Women’s rights champions are not prepared to let the dust settle on the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness that ended in this South Korean port city on Dec. 1 with the customary nod towards gender equality and empowerment.
Nigerians have used social media to stir the world's conscience over a rape incident, but the next step is to turn the heated online debate into concrete positive social change.
The next chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court pledged Tuesday to strengthen efforts to bring to justice the perpetrators of sexual and gender crimes.
In an attempt to fight gender injustice in Egypt, the National Council for Human Rights agreed to start a committee for women’s rights. The decision came on Tuesday and assigned Mervat Tellawy as the chairman.
Source: women_enews
The South Sudan International Engagement Conference will bring together a number of governments to outline the development priorities for this fledgling nation. For the first time at such an event, a delegation of South Sudanese women from civil society will be recognized as official participants and formally invited to contribute to the vision of the future of their country.
Source: allAFrica.com
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf says "Crimes against women are still under-reported in too many parts of the world." She made the assertions in Oslo, Norway Saturday, December 10, 2011, when she delivered a lecture at occasion marking the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize to her.
Source: The Guardian
Despite opening-day jitters over whether China would sign up to a global aid partnership at the fourth high-level forum on aid effectiveness in Busan, the country's leaders did finally come to the table to agree a deal that sought to marry the agendas of traditional aid donors with those of the emerging economies.
The conference in South Korea – a country that could be described as a model of development, according to Mark Tran – attracted big names. Among them were the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who declared US support for a global aid initiative, former UK prime minister Tony Blair, who spoke of his optimism for Africa's future, and Rwandan president Paul Kagame, who led the charge to set a deadline for an end to tied aid.
But what of the outcome? Jonathan Glennie wrote that the conference highlighted the shifting geopolitical realities, saying the increasingly prominent role of the Bric countries was critical in forging the new global partnership. However, whether the lives of the world's poorest improved as a result of the conference would depend on how leaders put documented words into practice.
Elsewhere on the site
While Busan concentrated on aid, in Durban, South Africa, world leaders met to thrash out a new deal on climate change. Writing on the Poverty matters blog, Martin Khor urged the conference not to lose sight of the principles agreed in Bali.
Ahead of the conference on the future of Afghanistan, held in Bonn, Claire Provost interviewed Selay Ghaffar, executive director of Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan, who said she feared the fragile gains won by Afghan women over the past 10 years could be compromised if the international community rushed into closed-door peace talks with insurgent groups and the government.
To mark World Aids Day – and the 30 years since the first cases of what we now know as Aids emerged – we published a timeline tracking the spread of HIV, an audio slideshow about the stigma some HIV-positive people still encounter, and interviews with people whose lives have been affected by the disease. Catch up on all our coverage in our 30 years of HIV and Aids section.
We also reported that the NGO Global Witness had quit the Kimberley Process in protest at "diamond laundering".
Meanwhile, the EU warned that the Sahel faced a major food crisis in 2012.
And to mark the 16-day global activism campaign to end gender violence, we published the ideas and thoughts of five readers on how that could be achieved. Our readers' panel talk point prompted debate about how change can happen.
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Coming up on the site
In the latest of our Global development voices interactive series, we hear from people living with disabilities around the world.
In our December Global development podcast, we will take a look back at key events of the past year and look ahead to 2012.
On Monday, we will publish the first blog from key development thinkers who we've asked to share their thoughts on development progress over 2011 and their hopes for the year ahead. More will follow next week and over Christmas and new year.
And look out for our end of year quiz.
The number of banana growers in the Windward Islands of St Lucia, St Vincent, Dominica and Grenada is dwindling after a hurricane devastated crops in 2010. Simon Rawles hears how fair trade rules are helping remaining farmers recover from the disaster.
In pictures: Pakistan floods: Sindh province still in need of assistance
Pakistan was still recovering from severe flooding in 2010 when this year's monsoon rains caused flash flooding in the south, affecting more than 9 million people and destroying more than 1.58m homes in Sindh province alone. Relief efforts in the area are ongoing and remain a major challenge.
Researchers recently held a series of workshops in east and west Africa to find out what matters to farmers, how they perceive their present and future challenges and how they can be empowered to tackle them. We show how farmers from Othidhe village, in Nyanza province, south west Kenya, responded.
What you said: some of the best comments from our readers
On Mark Tran's piece on Rwanda's role at the Busan aid conference, DesBremnerwrote:
Too much discourse on development gets stuck on the difficulty that, on the one hand, many developing country governments are unaccoutable to their citizens and prone to serial violation of human rights and, on the other hand, donor states have no claims to the moral high ground due to colonial history and more recent practice of tied aid.
Responding to Charles Abugre's blog about how Africa can make significant progress towards the MDGs, CeeWood argued:
The MDGS have no explicit goal for good governance and this is the black hole which may impact the overall success, or not, of the MDGs. Good governance isn't necessarily guaranteed through democracy in this very muddled world where aid can distort lines of accountability. The MDGs could have been an opportunity to address this. They haven't. Their impact will be less because of it.
William Easterly's blog about why US aid programmes should not be taken over by national security interests, drew the following response from Nancy Birdsall:
Oh dear it's complicated. In Pakistan, the United States could do far more to promote development by changing our trade policy and supporting US investment there than via any aid programme. And by channeling most of whatever aid money there is – for infrastructure, agriculture, water, education, health and energy – all both compassionate poverty-reducing and nation-building for the long run – through the World Bank or the African Development Bank, or via co-financing with the UK's poverty-driven aid programme.
The International Institute for Environment and Development's Anju Sharmaquestions why the needs of those most vulnerable to climate change were not a primary concern in Durban. He writes that the most climate-vulnerable people were "mostly unsupported, unprepared and uninformed about the complexities of climate change".
Owen Barder writes that, while the Busan aid conference did little to shape the future of development co-operation, he found four important outcomes and five future topics of discussion "which may prove important in future".
And on Poverty to Power, Duncan Green flags up a report on India's growth, written by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze. The report, Putting Growth in Its Place, "draws you in with some great questions, and then uses league tables to taunt India's decision-makers into action – so you think we're an emerging world power? Think again," writes Green.
Source: allAfrica.com
A new study aimed at establishing the participation and role of women in trade in the region indicates that the majority of Rwandan women are confined to petty trade, household or agricultural related work.
Source: AngolaPress
The approval of the Law on Domestic Violence is considered as undeniable milestone of the functioning of the National Assembly during 2011, due to its importance of combating this evil in the society.
Lack of commitment on the part of African leaders to domesticate the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 havs been cited as one of the reasons why there is low participation of women at decision making levels as well as the peace making processes on the African continent.
China executed a South African woman by lethal injection Monday for drug smuggling after rejecting last-minute pleas for clemency from her government, the foreign ministry in Pretoria said.
The Executive Director of Project Alert on Violence Against Women, Mrs.Josephine Effa Chukwuma is one woman who has been in the vanguard of promoting social justice, especially for abused women and girls in Nigeria.
Source: Bikya Masr
A group of Egyptian women’s rights advocates in Alexandria organized a protest on Saturday calling for greater participation for women in public and political life, coinciding with the anniversary of the human rights declaration.
AMINA ZUBERI grew up as an orphan and got married while still in school. Her tribulations created in her a passion to care for orphans and empower voiceless women; efforts that earned her a presidential commendation. She spoke to KIUNDU WAWERU
Violence against women and girls is a crime, not something private or cultural.Between International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25th and International Human Rights Day on December 10th, thousands of organizations and activists all over the world are working to highlight the global scourge of violence against women and girls.
Africa's first elected female head of state, a Liberian peace activist, and a human rights activist from Yemen are the three female winners of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. When they received the award Saturday in Oslo, Norway, they joined a special group.
Source: Daily Maverick
Fatou Bensouda's impending appointment as chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court might be exactly what the beleaguered institution needs to revive its reputation on the continent. She's black and she's African, which helps. But she's also very good.
Source: The Monitor
Having grown up as an only child, Priscilla Namasaba, a nurse, vowed to have as many children as she could.
Source: Times of Zambia
"The coach kept sending me juicy text messages and as soon as I shared my experience with someone, I was dropped from the team," recounts Susan, about her short-lived football career that ended before it even took off.
Source: The Monitor
In all honesty, I am probably as lazy and selfish as he accused me. What I couldn't stomach was the fact that he expected me to change. He had come up with the idea to spend different nights at each other's houses following our new Umeme rotation. "That way, we shall never feel the burden of load shedding," he smiled.