Source: The New Times
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has urged African countries to increase investment in family planning to benefit girls and women.
Source: US News
If prostitution becomes legal in South Africa, Nosipho Vidima, a 30-year-old sex worker, knows exactly what she’ll do. She’d start her own business called The Pleasure House, a classy operation staffed with an office administrator trained in finance, a group of prostitutes earning minimum wage – and maybe even an Italian chef.
Source: IPS News
Seventy-three-year-old Dorcus Auma effortlessly weaves sisal fronds into a beautiful basket as she walks the tiny path that snakes up a hill. She wound up her farm work early because today, Thursday, she is required to attend her women’s group gathering at the secretary’s homestead.
SOURCE:World Bank
Fatick, a three-hour drive from Senegal’s capital Dakar, is one of the regions hard hit by poverty. In a small community made up of mud brick homes and thatched roofs, we met Mariame Aidara’s family of eight children. Her husband has been out of work for two years now and the cash that she’s receiving from the government is helping buy food, pay for medical bills, and cover school supplies for her family.
Mariame is one of the beneficiaries of a conditional cash transfer program that was established by the Government of Senegal in order to provide a safety net for the country’s most vulnerable households. She and other beneficiaries receive 25,000 West African CFA Francs, the equivalent of $50 every quarter for five years on the condition that she ensures that her children attend school.
Establishing a National Social Safety Net System
Senegal has established several safety net programs for its poorest households, ranging from free school lunches, food assistance, support to the elderly and persons with disability, and cash transfers for the chronically poor. All of these programs were designed to improve the lives of poor households, help them invest in their human capital, and protect them from shocks. But until recently, these programs had been limited in scope and not always effective in targeting the most vulnerable.
In 2014, the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank Group’s fund for the poorest, approved a $40.5 million credit to support the government in establishing a national social safety net system. The project supported the design of an important tool to integrate existing safety net programs – the National Unique Registry. The registry combines geographical targeting with a community-driven process to identify the poorest households. It then conducts a proxy-means test to evaluate their poverty status. Mariame for example, was pre-identified by a community committee in Fatick, and the test confirmed her status as a potential beneficiary of this optimized system.
The information about the poorest households collected by the registry can be used to target beneficiaries for social programs – including the government’s national conditional cash transfer program that Mariame benefits from, as well as the universal health coverage program, the national nutrition program, and productive programs. By early 2016, there were over 280,000 households in the registry. Of these, around 180,000 are already benefiting from the national conditional cash transfer program.
Additional tools were also developed to improve the overall system and the impacts on extreme poverty. In an effort to secure cash transfers and make them more accessible, an innovative payment mechanism was set up. Since April 2016, some 30,000 households have been receiving their cash transfers through mobile phones via a mobile payment operator.
Adapting the National Safety Net System to Respond to Crises
The World Bank is part of a Social Protection Inter-Agency Board that’s working to link safety net programs with humanitarian response efforts. Development practitioners are now looking at how cash transfers can be used more strategically as a common tool in responding to humanitarian crises. In Senegal, $11 million additional financing was mobilized (through the Adaptive Social Protection Program, supported by theUK’s Department for International Development) to adjust the current social safety net system so it can be used to respond to regular crises.
Adjustments include temporary interventions to address periods of crises for vulnerable households and prevent negative coping mechanisms that jeopardize their future and that of their children, as well as connecting the poorest households to programs that help increase their productivity and diversify their source of income, making them more resilient to future shocks.
The National Unique Registry now includes households who are potentially vulnerable (in addition to the most chronically poor who are current beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer program), so that they are easily identified during crises. An emergency contingency plan that includes an early warning system is also under construction. The early warning system will trigger a pre-defined set of temporary interventions and a financing strategy to respond to specific shocks or crises.
"Everyone deserves a better life. For a country that has had its fair share of climate-related and economic shocks, a robust safety net system can help the poorest invest in their children’s well-being, build resilience in the face of a crisis, and develop a sustainable livelihood – all of which are critical to breaking the cycle of poverty," says Aline Coudouel, Senior Economist on Social Protectection and Labor for the World Bank.
Source: Human Rights Watch
Today is International Widows’ Day, when countries around the world recognize the violence, discrimination, and ostracism millions of widows face, and celebrate their important contributions.
Source: Human Rights Watch
Elizabeth is a vivacious secondary school student at Lusaka Girls School in Zambia.
Source: UN Women
While men make up most of those using or trafficking drugs, women are often the invisible participants and victims—one out of three drug users is a woman, and only one out of five drug users in treatment is a woman. [1]
Source: Malawi News Agency
(FAWEMA) has stated the need for parental engagement in promoting education especially for girls in the country.
Source: New Era
To provide sanitary pads to primary school girls in rural areas, along with comprehensive education, Sister Namibia is hosting a SisterPad Quiz Night tomorrow night at the Franco-Namibian Cultural Centre (FNCC).
Source: The New Times
Rwanda today joins the rest of the world to mark International Widows’ Day, with the national focus on addressing the plight of widows and widowers in the country.
Source: The New Times
Involvement of East African women in the region’s integration agenda is very important and must be enhanced, regional lawmakers have said.
Source: The New Times
As much as there is a growing understanding of the need to empower women, there is also some perception among some men that women empowerment could mean infringement on their rights.
Source:The Wire
When Clarisse’s husband died of malaria last year in the Cameroonian city of Douala, she was kicked out of their home by his family and forced to marry his brother.
Source: Fast Company
Welcome to Libya, where life goes on amid political and economic turmoil.
Source: Reuters
Congolese politician Jean-Pierre Bemba was sentenced to 18 years in prison by the International Criminal Court on Tuesday for heading a 2002-03 campaign of rape and murder in neighbouring Central African Republic.
Source: UNFPA
Mathilde learned she was pregnant under the direst of circumstances: in a displacement camp in the war-ravaged Central African Republic, where she was struggling to support herself with no partner or parents.
Source: Huffington Post
Girls from Sierra Leone who were impregnanted during the Ebola crisis, and consequently expelled, have been allowed back into the classroom. But advocates say that the decision has fallen short, considering that victims of sexual assault who became pregnant are still being banned from mainstream education.
Source: WhatsUpHIV
AIDS 2016 kicks off in Durban in four weeks' time with an ambitious goal: to achieve for HIV prevention what AIDS 2000 achieved for treatment in the same city 16 years ago.
SOURCE:Thomson Reuters Foundation News
“She was sixteen, fifteen, something like that. She had these dreams and aspirations. But her family didn’t have the funds to send her to school. So she had to stop. And then they gave her off to marriage. I put myself in that position…. it was not a good thing. That's why I'm speaking out,” said 17 year-old Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is one of the 30 girls from a girls’ after-school club based in Lusaka Girls School who decided to produce a song, “We are Girls, Not Brides”, about a challenge currently facing a large number of their peers in Zambia: child marriage. I went out to Lusaka, Zambia, to film their song, hear their story, and find out what made them decide to write this song, and why they think young people are key to ending child marriage.
This song was initially a recorded by one of my colleagues on their smart phone during a project visit organised byContinuity-Zambia Organization, a member ofGirls Not Brides. Continuity-Zambia Organization set up a girls club at Lusaka Girls School which plays an important role in providing peer-to-peer support for girls facing pressure at home to get married or teenage pregnancy. Issues can then be escalated to teachers or school guidance councillors, who work closely with families and girls to find solutions. One of the ways the club discusses sensitive issues with young girls is through music and poetry.
Faith, the lead singer in the music video, wrote the words to this song. In the weeks running up to getting it professionally recorded, she and her 29 other classmates, stayed behind after school to rehearse and make sure their harmonies were perfected and the words were clearly articulated.
Getting this group of sassy, determined, confident young girls to sing in front of a camera over and over again was no easy task. Often they would forget the camera can see everything, including someone texting their friends to tell them they are starring in a music video. But their sheer determination to make sure the video was perfect was inspiring. Take after take, the girls would have the same, if not more, energy to make sure they all did Faith’s song and its message justice. This was collective action at its best.
These girls want their peers to feel confident enough to say no to child marriage and yes to staying in school. For Faith, everyone, including young girls, families, communities, and the government, has a choice as to whether or not child marriage is still practiced in Zambia: “Life is all about making choices, and it is the right choices that determine who you will really be”. The hope is that this song will remind girls, their families and their country, that young girls have a voice which must be listened to.
With 42 percent of girls married before the age of 18,Zambia has the 15thhighest rate of child marriage in the world, though this could actually be higher due to thelow birth registration ratemaking it difficult to know the exact age of girls.
Poverty, traditional practices, lack of access to education are the main factors stagnating any progress in lowering the numbers of girls marrying young in Zambia.Over 60 percent of the population live below the poverty line, and some families see child marriage as an opportunity to benefit financially from the bride price they receive for their daughter. Young girls themselves can also see marriage as a way of escaping familial poverty, but grass is rarely greener on the other side. Young girls often end up pregnant, and vulnerable to violence and exploitation.
With almost 200 million people aged 15-24, Africa has the youngest population in the world which is both a challenge, but also an opportunity. The fact is, only if we involve young girls and boys in our efforts to end child marriage do we stand a chance of bringing the actual numbers down.
Everyone plays a part in allowing child marriages to continue, but everyone can also do something to make it stop. If there was one message Faith would want you to take from this song, it’s simple, “speak out, speak out” against child marriage. Remember you have a voice.
Maryam Mohsin is a Communications Officer atGirls Not Brides @GirlsNotBrides
Source: UN
On 19 June 2015, the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/69/293) proclaimed 19 June of each year the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, in order to raise awareness of the need to put an end to conflict-related sexual violence, to honour the victims and survivors of sexual violence around the world and to pay tribute to all those who have courageously devoted their lives to and lost their lives in standing up for the eradication of these crimes.