“If the American demonstrations are sometimes ignored by their own mainstream media, who are we, scattered all over villages in Africa, to expect our issues to attract their screens and cameras?” This question was what inspired Isis-Women’s International Cross-Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE), to resort to the convergence of media and communication to advance its agenda. The urgent task was to develop mechanisms that would communicate women’s ideas and allow them to forge solidarity action plans, to exchange information and strategies despite the challenges before them of poor communication infrastructure, high level of illiteracy among majority of women and the conflict situation amidst them.

As a week-long campaign to create awareness around the Sexual Offences bill draws to an end, South African NGOs involved in gender violence issues are calling for the proposed legislation to provide free anti-AIDS drugs for rape survivors. South Africa has one of the highest incidences of sexual abuse in the world. According to police statistics, 52,107 rapes and attempted rapes were reported in 2002, while a 1999 health department study found that 7 percent of women aged between 15 and 49 had been raped or coerced into having sex against their will.

The small Malian town of Zegoua - population 22,000 - doesn't have a great many ”claims to fame”. In one respect, however, it has achieved something remarkable. "Since January 2002, there's not been one case of neonatal or maternal mortality in Zegoua or any other nearby village,” Yaya Coulibaly, director of the Zegoua Community Health Centre, told a group of local and international journalists recently.

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 Tuesday.

In South Africa, Women’s Day commemorates the courage of the thousands of women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956 to protest against the pass laws. This action placed women at the centre of the struggle against Apartheid. Today South Africa has a new constitution that protects the rights and dignity of women. The government has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women. Yet South Africa has the 3rd highest rape statistics in the world, young women are in the high-risk category for HIV infection and one in six women are abused in their own homes.

As part of the Gender and Media Summit in September the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA) and Gender Links will be launching the first Southern Africa Gender and Media Awards. The awards will acknowledge excellence in gender aware reporting since the Gender and Media Baseline Study (GMBS) in 2003. The GMBS was the most comprehensive study ever to be undertaken regionally and globally on how women and men feature in the news. It showed significant gender gaps in the representation of women in the media, as well as biases in the way women and men are portrayed.

Fistula is a condition caused by difficult, protracted labor in which the fetus' head presses against the mother's pelvis so hard that it cuts off the blood supply to the area and kills the surrounding tissue. The result is a small, abnormal pipe-like opening, or "fistula," usually between the bladder and the vagina, that causes the woman to leak urine and stool uncontrollably. Surgery to repair a fistula usually only takes about 15 minutes, but in parts of the world where poverty has limited or eliminated women's access to natal care, the fistula problem is dire.

Although both men and women belonging to ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples suffer discrimination, it is women who do so in a multi-pronged fashion, argue Fareda Banda and Christine Chinkin, researchers with the Minority Rights Group (MRG). ''Sexual violence of nearly epidemic proportions and multiple forms of discrimination against minority and indigenous women could be better prevented,'' say the experts.

The fight for human rights in Nigeria has received ample coverage, as has that for fairer distribution of oil revenues - and the battle to curb endemic corruption. But, Nigerian women have another, and often more pressing fight on their hands - for abortion rights. In Nigeria, abortion is only permitted if the procedure is needed to save the life of a woman. Abortion under other circumstances is punishable with up to seven years imprisonment for the woman concerned, while the doctor who performs the procedure can spend 14 years in jail.

Urgent action against gender inequality is required to tackle the high rate of HIV-infection among women and girls in Zimbabwe, a report prepared by a regional task force has warned. Nearly 80 percent of all HIV infections in the 15 to 24 age group were among young women, said the Zimbabwe country report of the UN Secretary-General's Task Force on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa.

The Islamic Teachers Training College in Mombasa has opened its doors to women. Since it was established, the institution has only been offering training to men. Board of Governors chairman Sheikh Khalfan Abdallah Mazrui said intake for female students will start in September. He said the institution has a capacity for between 30 and 40 women.

Zimbabwean media has consistently ignored the voices of women in issues of national interest and continuously marginalised women as both newsmakers and as sources of news, a study has confirmed. While gender activists in Zimbabwe and in Southern Africa in general have continuously called upon the media to be gender inclusive, a recent study by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and a South Africa based non-governmental organisation Gender Links, has shown that not much progress in terms of gender-inclusiveness has been made by most mainstream media in general.

Gender inequality, power dynamics in sexual relations, and women’s lack of economic empowerment relate directly to patterns of poverty and are key factors in the spread of HIV/AIDS. At the same time, the epidemic leads to new social and economic burdens – often borne by women and girls – among households affected by HIV/AIDS that can stretch household safety nets to the breaking point. Defusing this self-reinforcing relationship between poverty and HIV/AIDS requires understanding how individuals and communities might best employ their resources and assets to prevent infection and to mitigate the consequences of HIV/AIDS.

A new family code in Morocco, known as the Mudawana, is having differing effects on women's rights in the Islamic kingdom and the disputed territory of Western Sahara, which falls under Moroccan rule. Earlier this year, Moroccan King Mohammed VI pushed the Mudawana through parliament. As of February 2004, Moroccan women no longer have to obey their husbands by law, something many Moroccan men saw as enshrining their right to use their fists on disobedient wives.

The papers in this volume explore the different kinds of partnerships for ending gender-based violence, and men's roles and responsibilities within these. These roles in and responsibilities for change range across the spectrum, from men changing their relationships with their intimate partners to male-dominated institutions changing the way they function in order to better confront issues of gender and violence.

They meet every week at a small, government-funded health clinic in Kawempe, the poorest and most crowded suburb of the Ugandan capital. They vary in age, but nearly all are married or widowed. Most contracted HIV from a husband or long-term partner. They are members of the Kawempe Positive Women’s Union (KPWU).

If proposed amendments to the country's abortion legislation are passed, nurses will be allowed to conduct complicated abortion procedures, a provision the country's largest nursing organisation has warned against. The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Amendment Bill was debated before parliament's portfolio committee on health by a range of religious and medical organisations.

Migration of male workers in South Africa is known to fuel the spread of HIV. This may also be the case for the increasing numbers of migrant women. Research funded by the UK Department for International Development looks at risk factors for HIV infection in migrant and non-migrant women in Carletonville, South Africa.

African women writers in this series redefine images of womanhood, provide new visions and reshape the erstwhile distorted characterisation of African women in fiction. The rapid upsurge of writing by African women has been one of the most dynamic, phenomenal trends of African Literature at the end of the twentieth century.

Contrary to the opinion that Africa has yet to take advantage of the information technology explosion, a growing constituency of mobile phone users in Africa is being mobilised to send text messages in support of a petition for women's rights in Africa. Mobile phone users across the world can now send SMS's (Short Message Service/ text messages) from their mobile phones to sign an online petition in support of a campaign urging African governments to ratify the African Union's Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. “To our knowledge, this is the first time that SMS technologies will have been used on a mass scale on the African continent in support of human rights,” said Firoze Manji, Director of Fahamu, a human rights organisation that developed the technique. “The facility enables those with poor or non-existent internet access to sign the online petition and takes advantage of the fact that there are about eight times more mobile phone users compared to email users in Africa.”
>>>>> Use your mobile phone to sign the petition in support of the ratification of the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa. Send a message to: +27832933934, with the word ‘petition’ and your name in the message. You will only be charged the cost set by your network provider for sending an international SMS.