelessly to ensure that the website and content were ready to be launched on time. In the past year the website has achieved and expanded far more than we could have hoped. It is with the MEWC website that we successfully celebrated the 101st Anniversary of International Women’s Day. Read more
EDITORIAL:
This month, MEWC published its first report from our Women’s Political Participation Monitoring project “Women’s Political Participation Across Africa 2011”. The report seeks to provide an overview of the role of women in elections across Africa in 2011 by covering the position of female candidates before and after the elections have taken place; it is one of the first election monitoring projects in the field focused solely on the women’s political participation. Read more
EDITORIAL:
January has been all about self‐assessment here at MEWC. With the start of a new year, we wanted to look back at all we have achieved and what we can improve as a start up charity. We have come a long way in the past year and we still have a long way to go in the future, but here is a quick recap of what we have done in the past year. Please read our Annual Report to find out, more in depth, all that we have accomplished in 2011. read more....
EDITORIAL:
This month, MEWC participated in the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence by launching the MEWC blog for 16 days. We featured different posts from women in Africa, African women abroad, and the MEWC team. The campaigns theme this year was “From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Let’s Challenge Militarism and End Violence Against Women.” We posted articles ranging in topics from sexual violence in conflict, to small arms in the home. Each of these articles publicized issues that affect women on the ground, issues that we may not have known about. read more....
EDITORIAL
November has been a very busy month here at MEWC. In case you haven’t heard, we launched two new programs on our website: Election & Political Participation Monitoring, and our MEWC Blog. The Election & Political Participation Monitoring page, to be found under the tools section of our website, is an easy to use tool to follow the role of women in elections across Africa both before and after elections have taken place. So far, we have been able to track the process in the DRC, Gambia, Morocco, Liberia, Tunisia, and Cameroon, and will keep a close eye on any further developments in women’s political participation on the continent. read more
EDITORIAL:
Two celebrations took place in October, one was the one year Anniversary of the African Women's Decade, and the other one was the 11th Anniversary of the UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace & Security. One year ago, the African Union declared 2010-2020 African Women's Decade. The theme of this year is “Health, Maternal Mortality and HIV/AIDS”. This decade is a promise from African governments and the African Union to promote women's rights and achieve gender equality in Africa. read more....