By resolution 54/134 of 17 December 1999, the General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and invited governments, international organizations and NGOs to organize activities designated to raise public awareness of the problem on that day. Women's activists have marked 25 November as a day against violence since 1981.

2006 marks the 16th anniversary of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign! Since 1991, the 16 Days campaign has worked to increase the visibility of violence against women as a human rights violation. The campaign has been utilized by groups all over the world to demand support services for survivors, enhance prevention efforts, press for legal and judicial reform, and use international human rights instruments to address violence against women as a human rights violation, a public health crisis and a threat to human security and peace worldwide.

A group of women met this week to consult on the draft national policy on peace-building and conflict management. Some participants had been involved in drafting the policy, spearheaded by the National Steering Committee on Peace Building and Conflict Management.

As the trial at the International Criminal Court of a Congolese rebel leader approaches, some fear that the voice of girls forced into militias may go unheard. While human rights organisations welcome the fact that Congo warlord Thomas Lubanga will soon stand trial at the International Criminal Court for conscripting child soldiers, some are concerned that the scope of the official charge is inadequate.

The Tanzanian government is reviewing the country's Marriage Act with the aim of raising girls' age consent for marriage from 15 to 18 years, Deputy Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Mathias Chikawe has said. "The Law of Marriage Act of 1971 allows the marriage of girls at the age of 15 years; at this age the girls are still biologically and psychologically immature," Chikawe, said.

Muslim clerics from 25 African countries have begun a five-day population and development meeting in the island of Zanzibar, focusing on issues such as HIV/AIDS and gender violence from an Islamic point of view. The participants, from member countries of the Network of African Islamic Faith-based Organizations, are also focusing on social and development problems.

The top United Nations aid official has called on the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) to release children, women and other non-combatants during a landmark meeting with rebel leaders in a remote jungle outpost, stressing it was "make-or-break time" in the peace process to end 20 years of brutal conflict with Uganda's Government. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland met Joseph Kony yesterday (12 November 2006) on the border between southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Love. That’s the key ingredient of a Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) strategy to unseat the Mugabe regime. Miriam Madziwa reports.

Women in Zimbabwe are taking to the streets to show their frustration with poor governance, lack of basic social services, and unprecedented increases in the cost of education. In the process, police have arrested nearly 1000 women members of the pressure group Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), for their attempts to hold their leaders accountable.

This past October, WOZA members scored three legal victories after the State failed to substantiate its charges against the some of the women arrested while demonstrating, prompting the magistrates to set the women free.

Others have not been as successful. Some women spend months detained in filthy police cells, sometimes with babies on their backs, attending continually postponed hearings while the prosecution teams try to find charges that will stick. Some have gone into labour while in police detention.

Jane Mlambo* is from a low-income suburb in Bulawayo. At 62 years of age, the widow explains how jam has become a luxury, and she cannot even afford to buy bread on which to serve the spread. Her grandchildren are no longer attending class because of prohibitive school fees and costly uniforms demanded before admission.

Thinking about the past and a brighter future for their grandchildren has stirred up strong discontent not just in Mlambo but also in hundreds of other Zimbabwean women who have joined WOZA.

WOZA's mission is to restore the dignity of the country's women by speaking out against social and economic injustices that have eroded the wellbeing of the majority of the country's citizens. Guided by their motto 'The power of love can overcome the love of power' the women peacefully show their displeasure.

WOZA is now known for it's non-violent but highly imaginative demonstrations during which they persistently call for 'tough love' among the country's leaders to resolve the crisis that has made not just women's lives, but all Zimbabweans' lives unbearable.

A major plus for the organisation is that the protests always catch State security agents napping because WOZA does not publicise actions beforehand. By the time security agents catch on, the women have already had their say.

With its street action and frequent visit to 'the garden' (WOZA lingo for police cells), the organisation is slowly chalking up victories against a repressive government.

While in the garden, the women seize the opportunity to share some sisterly love through song and dance. The songs also send a message to the arresting officers to realise that they too are victims of the socio-political environment.

Additionally, the women highlight the fact that Zimbabwe's situation is untenable but things are bound to change if they continue speaking out. So effective has this strategy been that police officers who have heard the women's "tough love songs" now refuse to arrest lead singers within the organisation.

WOZA members say through their homemade, hand written placards and leaflet they are communicating with a government that has cut off communication links with its people.

Listening and watching WOZA members plan and stage their projects, one get the sense that here are women determined to have their voices and opinions heard. Here are women who invest their time and meager material resources to stage protracted protests for their dream of a "socially just future."

These women put passion and conviction into their street actions. These women are serious.

The women's commitment is evident through their style of doing things. Members receive intensive training programmes to maintain the organisation's philosophy of non-violence and to always show love. Now even brutal baton-welding police officers have conceded in court that when they go to break-up WOZA demonstrations, "the women are very co-operative and sit down and allow themselves to be arrested."

The spirit of sisterhood ensures packed courtrooms when WOZA activists appear in court. Members who escape the police dragnet after protests go and offer themselves for arrest so that they can be together with their sisters.

With such an impressive record of accomplishment, maybe it is about time disgruntled Zimbabweans start taking WOZA seriously. Currently debate in opposition political circles and civic society is revolving around the need to a 'united and brave leader to direct a popular revolt."

Maybe it's time to draw helpful lessons from WOZA's experiences. Essentially, it is not about how strong the leadership is but how involved, committed and prepared members are in identifying a cause and planning how they will achieve their stated objectives.
It's about unshakeable belief in what you are doing and love for a brighter tomorrow. Just as the old adage notes, "it's love that makes the world go round.” WOZA is using love to unsettle an oppressive regime.

* Not her real name.

* Miriam Madziwa is a freelance journalist based in Zimbabwe. This article is part of the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service that provides fresh views on everyday news.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

This the quarterly update (July to September 2006) that Equality Now received from SOAWR members who are working on the campaign for popularization, ratification, domestication and implementation of the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa as well as from the African Union Commission, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other organizations that are also doing work around the Protocol. Also included is the information on the status of ratifications, meetings attended by the SOAWR members and upcoming events.

A digital library compiled by the Kenya Indexing Project is now available on CD-ROM. This CD-ROM contains a collection of 3651 articles from seven Kenyan Newspapers that bring together press coverage of gender issues during the period 1985-2005. The newspaper articles that focused on the events and discussions of the UN conference on women (Nairobi, 1985; Beijing 1995), give the background to what has unfolded in the subsequent years.

The Women's Peace Torch will today begin a five-day solidarity journey to the South Sudan capital, Juba, where peace talks between the LRA and the Uganda government are taking place. Members of the Uganda Women Parliamentary Association and the Civil Society Women's Peace Coalition will be led by Uganda Women's Network on a peace caravan undertaking the trek to Juba.

The United Methodist Church in Africa needs to address the lack of women in positions of authority in both church and society, according to the head of the denomination's Africa University. Rukudzo Murapa, vice chancellor of Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe, was one of many United Methodists from around Africa who provided leadership at the Council of Bishops' meeting Nov. 1-6 in Maputo.

Filmmakers from around the continent are being invited to submit their films and documentaries for a film festival devoted to ending violence against women in Africa. UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, the Senegalese Government, donors, NGOs, civil society and other partners are joining forces to sponsor the four-day festival beginning 23 November.

If ever there was an appropriate title for Dame Virginia Etiaba it is: The reluctant state governor. Twenty-four hours before she made history as Nigeria's first female state chief executive she was adamant that she would not take the office. It took a conclave of elders and other leaders of her party in Anambra State nearly five hours to persuade her to accept it in the interest of the party.

Have you seen them
Those gender lenses of mine,
That I brought back with me
From Beijing 21 years ago?

I swear I packed them among
My souvenirs and memorabilia
As I took up that coveted appointment
As Executive Director of this
International NGO with its seat in Washington D.C

In this international arena, Siseranism rules
Only those familiar with Un-speak
Are allowed into the loop of privilege-
Where thematic topics change
With each passing season---
Making it a members-only-club.

We spend our days drifting from
One diplomatic cocktail to the next,
Intoning in our bland, technocrat language
Our double speak, which is no speak
Ever mindful about peoples
Diversity and sensibilities.

We are quite busy sister, trying to
Draft work plans and futuristic agendas
That will usher you into a new era.

So don’t remind me about that grass root talk
Of women in development (WID)
And gender and development (GAD)
So dinosaurian if you ask me!

Today’s buzzword is Women
Peace and Security (WPS)
Keeping and building peace
After men’s big ego’s have suffered
Deflating punctures in battlefields
Where spurts of blood sprout
Off your daughters life spring.

Marginalised by society because they have few legal or institutional forms of protection, disabled women in Cote d'Ivoire are now coming out of the shadows and demanding their rights -- particularly those related to their sexual and reproductive lives. "Even if we don't get benefits, what's important to us is our rights," said Fatim Koné, a resident of the Ivorian financial capital, Abidjan, who had a leg amputated three years ago.

About 70,000 women worldwide die because of unsafe abortions annually, and about 85% of such deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and Southcentral Asia, according to an International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics report released on Monday at the group's five-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, AFP/Yahoo! News reports.

The Women's Peace Torch arrives today in Kampala to begin a journey of solidarity with the women of Northern Uganda. Having travelled in 2003 to more than 10 African countries in preparation for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing with the message, "There is no sustainable development without peace," and to the Democratic Republic of Congo during the review of the Dakar Platform for Action, the Women's Peace.

Two men walk determinedly towards the improvised minibus taxi rank on the Mpumalanga side of the Ressano Garcia border post with Mozambique. One dangles a faded canvas bag leisurely over his shoulder. The other mumbles something in Portuguese and points a finger in the direction of the taxis, his unoccupied arm swinging purposefully as if to remind the two women in tow carrying heavy bags that being a man extricates him from such burdensome preoccupations.

In this dynamic analysis of the gender revolution, authors Anne Breneman and Rebecca Mbuh create a platform for scholars from a variety of cultures to reflect upon their experiences as women and men in gendered cultures and upon their visions of prospects for gender equality and empowerment. Conceived during the United Nation's Fourth World Women's Conference in 1995 and continued during the Beijing +5 conference in 2000, this work represents the culmination of a ten-year project involving women from China, Sweden, Korea, Cameroon, Indonesia, South Africa, and the USA.