The Supreme Court of Appeals will on 23 August 2004 hear the matter of Fourie v Minister of Home Affairs. This case presents a challenge to the common law definition of marriage. According to the common law definition, marriage is a union only between one man and one woman. This makes it impossible for same sex couples to be married to each other. The Equality Project has been admitted as an amicus curiae (friend of the court) in this matter. The Equality Project recognises that the removal of the common law prohibition against marriages between people of the same sex would represent a major advance in the struggle toward securing and equal position for lesbian and gay people in the law and society.

More time, not a new deadline, is needed for universal ratification of the convention to eliminate discrimination against women, says Feride Acar, chairperson of the U.N. committee on the convention. The initiative to have the treaty signed by all the world's nations could get a boost from the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) Acar suggested in an interview.

The civilians of Darfur in western Sudan have been victims since February 2003 of coordinated attacks by the Sudanese government and bands of Arab fighters on horse and camelback known as Janjawid militias. Amid the killing of tens of thousands of people, women in Darfur's towns, villages and camps have experienced grave human rights abuses, including abductions, sexual slavery, torture and forced displacement at the hands of the Janjawid.

Preparations for the African Women NGO Forum on Beijing + 10 to be held in October this year have been initiated with the appointment of an organising committee. A meeting convened by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Centre for Gender and Development (UNECA ACGD), from 22 – 23 July 2004 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, brought together more than 50 women activists from all five sub regions of Africa to prepare for the forum, to be held in the same city, from 6 – 7 October 2004.

Women in Politics Support Unit (WiPSU) has just launched its website which can be accessed on www.wipsu.org.zw. The site covers WiPSU programs and activities, women's participation in local government and Parliament, as well as profiles of Zimbawe's current women MPs. Please send comments and enquiries to [email protected].

The 16 Days Campaign of Activism Against Gender Violence, now in its fourteenth year, is an international campaign originating from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Center for Women's Global Leadership in 1991. Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights. This sixteen-day period also highlights other significant dates including December 1, which is World AIDS Day.

The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa is beyond doubt the missing link in the Charter's protection of women. It’s adoption not only anchors into African soil the message and recognition that the injustices plaguing African women will no longer be tolerated, but it also affirms that human rights are women's rights too.

Although it is a document of great conceptual wealth, without the co-operation, political will, and commitment required from the members of the AU, its ambition to "ensure that the rights of women are promoted, realised and protected in order to enable them to enjoy fully all their human rights" will never come to fruition. It will be nothing more than a piece of paper with writing.

I thank the pioneers of this initiative, for their efforts on behalf of the larger half of humanity, from (in God we trust) saving the Protocol from such a miserable fate.

Obiagali Adaure, Nigeria

The need to uphold African women's human rights is now or never, but we have at all costs got to win the war, even if it means fighting our culture for the sake of our mothers, sisters and daughters.

Ezekiel Mwenzwa, Kenya

Women from Somalia have expressed concern at the fact that they risk being under-represented in their country's new transitional parliament, which was sworn in Sunday, August 22. According to an agreement reached in negotiations for restoring central government in the East African nation, a minimum of 12 percent of the 275 legislators should be women. However, only 16 women were inaugurated as members of parliament at the swearing in ceremony.

Zimbabwean women are urging greater representation in the next parliament ahead of the country's sixth general election, to be held in March next year. Thenjiwe Lesabe, secretary of the ruling ZANU-PF party Women's League, said at the weekend that women would push for a 50 percent quota in parliament and other ZANU-PF organs at the party's congress in December.

The World Summit on the Information Society is launching a program of small grants to support innovative research on gender and information communication technologies. The successful applicants will present their findings at the World Summit in Tunisia in November 2005.

The South African minister of communications launched the first portal specifically for women this week. Speaking at the launch of www.wict.org.za, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri told guests that "the portal will broaden the resources for women and nurture them in the ICT sector". Amongst the programmes identified as focus areas for WICT are "ICT for Girls" and "Rural ICT Capacity Development".

Gender bias has prevailed in scientific research about people-plant relationships, and conservation policies and programmes are still largely blind to the importance of the domestic sphere, of women and of gender relations for biodiversity conservation, and to the importance of plant biodiversity for women's status and welfare. Traditional knowledge and indigenous rights to plants are everywhere sex-differentiated, and gender inequalities are also implicated in processes leading to biological erosion. This is according to a paper from the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods Programme.

The arrest this week of a 63-year-old woman in Burkina Faso accused of circumcising 16 young girls has brought home to many that genital mutilation is still widespread in the west African state, despite being outlawed eight years ago. Since 1996, when the landlocked state formally declared genital mutilation illegal, the number of excisions practised in Burkina has fallen sharply, from a prevalence rate of 66 percent to 40 percent, according to the national watchdog group, the CNLPE.

This is the first book to describe and analyze the experience of women in African civil wars. A mixture of reportage, testimony and scholarship, the book includes contributions from women in Chad, Liberia, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa and Sudan. The political context of these conflicts is outlined in an introduction to each chapter. The book profiles women's responses to war, as combatants as well as victims, and describes the groups women organize in the aftermath.

This site is a virtual community for over 100 member organizations in the Horn, East and Southern Africa working to prevent gender-based violence. It is the first of its kind in the region and a resource for activists and practitioners in Africa and beyond. On the site you will find member profiles and a rich database of regional program approaches, communication materials, publications, reports, tools and resources. There are also international documents, resources and links relevant to GBV prevention and opportunities to dialogue, contribute and share experiences. We hope the information and exchange will contribute to stronger GBV prevention programming and advocacy in the region.

UNIFEM and The Association for Women's Rights in Development created this resource based on a Feb-March 2002 online discussion for young women. The booklet offers an overview of the e-discussions, profiles young women's HIV/AIDS leadership, and describes activities for young women who want to start campaigns to raise awareness and decrease stigma in their communities.

Morgan Tsvangirai

"Often Zimbabwean women show a deep level of mistrust over their exclusion in key decision-making processes, in politics, in public administration, in management and in the allocation of national resources. The issue is rooted in our history. It is true that women have been denied their space, by customary laws, tradition and patriarchy, by colonialism and exploitation, through political oppression and by certain biased practices in our African culture. It is true that they lead a life characterized by obstacles which demand serious attention and long term solutions."

Despite considerable rhetoric about gender mainstreaming in development, little has been done in practice. Reasons for this lack of action include lack of understanding of the links between gender and other issues, resistance to the concepts of gender equality and equity as these threaten prevailing structures of power and lack of involvement of civil society and alienation between the political (ruling) class and the people. This is according to a report produced by the United Nations (UN) Environment Programme that outlines some of the major issues related to women and the environment.

Traditional practices of polygamy, virginity testing and 'kugara nhaka' (wife inheritance), inhibit women's control over their bodies and increase vulnerability to HIV infection, but activists are split on the best way to tackle the customs. "Where the cultural practice is not seen as a violation and is believed in, it's difficult to police," said Emedie Gunduza, advocacy officer of the Women and AIDS Support Network (WASN). She told IRIN that the more economically disadvantaged the woman, the more prone she was to wife inheritance.