Source: Washington Post
People in the world’s largest Black nation have taken to the streets to demand one thing of their police: Stop killing us.
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Source: Daily News
SEVENTEEN schoolgirls out of 48 in six secondary schools in Dodoma's Bahi District have absconded classes due to early pregnancies, suspected to be acquired during the coronavirus pandemic and flooding season.
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Source: New Zimbabwe
THE High Court Wednesday ordered the Harare City Council and government to re-open 42 local clinics that had been closed without notice recently.
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Source: Nyasa Times
The Women Manifesto Movement, comprising various women empowerment civil society organisations (CSOs) are organising a nationwide protest this Friday against President Lazarus Chakwera's failure to fulfil the Gender Equality Act (GEA) requirement of 60:40 representation of either sex in public appointments.
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Source: IPS News
BLANTYRE, Malawi, Oct 6 2020 (IPS) - In August, police intercepted the trafficking of 31 people to Mozambique. The victims, all Malawians, included 17 children and 6 women. Their two traffickers, also Malawians, had coerced them from their rural village in Lilongwe district with a promise of jobs in estates in neighbouring Mozambique. But they were saved in large part thanks to their own community.
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Source: Pregnancy Help News
The current abortion laws in South Africa are pretty liberal and are even hailed as some of the most progressive abortion laws on the books. Yet, many doctors and healthcare providers will refuse to do legal abortions or even give a referral for one for reasons of religion or conscience. In fact, the general population is also opposed to abortion, with over half the population thinking abortion is always immoral in cases of family poverty, fetal anomaly, or both.
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Source: The East African
Kenya’s Chief Justice David Maraga has thrown a spanner in the works by advising President Uhuru Kenyatta to dissolve Parliament for failure to enact laws to achieve the two-thirds gender rule.
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Source: UN Women
There are many barriers to the leadership of young women with disabilities in Tanzania and Africa as a whole. In many countries, this is more visible in the political and governance sphere and male-dominated sectors such as science and technology. Looking at the political space in Africa, I can point to a number of factors which include discriminatory practices in the selection of women to occupy leadership and decision-making positions. But also limited knowledge among duty bearers on our needs and rights is a concern alongside stereotypical perceptions of capacities. It is quite a challenge for women and girls with disabilities to access facilities and civic information due to a lack of support services, and devices that are friendly to people with disabilities.
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Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation News
Facing down fears of violent attacks over their commitment to sport, players hope to start women's teams all over the country
By Abdi Sheikh
MOGADISHU, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Whistles screech on the sea breeze as three female Somali coaches inspect a line of women in black and blue headscarves dribbling basketballs.
It's not just the heat that makes it hard: the women are also braving the scorn of their families and the threat of attack by gunmen who think women should not play sport publicly.
"We cannot openly say we are going to play. We put our playing clothes and shoes in school bags and carry them that way to the field and we pretend we are going to school or university," said Fardawsa Omar Ahmed, 20, a university graduate who also plays volleyball and football.
Her family used to discourage her from playing, but now they accept it, she said.
The women only play in compounds behind high concrete walls, which shield them from the gaze of the curious or those who might attack them.
One of the coaches, Suham Hassan Sobran, 40, played as a child before civil war broke out in Somalia in 1991. She restarted in 2009, when the Islamist al Shabaab insurgency still controlled large swathes of the city.
Now, Sobran and her two friends train some 30 other women on a court enclosed in Mogadishu's Hamar Jajab district office. A police checkpoint lies nearby - such checkpoints are often a target for al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab, which was driven out of Mogadishu in 2011, but still mounts frequent attacks.
On the court's gate is a painting of a woman playing basketball and slogans promoting good sportsmanship.
Another of the coaches, Faduma Ali Abdirahman, 39, now a mother of six, once played on Somalia's national team, travelling to Djibouti and Uganda for matches.
The women receive no funding. When they play matches, the trainers pool money to buy a cheap cup as a prize. But they love what they do, and dream of starting teams all over Somalia.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation News
Togo's first female prime minister has appointed a new government with a record 30% of the 33 ministerial positions given to women
LOME, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Togo's first female prime minister has appointed a new government with a record 30% of the 33 ministerial positions given to women, according to the cabinet list announced on state television late on Thursday.
Prime Minister Victoire Tomegah-Dogbe, who was appointed earlier this week after the resignation of the previous government, named Essozimna Marguerite Gnakade as defence minister - the first time a woman has held that role.
The change in government had been expected since President Faure Gnassingbe won re-election in March, extending his 15-year rule and a family dynasty that began when his father took power in a 1967 coup.
Ahead of the February election, a fractured opposition struggled to launch a concerted campaign to unseat Gnassingbe despite widespread disaffection with his leadership of the small West African country of 8 million people.
Analyst Mohamed Djabakate, who works at the Togo-based Centre for Democratic Governance and Crisis Prevention, said the appointment of a more female government was "all a strategy with an eye towards public opinion."
The defence ministry's close connection to the presidency meant, "it doesn't matter who is put there," said Djabakate.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation News
HAUNA, Zimbabwe, Oct 1 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When the girls at Sahumani Secondary School in eastern Zimbabwe started playing rugby, they had to make do with the soccer pitch and the oversized football shirts used by the boys.
Five years on, several have represented their country in the sport, and many more credit it with saving them from becoming child brides in a nation where early marriage remains common despite being outlawed in 2016.
"I used to hate rugby. At the time I believed the sport was only for the elite and for men, not girls like me," said Catherine Muranganwa, 20, who has played for Zimbabwe's Under-18 and Under-20 women's national rugby teams.
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Source: AllAfrica
Nigeria, Oman and Lebanon are among the nations with explicit anti-trans laws
At least 13 United Nations member states still criminalise transgender people, while others use morality and indecency laws to crack down on the trans community, a report showed on Wednesday.
Nigeria, Oman and Lebanon are among the nations with explicit anti-trans laws, according to the latest Trans Legal Mapping Report by LGBT+ rights group ILGA World.
The research details trans legislation and policies in 143 U.N. member states and 19 other jurisdictions.
Many other countries apply "seemingly innocuous" regulations covering offences such as "public nuisance, indecency, morality (and) loitering" to police trans communities, the report said.
However, at least 96 U.N. member states now have provisions for legal gender recognition, according to the research.
Violations of trans rights occurred across the world, said ILGA World's director of programmes Julia Ehrt.
"Some of the more shining nations when it comes to legal gender recognition are based in the global south, such as Argentina," she added.
Eight years ago, Argentina joined a handful of countries that let trans people change their gender on official identity documents without physical or psychological tests.
In Britain, there has been a ferocious debate in recent years over reforming the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, pitting some feminists against parts of the trans community.
The British government launched a consultation two years ago on overhauling the law to allow "self-ID" in England and Wales - a reform opponents said could allow predatory men access to women-only spaces such as toilets.
"In the UK, the debate is particularly fierce when you compare it with other debates in European states and I think (it) has, in a certain way, been exported to many of the other Commonwealth countries," Ehrt said.
The report also highlighted some positive developments for trans people over the past two years.
Nine countries have taken steps to make it easier for people to change their name and gender classification on official documents such as birth certificates since 2018.
British lawmaker Crispin Blunt, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global LGBT+ Rights, said the government's decision to scrap the "self-ID" proposal meant it was "a particularly wretched time in the UK".
"Britain continues to claim global leadership on LGBT+ rights but has just decided not to update its own processes," Blunt said.
"Now 25 nations, with more to follow, show us a better example of how to respect the basic human rights of trans and gender diverse people," he added.
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
BULAWAYO, Sept 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Smangele Tshuma got divorced after five years of marriage, her in-laws forced her out of the home that she had been living in with her husband in southwestern Zimbabwe and took the three donkeys she had bought with money from selling blankets.
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Source: Swazi Media Commentary
A High Court judge in the deeply conservative kingdom of Swaziland (eSwatini) has started a debate about legalising abortion.
Judge Qinisile Mabuza heard a case involving a 26-year-old woman who was accused of causing the death of her four-year-old son, by drowning him in a river.
The eSwatini Observer reported that the child’s father had denied paternity, leaving her to rise the child herself. This prompted the judge to question what provisions were available for women who found themselves in similar situations.
The Swazi Constitution provides that abortion might be allowed on medical or therapeutic grounds, including where a doctor certifies that continued pregnancy will endanger the life or constitute a serious threat to the physical health of the woman; continued pregnancy will constitute a serious threat to the mental health of the woman; there is serious risk that the child will suffer from physical or mental defect of such a nature that the child will be irreparably seriously handicapped.However, no law exists to put the constitutional provisions into effect.
According to the Observer, ‘In her subsequent remarks, she [Judge Mabuza] hinted that she viewed the current situation as shackling women’s autonomy, making an undertaking to tackle the current ban on abortion before she retires from the bench.
‘In fact, the learned judge believes it would be reasonable to allow women to make a decision on whether to perform an abortion.’
The Observer reported, she added some of the rights of women had been addressed through the 2018 Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act and it was time that society explored the possibility of legalising abortion as well.
Later, a number of representatives from organisations within Swaziland supported the idea of a debate. Acting Director Bongani Msibi of the Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS), a leader in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights delivery and youth programming in Swaziland, said the illegality of abortion often posed serious risks to women, and that legalisation could help to protect their reproductive and health rights.
Acting Director Zanele Thabede of Women and the Law of Southern Africa (WLSA) said abortion law reform should be discussed. She told the Observer it was important to have meaningful conversations whatever your beliefs about abortion.
Head of the Human Rights and Integrity Commission Sabelo Masuku said the group was in support of the call by the judge to have Swaziland revisit its position on abortion.
Because abortions are illegal in Swaziland it is difficult to say accurately how many are performed in the kingdom. However, in August 2018 the Times of Swaziland reported that every month, nurses at the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial (RFM) Hospital in Manzini attended more than 100 cases of young women who had committed illegal abortions.
The IRIN news agency, quoting FLAS reported that in October 2012 more than 1,000 women were treated for abortion-related complications at a single clinic in Swaziland.
