As Egypt pieces itself back together after last year’s revolution, women’s rights are taking a back seat. Some examples:
The head of the United Nations entity mandated to promote gender equality today welcomed the increase in women’s representation in Algeria’s new parliament as a result of elections held last week, and stressed that it represented a step towards democratic reform and gender equality.
WOMEN play a vital role in winning elections due to their numbers and enthusiasm. Many politicians all over the world have realised the importance of the women voters. In the US, politicians go out of their way to promote those values that women identify with.
Source: Tanzania Daily News
Premarital counselling is important to minimize domestic violence and divorce cases in Zanzibar.
Source: The Namibian
The Executive Director of the largest sex workers organisation in the country, Rights Not Rescue, Nicodemus 'Mama Africa' Aochamub says that decriminalising prostitution is better than legalising it.
Source: All Africa
Sisonke Msimang, executive director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, has been named a 2012 Yale World Fellow, announced Yale University President Richard C. Levin.
South Sudanese women yesterday hold a peaceful nationwide demonstration against Khartoum's continuous aggressions and bombardment of territories within their country as a result leading to deaths of innocent women and children. They carried slogans which read: "Stop killing women
Source: All Africa
Rwandan legislature recently approved a bill legalising abortion in cases of rape, forced marriage or incest. The government hails the move as the promotion of women's rights. Churches see it as a violation of the fundamental right to life. Abortion remains a sensitive issue in a country still recovering from the 1994 genocide.
Some Rwandan women would like abortion to be legalised altogether.
Take Marianne Irankunda. "We've waited long enough," says the young student. "Let's not fool ourselves; abortion is widely practised in the country, even in rural areas. It is done secretly and in extremely dangerous circumstances. Abortion should simply be legalised." She and many other Rwandan women believe a woman's right over her own body is sacred.
Abortion, a reality
Recent research shows that an estimated 60,000 abortions take place in Rwanda every year. That comes down to 25 per every 1,000 women. Summarised in the article 'Abortion incidence and postabortion care in Rwanda' published in March, the study exposes - for the first time ever - the extent of the practice within the country.Source: Times of Swaziland
The Lawyers for Human Rights Swaziland (LHRS)has reported the country to the African Commission for disallowing the partici-pation of political parties in the 2013 elections.
Sub-Saharan Africa cannot sustain its present economic resurgence unless it eliminates the hunger that affects nearly a quarter of its people, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) argues in the newly released Africa Human Development Report 2012: Towards a Food Secure Future.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) launched its first Africa Human Development Report today, stressing food security as a means to a better quality of life for all.
Source: The New Age Online
The only two women heads of state in Africa – Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Malawian President Joyce Banda – have just committed to using their positions to improve the lives of women across the continent.
Source: Science Codex
A review of studies reporting estimates of the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections/reproductive tract infections (STIs/RTIs) and malaria over the past 20 years suggests that a considerable burden of malaria and STIs/RTIs exists among pregnant women attending antenatal (before birth) facilities in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a review and meta-analysis of previous studies published in the May 16 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on Global Health.
Lingering violence, intolerance and oppression in Tunisia, following the ousting of former dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, tells the revolutionaries who sparked the Arab Spring that their work is just beginning.
Women’s rights in Morocco have come under the spotlight recently after a young woman was assaulted in a Rabat market by people she called “Salafists,” or ultra-conservative Islamists. She said she was accosted by the men because of the short dress she was wearing.
Source: Democratic Alliance
Press release - The Democratic Alliance (DA) notes with extreme concern the Cape Town High Court full bench judgment highlighting what appears to be a fatal flaw in the Criminal Procedure (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act 32 of 2007.
Source: New Era
About 100 people, of whom 56 were men, held a peaceful march to protest violence perpetrated against women and children under the theme 'men for healthy relationships' on Saturday.
Source: New Security Beat
“Nigeria is a country of marginalized people. Every group you talk to, from the Ijaws to the Hausas, will tell you they are marginalized,” said Peter Lewis, director of the African Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Lewis spoke at an April 25 conference on Nigeria, co-hosted by ECSP and the Wilson Center’s Africa Program, assessing the country’s opportunities for development given its demographic, governance, natural resource, health, and security challenges.
Source: CNN
Baby showers herald the transition to motherhood. Roses, greeting cards and invitations to lunch, celebrate mothers every May -- well at least in most parts of the world. In Africa by and large the story isn't so rosy.
Source: The Standard
"Getting to Zero” stands for the hope that we have for eliminating HIV. We can get to zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero Aids-related deaths, but the challenge is how to get there and how to hold on to the gains made so as not to roll backwards.