The issue of women in parliament has returned to centre stage in Morocco following the country's recent legislative elections. In 2002, women were elected to 35 of the lower house of the Moroccan legislature's 325 seats; on September 7, 2007, only 34 were selected. Only four women managed to transcend the local lists: Yasmina Baddou of the Istiqlal party, Latifa Jbabdi of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces, independent candidate Fatiha Layadi and Fatna Lkhail of the Popular Movement.

A dramatic 41 per cent decline in HIV prevalence has been reported in pregnant women in Zimbabwe, according to the latest survey done in this population. The results were reported in a poster presentation at the 47th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago this week.

As part of a three-part project with FAHAMU and local partners, CMFD is working with rural women in Southern, East and West Africa to produce radio/podcast prgrammes about women's rights, especially related to rural women. In collaboration with the Rural Women's Movement and Indiba-Africa, an 8-day training took place from 19-26 August 2007. Over the course of the workshop, women from rural communities in Kwa-Zulu Natal and a representative from the Centre for Public Participation planned, researched, conducted interviews, wrote scripts and created a series of features covering a range of issues affecting rural women.

Amina Mama writes, 'As South Africa debates the political challenges associated with the ANC’s year-end conference at Polokwane, this is perhaps a good moment to think beyond immediate struggles and to consider what women have achieved beyond the borders of this country'.

This guidebook, Claiming Rights, Claiming Justice: A Guidebook on Women Human Rights Defenders, is an important initiative to acknowledge the valuable contribution of women human rights defenders in the promotion and protection of human rights, and to empower them further in their role. It builds on their achievements, including those attained in the framework of the three-year international campaign on women human rights defenders.

On 13 September it was announced that 18 cross-dressers in the Bauchi state in Nigeria were granted bail, after been charged with indecent dressing and vagrancy. The news spread internationally after their arrest more than two weeks ago amid renewed concerns of prejudice and homophobia.

African parliamentarians need to push public policy to focus more on women's health issues, delegates attending a regional workshop organised by the Parliamentarians for Women's Health (PWH) [www.womens-healthcare.org"> in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, heard this week. "MPs [members of parliament] have the potential to drive the political will to support women's health issues," said Elizabeth Aroka, East Africa regional coordinator of PWH.

It is election year in Kenya. Kenyan women running for electoral office face a barrage of tactics designed to intimidate and terrorize them into withdrawing. The tactics range from threats and verbal intimidation, to harassment and obstruction as they campaign, to brutal violence.

South Africa's department of Water Affairs and Forestry is conducting a gender analysis audit, to assess the efficacy of their programmes specifically for women. The audit, which kicked off in July and will conclude at the end of September, will show the impact the department's projects have had on ordinary South African women. Speaking at a committee meeting on Women in Water and Forestry Wednesday, the department's Deputy Director-General Nobubele Ngele said this was an important piece of work that looks specifically at gender issues.

Zamzam Abdinoor, a 16-year-old orphan, has already been married and widowed twice and is now a single mother of two. She was first married off to a militiaman in the port town of Kismayo. He was killed in one of Somalia's many factional confrontations just a year into the marriage. Her uncle then found another militiaman and she was soon married off again. The second husband also met with a violent death.

Independent Newspapers in Cape Town has launched a monthly niche publication aimed at Cape Town's gay and lesbian readership this week called The Pink Tongue. With a print run of 15 000 it would be distributed to selected vendors throughout the city and aimed to give gay and lesbian readers a "non-trashy" read, Sandy Naude, advertising and marketing director for Independent Newspapers in Cape Town, told Sapa.

Bernard Nzimbi, head of the Anglican Church in Kenya, entrenched his anti-gay position by consecrating Anglican clerics Bill Atwood and Bill Murdoch as bishops last Thursday in Kenya. Atwood and Murdoch, from the United States, oppose gay unions, which have been authorized by certain Anglican dioceses in North America.
Nzimbi insisted in an interview with news agencies that the consecration would not widen the rift between the Anglican Church in North America and African Anglicans who oppose gay unions. “Since the talk about gay marriage started, many congregations in America have been looking for oversight from overseas,” he said.

This article argues that the understanding of how public policies have different effects on men and women has improved in recent years and is influencing macroeconomic policymaking. Reducing gender disparities can lead to improved macroeconomic performance. The recognition that gender disparities are harmful and that government budgets are not gender neutral implies a need to incorporate gender considerations into the budgeting process.

SADC leaders have deferred the signing of the Protocol on Gender and Development because some member states need more time to conclude internal consultations following late changes to the document. A communiqué presented at the end of the 27th SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government in Lusaka on 17 August 2007 read, "...Summit noted progress on the negotiations of the protocol on gender and development and agreed to defer its signature to allow some member states to conclude their internal consultations".

As part of a three-part project with FAHAMU and local partners, CMFD is working with rural women in Southern, East and West Africa to produce radio/ podcast prgrammes about women's rights, especially related to rural women.

In collaboration with the Rural Women's Movement a, an 8-day training took place from 19 - 26 August 2007. Over the course of the workshop, women from rural communities in Kwa-Zulu Natal and a representative from the Centre for Public Participation planned, researched, conducted interviews, wrote scripts and created a series of features covering a range of issues such as evictions of widows from their marital homes, women’s inheritance rights and the impact of HIV/AIDS, sexual violence against girl children, forced/arranged marriages, young women and employment and grandmothers and orphans - all issues that receive little mainstream media attention. Each had never made a radio programme before. The programmes will be made available to local radio stations, as well as being distributed over the internet as ‘podcasts’. The workshop is part of the UmNyango Project, an innovative project to use ICTS to promote and protect the human rights of rural women in KwaZulu Natal.

While most South Africans view homosexuality as more acceptable than prostitution or abortion, they still regard it as worse than mercy killing or divorce. And many do not want to live next door to gay, drug addicted or heavy drinking neighbours. This is according to a nationwide public opinion survey of values by market research company Markinor and the University of Stellenbosch’s Centre for International and Comparative Politics.

Charges against the 18 Nigerian men arrested in Bauchi at Denco Hotel have changed from those of alleged sodomy and alleged attendance of a same-sex marriage to those of indecent dressing and vagrancy. Aged between the ages of 18 and 21, the men are now charged with contravening Article 372 section 2(E) of the Bauchi State Islamic code which prohibits cross-dressing and the practice of sodomy.

An international human rights group has accused President Yoweri Museveni's government of promoting "state homophobia" in Uganda and urged the repeal of a colonial-era law against sodomy. Human Rights Watch's attack added to a fierce social debate in the east African nation, where gays and lesbians have been increasingly vocal in demanding rights while Christian groups have taken to the streets to denounce them.

A ground breaking study on gender and advertising in Southern Africa, conducted by Gender Links, has revealed that while women are more likely to feature in asdvertising than in news content, they are more likely to be seen than head. They predominate in billboards and still images and hardly feature in voice-overs; and it is in these still images that we see blatant stereotypes at their worst.

Male circumcision has “little influence” on a woman’s HIV risk, according to a study conducted in Uganda and Zimbabwe published in the August 20th edition of AIDS. However, the study did show that women with high levels of sexual risk were slightly less likely to contract HIV if their partners were circumcised, and the investigators suggest that this finding should be explored in further studies