This year the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE) held its third global conference in Istanbul Turkey. The conference, titled “WISE: Muslim Women Leaders at the Frontlines of Change,” lasted just four days, from October 14 to October 17, 2011. It included panel discussions, debates, and training sessions.
Women should voice demands about their rights during the popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world to avoid being short-changed by post-revolutionary governments, Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi said.
Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda Party denied having any intention to roll back women's rights in the country today after hundreds of women demonstrated in the capital.
Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a joint Nobel Peace Prize winner hailed as a champion for women's rights, as well as a shrewd politician who has allied with an ex-warlord to boost her re-election bid.
Source: UNDP NEWS
Bernadette Ntumba, 61, travels with her new voter’s card everywhere she goes. She is one of some 30 million people registered to vote in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s second ever national elections, scheduled for 28 November this year.
Life-raft policies must be drawn up to counter worst threat 'in living memory' to women's hard-won rights, says charity.
Deteriorating security, rampant poverty and illiteracy, logistical difficulties and allegations of rigging are among the concerns raised by analysts and activists ahead of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) presidential and parliamentary elections, scheduled for 28 November.
Source: Swazi Observer
The women’s development bank will soon be established, following last month’s E50m pledge by NAFCOC.
The National African Federated Chamber of Commerce President Hellen Kentse Makgae made the pledge during the launch of the Swazi division of the women’s empowerment organisation.
Source: IRIN
Women's groups in the Somali town of Galkayo are lobbying the authorities in the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland to enact a law banning female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), saying the practice was becoming widespread. Activists say FGM/C causes serious health problems to the women and is against their religion.
Four political parties in Sierra Leone, the All People Congress APC, the Sierra Leone Peoples Party SLPP, the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change PMDC and the National Democratic Alliance NDA have called on for the participation of more women, youths and the disabled in the 2012 general elections.
Source: IPS
On the grubby edge of Old Fadama, Accra’s infamous illegal slum settlement, 67-year-old Mariana Sayitou sits under a parasol and tends to her livelihood – selling several dozen kola nuts and a few piles of bagged beans to passers-by.
Last month women worldwide were delighted to hear that three women from the global south were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman were honored for their nonviolent struggles for justice in Liberia and Yemen, and for the right of women to fully participate in peacemaking.
Testimony from Tamara C. Wittes Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and Deputy Special Coordinator for Middle East Transitions
iKNOW Politics, an online network dedicated to the advancement of women in politics around the world, has come to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Some 200 Tunisian women demonstrated Wednesday in downtown Tunis in defense of their rights, following the election victory of an Islamist party.
Source: Zambian Watchdog
UN resident coordinator in Zambia Kanni Wignaraja says no country can attain higher levels of human development where many of its women citizens lag behind, cannot fully participate in the economic or political life of the country on equal terms or feel disempowered.
Egyptian political parties must deliver 10 key human rights reforms to deliver the new Egypt promised by the “25 January Revolution”, Amnesty International said today.
Fartun Abdi Hashi, 22, arrived in the central Somali town of Galkayo in 2001 with her parents after fleeing violence in southern Somalia.
While gender equality ratios have improved in 85 percent of countries over the past six years, economic participation and political empowerment for women has failed to match the steady progress of health and education, says a new report by the World Economic Forum.
Reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) estimate that over half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth every year and a 1.4 million barely survive life-threatening complications in developing countries.