Social policies and instruments will need to be developed to ensure that the Green Economy not only alleviates poverty and improves equity, but that the interests of the people who depend on Green Economy are deliberately safeguarded from the very outset. In 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the United Nations held its landmark Conference on Environment and Development.
During a visit to Bamako, capital of Mali, on 26 February, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé observed that the Malian government would be best advised to sit down and negotiate with the MNLA (Mouvement National pour la liberation de l’Azawad), which is fighting to carve out an independent state in the north.
She is a renowned international advocate for women and children’s rights and has been a social and political activist for many decades. She is also the president of the Foundation for Community Development (FDC), a not-for-profit organisation she founded in 1994, which gives grants to civil society organisations to strengthen communities, facilitate social and economic justice, and assist in the reconstruction and development of post-war Mozambique. And her name? She is the vibrant and highly industrious woman of substance, Graça Machel, the amiable wife of Nelson Mandela.
Source: The Herald
WOMEN are demanding political parties to reserve half the number of council seats for them as part of measures to achieve the 50-50 representation by 2015.
Source: Aswat Masriya
Potential presidential candidate Mohamed Selim Al-Awa said that the case of Tahrir girl who was beaten and stripped off should be investigated and all those responsible for it will be prosecuted even it is Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi himself.
Source: The Independent
At a conference organised by the Federation for Women Lawyers at the FIDA offices in Kampala on March 29, women activists condemned the light sentence at which the Nakawa magistrate court handled the case against Emin Baro a 53 year old Turkish who was accused of molesting about 50 under aged girls and the pardoning of Sharma Kooky who has spent 12 years in jail for murdering his wife.
Source: Gender Links
Gender Based Violence (GBV) continues to be one of the foremost concerns in the struggle to achieve gender equality in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Source: The Herald
Zimbabwe joins Sadc countries in hosting the inaugural country level local government summits on gender and justice. In Zimbabwe, the summit gets underway in Kadoma as a precursor to the third regional summit to be held in South Africa next month.
Source: The Independent
Policy makers at the Women deliver summit in Munyonyo urged African governments to come up strong laws and policies to ensure that countries meet the millennium development goal 5 (maternal mortality) which is among the 8 MDGS that were arrived at in 2000 in New York.
Source: GenderLinks
Over two thirds of women in Botswana (67%) have experienced some form of gender violence in their lifetime including partner and non-partner violence. A smaller, but still high, proportion of men (44%) admit to perpetrating violence against women.
Source: Gender Links
Botswana's Minister of Labour and Home Affairs Honourable Minister Edwin Jenamiso Batshu will today launch The Gender Based Violence (GBV) Indicators Study Botswana (2012) report which reveals the high prevalence of GBV in the country. The research is a product of the partnership between Gender Links (GL) and the Women's Affairs Department (WAD) in the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs in Botswana.
Source: The Informer
The Representative of the Mano River Union (MRU) in Cote d' Ivoire, Angui T. Assouakon, has called on Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), particularly women of the subregion to work in unity and collaborate with one another if they which to make progress for the 30% quota of female representation in national decision-making and politics.
According to the World Health Organisation, 60 000 women and children in South Africa are victims of domestic violence every month.
A demographic survey has revealed that one of the reasons for the low women representation in the national and local governance system in the Northern Region is that husbands threaten their wives not to vote for women candidates contesting against men.
Nine out of 10 Nigerian women of child-bearing age are not using modern contraceptive methods. This is one of the startling revelations at a stakeholders’ dissemination on the Universal Access to female Condom programme aimed at increasing demand and access to female condoms in Nigeria.
Hand-dyed polished cotton — called bazin — is the mainstay of Malian fashion. The blind singers Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia extolled the fabric in a song released in 2005, “Beaux dimanches” (“Beautiful Sundays”). The song’s scintillating lyrics include the lines: “Sunday in Bamako is the wedding day / Men and women put on their best boubous / The bazins are waiting for you / This is the wedding day.”
It is rare for a head of government to be greeted with applause at the very beginning of a speech before the United Nations General Assembly. But that’s what happened last September when Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley of Bhutan took the podium and signalled his intention to talk about “happiness.” The prime minister’s seeming change of subject from the discussion of global crises immediately provoked the audience’s curiosity.
In an exclusive discussion with women’s organizations the day after he emerged as the winner of Senegal’s Presidential election on 25 March President-Elect Macky Sall outlined his vision for improving the lives of Senegalese women.
Young men and women socialise together at Tripoli University’s ‘campus B’ tarmac parking lot as they prepare to sit for examinations during this tumultuous school year.