Source: RNW
Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure has signed a new family law, an official said Friday, after it was revised due to pressure from Muslim groups to cut out sections providing for greater women's freedoms.
Source: New Democrat
In an accelerated drive to promote youth empowerment, especially adolescent girls across the African continent, the government of Japan has granted US$86,206 to Youth Crime Watch of Liberia (YCWL).
Source: Daily News
"WHEN you educate a woman, you educate a nation," says Kalunde, whose foster child was thrown out of her rural school and her home after becoming pregnant. "A woman is a mirror and spends much of her time with her children." Every day across Tanzania, hundreds of schoolgirls become pregnant, bringing their learning to a halt.
Source: New Democrat
As the nation yearns for President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to reveal the full slate of her new government, she has assured that appointment this time will reflect ethnic and gender balance, while former officials who performed with integrity in the past government, are likely to resurface in the new administration.
Source: Capital FM News
Former Police Commissioner Major General (Rtd) Mohammed Hussein Ali who is now the Postmaster General, is among six suspects facing possible indictment before the International Criminal Court's Pre-Trial Chamber.
Source: HRW
Many democracies have allowed their ties with repressive allies to temper their support for human rights in the Arab Spring protests, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2012. For reasons of principle and long-term interest, governments should stand firm with the people of the Middle East and North Africa when they demand their basic rights and work to ensure the transition to genuine democracies.
Source: ON LINE opinion
On 31 October 2000, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 (SC1325) affirming the importance of women's voices in the resolution of war and conflict. http://www.un.org/events/res_1325e.pdf (accessed 20 January 2012) For women and women's organisations, this was an extraordinary achievement.
Source: HRW
Libya's interim government and its international supporters should make it an urgent priority to build a functioning justice system and begin legal reform that protects human rights after Muammar Gaddafi, Human Rights Watch said today, in releasing its World Report 2012.
Source: Irin News
The main threats to women in South Sudan derive from chronic deficits in health, economic opportunities, access to food and gender equality, rather than weapons, despite the prevalence of militias and armed conflict, according to the Small Arms Survey.
Source: Times of Zambia
SHE is a regular presence on the streets of Freedom Way in Lusaka begging for alms from well-wishers. She is blind and describes her life as painful and full of strife.
Source: The Morung Express
Jean Shinoda Bolen, a best-selling author and internationally-known lecturer, is a qualified psychiatrist and Jungian analyst. She is presently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California Medical Center. Her fan following includes the acclaimed novelist Alice Walker, who once wrote that “the healing power of Jean Shinoda Bolen’s work and thought transform all who will allow encounter”, and feminist icon Gloria Steinem, who has observed that Bolen has shown people how “the cult of masculinity is endangering us all.” Pamela Philipose interviewed her in New York.
Source: IRIN
Nairobi — The main threats to women in South Sudan derive from chronic deficits in health, economic opportunities, access to food and gender equality, rather than weapons, despite the prevalence of militias and armed conflict, according to the Small Arms Survey.
Source: RNW
About 2,000 Malawian women Friday staged a protest against attacks on trouser-wearing women, who were stripped in the streets this week by a gang of unemployed youths and sidewalk vendors.
Source: RNW
More than 200 women were let out of jail for 24 hours after President Abdoulaye Wade declared Friday a "day of giving" in which no ladies should be in prison, the justice minister said in a statement.
Source: IPS
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 19, 2012 (IPS) - The proportion of abortions deemed unsafe rose from 44 percent in 1995 to almost half (49 percent) in 2008, according to a new study released Thursday.
Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika on Thursday told women to be free to wear "what you want", saying the country had no dress code barring women from wearing trousers.
A new study by the New York Guttmacher Institute states that the number of women having induced abortions has stayed stubbornly high since the last such report in 2003, and that the marked reduction in the eight years before that has not been maintained.
Source: Human Rights Watch
The Ethiopian government under its “villagization” program is forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages that lack adequate food, farmland, healthcare, and educational facilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. State security forces have repeatedly threatened, assaulted, and arbitrarily arrested villagers who resist the transfers.
Women are at a crossroads in the Middle East and North Africa. This is widely reflected in the current battles over the adoption of quotas aimed at improving women's chances of being elected into parliaments. Although women's quotas were introduced as early as 1979 in Egypt, there are new efforts underway in the Middle East to implement them.
Source: Zimdiaspora
A 15-YEAR-OLD girl from Marange who was married off to a geriatric member of the largest polygamist Johanne Marange Apostolic Sect — but was lucky to escape, this week bared her soul and exposed the torturous abuse she encountered at the hands of the churchman and her own father.