Following various seminars conducted by NGOs to mark the 8 March International Women's Day, 200 female circumcisers from Kenya's Rift Valley Province have abandoned their tools of trade and vowed to fight the deeply rooted custom. Habil Oloo, a programme officer at the Kenya National Focal Point for FGM (female genital mutilation), which coordinates nationwide activities against the practice, said the development was the fruit of years of struggle by Kenyan NGOs against entrenched traditional attitudes among communities.

Harking back to traditional caravans as carriers of news as well as goods, professional singers, musicians and actors travelled for three weeks through Djibouti's five districts to spread the word about Millennium Development Goals, and the important role women can play in achieving them. Organized by UNDP and other agencies in the UN country team, the Caravan on Human Development included 40 people, UNDP vehicles, two buses and a truck with camping gear.

Violence against women is a global outrage. The experience or threat of violence affects the lives of women everywhere, cutting across boundaries of wealth, race and culture. In the home and in the community, in times of war and peace, women are beaten, raped, mutilated and killed with impunity. Breaking new ground in the work of Amnesty International, ‘It's in our hands: Stop violence against women’ investigates causes, forms and remedies, and highlights the responsibility of the state, the community and individuals for taking action to end violence against women.

International Women's Day, focusing this year on the plight of women and HIV/AIDS, carries special significance. In the worst-affected regions of sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls account for 58 percent of those living with HIV/AIDS, and girls age 15-19 are infected at rates four to seven times higher than boys, a disparity linked to sexual abuse, coercion, discrimination, and impoverishment. The Bush administration's new five-year global HIV/AIDS strategy recognizes the urgent situation of women and girls, but much more is needed to translate this into action on the ground.

From pre-independence Zambia to independence from British colonial rule in 1964, in times of the slave trade as well as the fight for independence, Zambian women and young girls have faced discrimination and violence at the hands of the slave traders, the state, the community and family. Every year, thousands of Zambian women face violence from their relatives when their husbands die. Most Zambian women and children suffer violence in their home and most cases are not reported to the police.

On the occasion of International Women's Day, a campaign against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has been launched throughout Somalia, where an estimated 98 percent of all women have undergone the ritual. The campaign is being led by four networks of Somali women’s organisations, namely the Coalition of Grassroots Women's Organization (COGWO), IIDA Women's Development Organization (IIDA means celebrate in Somali), We Are Women Activists (WAWA) and NAGAAD (roughly translated in Somali as 'Stay Rooted'). The networks represent nearly 90 grass-roots women's groups, Maryan Abdulle Qawane of COGWO told IRIN.

"Everywhere, women are confronting the challenges of our global world, from deepening poverty and economic uncertainty, the rising toll of HIV/AIDS on their lives and those of their children, to the violence they experience in everyday life. At the same time, in many regions, the gains that women have made over the last two decades are being lost. On International Women's Day this year, we must declare our determination to meet these challenges, and move forward."

As the world marks the International Women's Day on 8th March, HelpAge International pays tribute to the older woman. The world is ageing today faster than at any other time in the history of mankind. Research has shown that women survive longer than their male counterparts who are more likely than women to suffer from deadly conditions such as lung and prostate cancers, heart disease or strokes. The world is therefore becoming a woman’s world.

The Coalition for Political Accountability to Women (COPAW) is a non-partisan alliance of rights based organisations and individuals committed to political accountability to women and to socio-political transformation in realising good governance in Uganda. COPAW in collaboration with Uganda Women's Network (UWONET) organised a series of meetings last year (2003) to chart out clear and distinct issues to put to political parties and organisations as Uganda transits to pluralism. Some of the issues that prominently featured were (i) Real and Meaningful Democracy; (ii) Integration of the Principle of Affirmative Action; (iii) People-Centred / People-Focused Development; (iv) Commitment to Obligations under International Human Rights Instruments; and (v) Peace and Security. These issues were compiled in a brief memorandum that is now being shared widely for input.

UN Wire reported that UN officials told the Commission on the Status of Women at a meeting on 2 March 2004 that gender equality was the key to reducing poverty and meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s). UN Wire documented how participants discussed the issue that despite progress towards gender parity, in many countries women’s rights are still under threat. According to World Health Organisation (WHO) research, between 10 and 69 per cent of women worldwide are subjected to some form of violence in their lives, while 1 600 women die every day due to pregnancy-related complications.

Women, lacking power, resources and education because of Tanzania’s patriarchal society, are bearing the brunt of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the East African country, the Tanzania Media Women's Association (TAMWA) reported this week. Despite ongoing activities and debates aimed at tackling the spread of HIV/AIDS, the roots causes of the problem are not being properly dealt with, many HIV messages are out of context and current attitudes are not conducive to reversing the spread of the disease, especially among women, says Ananilea Nkya, TAMWA's executive director.

This guide, produced by Forest Peoples Programme, aims to provide practical information for indigenous peoples and organizations to support their use of rights-based arguments under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

The theme of this years Internationam Women's Day is Women and HIV/AIDS. There will be a panel discussion moderated by Mr. Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General for Public Information, will take place from 10 am to 12 noon.

All countries have agreed to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005. In its opening chapter, this second edition of the EFA Global Monitoring Report sets out the powerful human rights case for achieving parity and equality in education. Chapter 2 monitors progress towards the six EFA goals through a gender lens. The next two chapters look at why girls are still held back and highlight policies that can lift barriers and improve learning. Strategies to remove gender gaps in education are part of a much broader reform effort underway in many countries, as Chapter 5 shows. This agenda cannot be met without much bolder international commitments and better co-ordination, which is assessed in Chapter 6. It is in the interests of all states and peoples to remove the gender gap and it should be a top priority in all educational programmes, as the final chapter concludes.

Fito is a fringe feminist ezine based in South Africa, but open to world places, visions and voices,
Fito aims to:
- Celebrate freedoms and expression beyond patriarchal, hetero-normative and other repressive mindsets;
- Explode the myths about history, culture and identity that leave so many stories untold;
- Stake out e-space for expressing anger about things too long left unsaid;
- Challenge coercive loyalties to creeds, leaders, organisations and other collectivities.

A gender activist with the Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA) has criticised local journalists for what it called their “unjust and unfair” portrayal of women. The activist, Echikael Maro, said in most cases journalists have shown bias when covering women stories.

Nelson Banda is a 28-year-old journalist from Zambia. Fifty-eight year old Moses Mbugua is the head of United Way Kenya, a non-profit organisation that provides support for community programs. In November last year, both men took part in the Men's Travelling Conference - a group of more than 100 men from Zambia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa who travelled across eastern and southern Africa to raise awareness and mobilize other men to support gender equality and end gender-based violence (GBV). The Travelling Conference was organised by the Men for Gender Equality Now Network, an initiative by FEMNET, the African Women's Development and Communication Network.

Representatives from 26 sub-Saharan African countries meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, launched a four-year strategy to promote partnerships for more equal roles for men and women and support women's advancement and wider participation in development. Despite progress, less than 15 per cent of economic managers in Africa are women, and women account for less than 10 per cent of the parliamentarians and 8 per cent of government ministers.

To mark International Women's Day on 8 March 2004 and celebrate the high professionalism of women journalists, UNESCO is launching for a third time the global initiative "Women Make the News" calling on all media producing daily news to hand over editorial responsibility to a woman editor-in-chief on that day. Through this initiative, UNESCO seeks to give more visibility to women journalists, to their editorial work, as well as to women as voices in the media.

The African Union (AU) came into being when two thirds of the members of the former Organisation of African Unity (OAU) signed the Constitutive Act in July 2001. The AU was formally launched in Durban South Africa on July 2002, replacing the OAU. One of the key differences between the AU and the OAU is that the AU is conceived as a union of peoples rather than of the leaders of Africa. Women were virtually absent from the former OAU, holding no positions of influence within the OAU during its 39 years of existence. A notable departure from the OAU is the inclusion of the principles of democracy, gender equality, good governance, and the rule law in the Constitutive Act of the AU. Building on those principles, the African women's movement has been exploring strategies to mainstream gender in all structures of the AU. This is the background to a report on a regional strategy meeting organised by FEMNET with support from The Ford Foundation's Special Initiative For Africa (SIA) and held in Nairobi, Kenya 27-31 October 2000. The background and introduction to the report are available through the link below. For the full report, write to the email address available below.