Source: IPS
CAIRO, Nov 27 (IPS) - As several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) elect bodies to write new constitutions, women are looking to expand their rights through legislation.
Source: All Africa
Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Defence has expressed concern at the alleged abuse of women soldiers in the army.
Source: AllAfrica
A mother of four, Taiwo Arum, on Friday told an Igando Customary Court, Lagos, that her husband usually raped her in the presence of their children.
Source: The Moment
Spousal abuse, whether in form of marital rape, physical, psychological or economic injury is now a punishable offence in Lagos State, and whoever is found culpable risks years of imprisonment.
Source: Reporteurs Sans Frontières
International news media should take great care with the safety of the reporters they send to cover the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Reporters Without Borders said today after Caroline Sinz, a French reporter for public TV station France 3, yesterday became the latest woman journalist to be sexually assaulted while covering the street protests in this part of Cairo.
Source: Women's Enews
Two women prominent in Egypt's revolutionary movement say parliamentary elections scheduled to start Nov. 28 should be cancelled in light of the violence.
Source: The Citizen
The government has been urged to walk the talk in fighting gender-based violence by translating conventions it has ratified into laws, to give security organs more powers in dealing with the vice.The laws will also have powers to differentiate gender-based violence from other kinds of the vice prevailing in the society, thereby helping courts to issue punishment.
Source: New Times
The "16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence," kicked off yesterday with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and will run up to December 10, when the World marks the International Human Rights Day.
Source: New Times
The National Women's Council (NWC) yesterday, officially, opened the "16 days of Activism against Gender Based Violence (GBV)" in Kigali.
Source: Aljazeera
A Moroccan political party has selected for the second time a woman from the Jewish faith to head its national women's list for the parliamentary elections in the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim North African country.
Source: UNAMID
UNAMID organized today in El Fasher, North Darfur, an open day on the progress in the implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security under the theme “Women count for peace”. More than 100 women from Darfur’s three states participated in the event, including officials from the state governments, legislators and UN agencies.
Source: Mail & Guardian
As a young girl Garmar Murphy was forced into a child soldier's life, serving as a sexual plaything for Liberian rebels between battles a tragic norm in the country's savage conflict.
Source: Mail & Guardian
United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon has called for zero tolerance for violence against women, adding that the pervasiveness of violence against women poses a serious barrier to gender equality.
Source: allAFrica.com
In order to popularise female condoms in Cameroon, local organisations promote them through hair salons, workrooms and other small shops. But instead of selling the condoms, the managers are giving them away to the clients in order to clear their stocks.
Source: IPS Gender Wire
Bookended by the Nov. 25 International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the Dec. 10 International Human Rights Day, the16 Days campaign sinks its gender justice roots deep into scores of countries around the world, where women and their allies are still battling lower wages, sexual abuse, rape as a weapon of war, female genital mutilation and cutting, intimate partner violence, sex-selective abortions, breast ironing, infanticide and much more.
Source: IPS Gender Wire
Agriculture is key to women’s livelihoods in rural West Africa and to the survival of the national economies. But despite women’s crucial work on the farms women’s rights to land ownership, control and access to land continues to be neglected.
It is pitch dark in a village in Kisumu. Ms Peris Akeyo Oyoo is in labour and needs immediate medical attention. But the nearest hospital is three kilometres away and the labour pangs are intense.
Martha Mebrahtu died young, killed by the Ethiopian regime while she and others attempted to liberate their country from misrule. But, as Elyas Mulu Kiros shows, her dream has inspired Ethiopian revolutionaries for decades.
The UK’s first ambassador to South Sudan, Alistair McPhail, has called for a focus upon tackling the country’s violence against women ahead of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Friday.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has arrived in Rwanda for a four-day diplomatic mission focused on economic, agricultural and health development. She says despite impressive growth in these sectors, political life in Rwanda remains, as she puts it, “comparatively closed.”