Source: Womens Enews
Cameroon has pledged to reduce its maternal deaths by 75 percent from 1990 levels, but compared with that year, more women are now dying. Last year the government joined a regional campaign to accelerate progress on this key development goal.
Source: All Africa
Violence against women has been recognized internationally as a major violation of woman human rights.
Source: All Africa
Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi ordered mass rapes and gave troops Viagra-type drugs to encourage sex attacks, International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo claimed Wednesday.
Source: All Africa
Women in southern Africa will soon move a step closer to having equal rights and opportunities with men when a regional gender protocol is ratified in the coming weeks.
Source:The Mark
The wars in Libya and the Congo highlight the vexing problem of rape as a military weapon.
Source: UN News Centre
The forced return from Qatar to Libya of a woman who had made complaints about gang rapes in Tripoli and was later recognized as a refugee violates international law, the United Nations refugee agency said today.
Source:IRIN
In 1998, HIV/AIDS activist Gugu Dlamini was beaten to death near KwaMashu township outside Durban after publicly disclosing her HIV-positive status. Her death, an example of the depth of HIV stigma, shook South Africa. Dlamini’s death almost destroyed her daughter, Mandisa, who was just 13 years old when her mother died. Now 25, Mandisa spoke about her experience as part of this year’s Nkosi Johnson memorial lecture, named for South Africa’s youngest HIV activist who died in 2001, at the SA AIDS 2011 Conference.
Like a car without a driver.” That’s how U.N. official Lakshmi Puri described the organization’s efforts to handle women’s issues before the creation of U.N. Women. For years, global women’s issues were divided among four smaller entities – the best known being UNIFEM, the U.N. Development Fund for Women.
We can end HIV/AIDS right now if we want to. We already know how. We know how it's transmitted; we know how to prevent and treat it. We're just not doing what it takes to end it.
South Africa's HIV/AIDS programme has come a long way from the dark days of denialism and deadly treatment delays. Francois Venter, chairman of the country's bi-annual HIV conference, SA AIDS 2011, gave IRIN/PlusNews five reasons to be happy about the country’s progress:
Participants attend a United Nations Security Council meeting on "Impact of HIV/AIDS epidemic on international peace and security" at UN headquarters in New York, the United States, June 7, 2011.
As world leaders gather at UN Headquarters in New York this week to chart the future course of the global AIDS response, UN Women is advocating for a robust response for those infected and affected by HIV — particularly women and girls.
Source: UN News Centre
Thirty First Ladies from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean joined forces today at the United Nations to mobilize support to achieve the goal of zero new HIV infections among children by 2015.
Source: BBC
The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor says there is evidence that Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi ordered the rape of hundreds of women as a weapon against rebel forces.
The worst kept secret at the United Nations is that Ban Ki-moon wants a second term as secretary-general and will almost certainly get it, possibly this month.
Five years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) revised its laws against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), these crimes continue to go unpunished because of judicial inaction and a legal culture at odds with the changes.
UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, will actively participate in this week’s global AIDS meeting by raising awareness of the heavy toll of HIV on women and young people, particularly young girls, and of the urgent need to address their special needs.
Source:IRIN
Five years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) revised its laws against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), these crimes continue to go unpunished because of judicial inaction and a legal culture at odds with the changes. The laws, ignored and misinterpreted, have left escalating numbers of sexual violence survivors unprotected, and perpetrators free to violate again.
Source: UN News Centre
The United Nations agency charged with gender equality and women’s empowerment today presented concrete areas of focus and goals for the three-day, high-level meeting on AIDS which begins at UN Headquarters tomorrow.
Source:UN News Center
The Security Council today underlined the continuing need for urgent and coordinated global action to curb the impact of HIV and AIDS in conflict and post-conflict situations, while recognizing the important role United Nations peacekeeping operations can play in responding to the epidemic.