Source: The Reporter
I never considered my mother a gambler, but looking back to my earliest days in Ethiopia, I realize that the likelihood of my mother and me both dying during childbirth was alarmingly high. When I was born, the lifetime risk of a mother dying during pregnancy or childbirth in Ethiopia was about 1 in 14.
Source: The Star
Recent reports that a 13-year-old girl died after excessive bleeding due to botched female circumcision in Kajiado county and the subsequent arrest of a chief who aided the circumcision of four girls including his two daughters in Narok county shows that the war against female genital mutilation is far from being won.
Source: Daily Trust
Lagos — Women from various Non-Governmental Organisations will today embark on a nationwide protest to demand release of the abducted Chibok school girls.
Source: Daily Independent
The Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has condemned the impression being created by a section of the press that the military lacks the capacity to rescue the girls abducted from Government Secondary School, Chibok.
Source: News24
Abuja — THE kidnapping of more than 200 schoolgirls in northern Nigeria by Boko Haram insurgents is more than an act of terrorism against the federal government but a direct attack on the rights of women to an education.
Source: This Day Live
A human rights organisation, for Women BAOBAB yesterday demanded an apology from the First Lady, Mrs Patience Jonathan, for parents of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls for expressing doubts that the abduction ever took place.
Source: The New Times
Even the healthiest pregnancy can pose serious health consequences such as infection, obstructed labour, high blood pressure, and severe bleeding. The use of a midwife is key to a healthy and safe pregnancy and childbirth but they often work in decrepit health facilities and lack required resources, supplies and equipment.
Source: Daily Trust
Eminent figures like Desmond Tutu, Bill and Melinda Gates, Aliko Dangote, Rupert Murdoch, Mo Ibrahim, Ted Turner and François-Henri Pinault among global business, civil society and religious leaders are calling for urgent action and resources to rescue the abducted schoolgirls of Chibok, Borno state.
Source: NPR
As Rwanda began to rebuild itself from the ashes of the 1994 genocide, something unexpected happened: Women began playing a much more influential role on many fronts, including politics.
Source: Vanguard
OPINION
ON Monday, April 14, 2014 over 200 young female students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State were abducted by Boko Haram members, sending shock waves across the globe. It is believed that the gunmen took the girls to the Sambisa forest near the Cameroonian border.
Source: Times of Zambia
GOVERNMENT will revise pieces of legislation and the administration strategy to ensure women have access to economic resources including rights to ownership of land.
Source: The New Times
INTERVIEW
Jeni Klugman is the Director of Gender and Development at the World Bank. Last week she was in Rwanda to attend the Oxford Human Rights Conference on Women and Poverty. She also visited adolescent girls and women empowerment projects around Kigali.
Source: allAfrica
Lafia — Dozens of wailing female personnel of the police and Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in Nasarawa State, today, joined dozens of other women on the street of Lafia, chanting "Bring Back Our Girls", to add a voice the worldwide protests to free the abducted girls of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok in Borno State.
Source: Capital FM
Nairobi — Nancy is a 12-year-old girl from the Maasai community living in the western Rift Valley. Earlier this month, she ran away from her family home in Kajiado County just before she was due to undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
Source: News24
THE United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called for the immediate release of abducted school girls in Chibok, Borno State.
Source: Daily Independent
Six of the 10 countries that carry most of the burden of maternal deaths in the world are from Africa. This was highlighted from the newly-published report, "Trends in maternal mortality estimates 1990 to 2013".
Source: The New York Times
ABUJA, Nigeria — A second kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria's northeast by Islamist militants put new pressure on the country's troubled government, which had been hoping to showcase its emergence as Africa's largest economy this week but instead has been forced to confront its failure to contain a growing insurgency in its north.
Source: AlertNet
Nairobi — Pregnancy-related deaths in Ethiopia have fallen by nearly two-thirds, making it the African country that has most successfully lowered its maternal mortality rate thanks to its lifesaving investment in female health workers and girls' education, Save the Children said on Tuesday.
Source: UNAIDS
Maternal deaths have decreased by 45% since 1990 according to a new report released on 6 May by the Maternal Mortality Estimation Inter-Agency Group. Entitled Trends in maternal mortality: 1990 to 2013, the report estimates that 289 000 women died in 2013 owing to complications in pregnancy and childbirth, down from 523 000 in 1990.
Source: Daily Independent
Abuja — The meeting of women stakeholders convened by the First Lady, Patience Jonathan, over the abducted girls of a secondary school in Chibok, rose on Monday morning with a unanimous declaration that contradictory narratives given by the major actors showed that no girls were abducted.