Source: AlertNet
What do we know about women caught up in conflicts?
Sunday Monitor of February 12, refers to a new report that has revealed that 20 per cent of city students are in the sex trade. Girls down to pre-teens are recruited into transactional sex. This comes on top of the survey published three-and- half years ago which showed that 40,000 girls in upper primary school were defiled annually by their teachers.
At least 600 Ugandan girls have been forced into Malaysia's sex trade in what has become a human trafficking epidemic, a foreign diplomat has said.
Sexual violence is rampant in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The UN estimates that over 200,000 women and girls have been raped since 1998, but the true extent is not known. Missing from these figures are women and girls held as sex slaves or forced wives and men who are also victimized. The world has never known such extreme levels of sexual violence. Yet this crisis is largely ignored by the global community.
The United Nations reiterated today the need to provide women with access to both hormonal contraceptives and condoms to prevent unwanted pregnancies and HIV infection, after a renewed consultation with health experts on the issue.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed today the need to empower women and youth, who have been at the centre of recent social protest movements worldwide, and warned countries against ignoring their voices as they are critical to countries’ development.
Today’s global food insecurity destabilizes rural communities all over the world, impeding their access to food and affecting their ability to earn a livelihood. In partnership with the Huairou Commission and WOCAN, FAO held a series of twenty one consultations with hundreds of women and men in Africa, Asia and Latin America to better understand the direct impacts of food security on their lives and those of their families.
Source: US Department of State
I greatly appreciate this opportunity and want to thank Spelman College and its Department of International Studies for hosting this event and the very warm welcome. I want to thank the students and faculty from Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College for joining us today.
Three weeks ago I was at a meeting in Accra, Ghana, in preparation for the biennial African Feminist Forum, which is convened by the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), an Africa-wide grant-making foundation for African women which I co-founded twelve years ago.
Source: the Star
Domestic violence can be defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Abuse can take very many forms. It can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological. The unwanted actions or threats of actions are usually meted out with a view to influence the other person.
Source: Politics Web
The Congress of South African Trade Unions wholeheartedly supports the ANC Women's League's Mini-Skirt March Against Women Abuse on Friday 17 February 2012. We congratulate them on this brilliant initiative and urge all our members to join the march.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Wednesday disclosed that it planned to roll out a three-year programme that would seek to empower women bankers in the financial system as well as a women economic empowerment scheme that would make sure that female entrepreneurs could access credit from banks at single-digit rates of interest by the end of the year.
Source: The Monitor
Zambian President Michael Sata has appointed the first female inspector-general of the Zambia Police and a new director-general of the Zambia Security Intelligence Service (ZSIS), a statement from his office released on Tuesday said.
Source: Vanguard
With the recent upsurge in terrorism in Nigeria, Nigerian airport authorities have adopted counter-terrorism and security measures at airports in order to safeguard the lives and property of passengers and airport personnel.
Source: Trust Law
Once the most frequented source of poster images depicting starving children, Ethiopia is now in the media for a new reason: as the go-to destination, ironically, for foreign companies and governments leasing land to grow food and biofuels.
Source: UN News Service
Delegates at a meeting convened by the United Nations to draw up strategies to respond the humanitarian crisis in West Africa's drought-prone Sahel region today called for comprehensive and rapid assistance to the millions of people affected, especially children and women.
Source: Reuters
Libyan jewellery shopkeeper Hassan El-Kekli used to be careful what he said on the phone to his family and friends.
Any criticism of Muammar Gaddafi's regime was off-limits for fear security officials listening in could show up at his home and arrest him.
A study has found that human trafficking in South Africa has been getting worse as trafficking rings become more sophisticated and poverty means that more are desperate and easily targeted.
Women were at the vanguard in the protests that ousted Hosni Mubarak. But long-held sexism has reasserted itself at the hands of the military and the Islamists.