My name is Natasha Kangele and I am from Malawi. I came to South Africa when I was ten years old. As a child, I grew up with my mother’s sister due to family problems. Growing up in my aunt’s house was not a piece of cake. It was like living in hell because she did not like me that much. So one of the horrible days of my life came, the day I lost my womanhood in a way that I did not expect. I was raped when I was 12 years old.

My name is Grace Dimakatso Maleka, I was married to my husband for 20 years. We were blessed with three children, two of whom are still alive. Since we began to live together we did not have a happy relationship, we used to fight every weekend when he came home drunk. Shortly after my first child was born, in 1990, we separated and I went to my mother’s place.

It was July 2006 when I met a certain guy. At first, he was everything to me but after just two months of moving in together problems began. I was only happy for a short period. He was an excessively jealousy and over protective man. He always accused me of having affairs with other man of which it was all wrong. He started beating me telling me that “I am bitch and cheap”. He beat me sometimes four times a month.

I am a 38-year-old woman born in Lubumbashi, who did not enjoy love from her parents. At the age of three, my father passed away and my brother and I had to separate from my mother. The way the culture was then, the husband’s family must take over everything including the children. My mother remarried her husband’s brother and we started our new life with problems in a house with two wives and nine children. I did not understand why my mother had chosen to marry her husband’s brother.

I met my abuser who I confused as my partner for three and a half years when I was seventeen, on the set of his first big break. He was alive and enthusiastic with a magnetism that lured me and catapulted me back at the same time. We raised many eyebrows in the supposedly new South Africa, me the white suburban Jewish girl from the northern suburbs paired with an unknown ghetto boy with a shady past from the depths of Zola.

Freeing myself from a psychopathic lover (I call him a psychopath because of his behaviour and actions, only he wasn’t one as he was fully aware of his dehumanising actions) came at a great cost to me; having lost my house, part of my ear, my self-worth and my dignity. It is still not easy for me to cope with that situation, but I am trying very hard to face my giant. In the name of love, I again found myself trapped with a psychopath, but because of God, who is the source of my life and destiny, he gave me another chance to prove to the world that he alone “can turn my scars into stars”; “my pains into other people’s gains” and “bad into good.”

We, women from women’s rights organisations and networks gathered in Doha before the official Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) to review the Monterrey Consensus, have been working to ensure that gender equality and women’s empowerment are at the centre of the FfD process.

In the last decade, barrels of ink have been spilled on the failure of the South African state to address the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic among its people, writes Rebecca Hodes. In recent months, South Africa has undergone a number of seismic political changes. The controversial, populist Jacob Zuma, was elected the head of the ruling African National Congress to the dismay of many following his acquittal for a rape charge. In September 2008, President Mbeki was deposed by the ANC’s Zuma-dominated leadership, and the subsequent reshuffle saw the appointment of Barbara Hogan. The implications of these changes on health policy, as well as those associated with the potential outcome of next year's elections, are explored.

In South Africa, as throughout the world, gender inequality continues to undermine democracy, impede development and compromise people's lives in dramatic ways. Just twelve years into its hard won democracy South Africa is faced with twin epidemics of HIV/AIDS and violence against women—each propelled in significant ways by prevailing gender norms that encourage men to equate manhood with dominance over women, sexual conquest, alcohol consumption and risk taking.

I was born 3 of July 1955 at Katlehong and grew up with polio after being diagnosed when l was eight months old. I stayed at the Germiston Hospital, Baragwaneth, and later ended up in Natal-Spruit Hospital where they kept disabled people. In 1993, l received an RDP house. It was nice because l was working and l could do whatever l wanted. My house was very beautiful.

I was born 27 years ago in a little village called Gatumba, 15 km from Bujumbura in Burundi. I am a product of a teenage mother forced to marry the man who impregnated her and later had three more children with him. I grew up in a very violent home. Gender based and sexual violence was daily bread in my life. My father assaulted my mother every day in front of the entire family and no one said anything. Sometimes he would force my mother to have sex in front of me. This puzzled me because it didn’t seem normal, nor did my mother like it.

During this year’s Sixteen Days of No Violence Against Women and Children, Southern Africa has quite a bit to celebrate, though with some caution, as there is still much work to do to address the high levels of gender violence in the region. Though we all dream of a day when we have 365 days of no violence, Sixteen Days is an opportunity to see how far we have come, and what we need to do next.

The Refugee Law Project seeks to recruit a Research and Advocacy Officer for the African Transitional Justice Research Network (ATJRN) based with Refugee Law Project, Makerere University, Uganda. To apply, please send your application letter and CV including the names and contacts for at least two references simultaneously to the following email addresses no later than December 15, 2008.

NGOs have urged the government to “put its money where its mouth is” in the fight against gender violence at the start of the 2008 Sixteen Days of Activism campaign. In a stock taking exercise held at Constitution Hill ahead of 25 November - International Day of No Violence Against Women – government representatives listed several initiatives that are being taken to curb the scourge of violence against women and children that remain among the highest in the world.

Justice Philip Waki, a veteran appeal court judge, headed a team tasked with analysing the violence that followed Kenya’s dubious presidential election on 27 December last year. More than 1300 people were killed and at least 300,000 forced from their homes after President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner. Waki’s mandate derived directly from the peace accord brokered by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, which saw Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga agree to share power.

The 18th African Human Rights Moot Court Competition will be held at the University of Lagos, Nigeria from 10 to 15 August 2009. Students, academics and judges from all over Africa are invited to participate. All law faculties in Africa are invited to send one faculty representative who works in the field of human rights (dean or another lecturer) who will serve as a judge in the preliminary rounds, and two undergraduate students (preferably one man and one woman) who will constitute the team that represents its university at the Moot Court.

Guinea is ranked second worst trade union oppressor in the world under leadership of President Lansana Conte, International Trade Union Confederation Annual Survey has revealed. President Conte's regime is directly linked to the killing of 30 unionists during brutal repression of union-organised public demonstrations against corruption and violations of fundamental rights.

“The 16 days of activism campaign responds to issues troubling all South African women regardless of their sexual orientation.” So said Zanele Muholi, a lesbian women’s rights activist who believes that the 16 days should be a period of solidarity among women to uphold the rights of all citizens and restore the dignity of the most vulnerable members of society.

The battle continues. Gugulethu residents are continuing to oppose the R350-million Guguletu Square Mall. We are in solidarity with all other South African’s who are being sidelined to make way for elitist projects such as the proposed AmaZulu World in Durban.

On November 24th 2008, Lyon will be hosting an international conference on digital solidarity at the invitation of President Nicolas Sarkozy, on a proposal made by the President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, and under the French presidency of the European Union. Almost 300 personalities are expected, including several heads of state and government and leading members of territorial authorities, international organisations, NGOs, companies and foundations.