A Strategic Planning Conference on “Mainstreaming Gender and Women's Effective Participation in the African Union (AU) and NEPAD” took place in Dakar, Senegal, from 24-26 April 2003. The Conference adopted a strategy including various recommendations for the effective implementation of gender mainstreaming in all the programmes and structures of the African Union and NEPAD.

Whatever the other shortcomings of representative democracy, one issue that clearly remains largely unresolved is the participation and policy impact of women. This comparative study examines two African countries, South Africa and Uganda, both of which have attained greater women's political participation than most African - or indeed Western - democracies.

Information and communications technologies (ICT) are becoming widely accepted as integral means for transforming the path of development. As envisaged in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the importance of harnessing information and communication technologies for poverty eradication cannot be overemphasized. Yet, as statistics describing the growing digital divide demonstrate, women and girls are at particular risk of exclusion from opportunities presented by ICT to secure better livelihoods and other rights.

The South African Human Rights Commission on Tuesday released a 533-page report calling for the South African government to implement the Constitutional Court's ruling regarding the provision of antiretroviral drugs to HIV-positive pregnant women and their infants, the South African Press Association reports. A Pretoria High Court in December 2001 ruled that the government must provide nevirapine to HIV-positive pregnant women through the public health system to reduce the risk of vertical HIV transmission.

This manual from Inter Press Service provides training for members of the media reporting
on HIV/AIDS. Its introduction argues the importance of gender training for the media because research shows that news is told largely through the eyes, voices and perspectives of men. The media often makes the mistake that gender equals women. This leads to a news approach which focuses on women as isolated members of societies with specific needs and interests.

A United Nations proposal to give special assistance to women as part of the effort to relieve southern Africa's humanitarian crisis would unjustly discriminate against African men, who are disproportionately affected by illnesses and war-related injuries, a group of health organisations said. The group took issue with a recent statement by Carol Bellamy, executive director of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), who said women and children must be at the center of any response to southern Africa's humanitarian crisis, particularly the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe are battling drought-induced food shortages and AIDS. One in four adults in these countries lives with HIV or AIDS; 2.35 million children in these countries have lost one or both parents to AIDS; and 600,000 children under 15 years of age in the region are HIV-positive themselves, U.N. figures show.

This paper from the International Center for Research on Women is the product of a review of recent literature on issues of gender in the context of conflict and post-conflict reconstruction. It was prepared as background material for an international workshop on gender equity and peacebuilding jointly convened by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Key findings and research questions are presented in relation to the effective integration of gender concerns into policies and programs that shape post-conflict societies. There has been progress in considering a gender perspective in international thinking, policy statements, and programs related to peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction, as evidenced by recent documentation on this topic from the United Nations. Findings reported below indicate a slow but positive shift in international opinion and understanding about the consequences of conflict on women and the importance of their participation in peacebuilding processes and post-conflict social transformation. However, gender discrimination continues through political exclusion, economic marginalization, and sexual violence during and after conflict, denying women their human rights and constraining the potential for development.

The Institute for Education of Women in Africa and the Diaspora (IEWAD) has prepared a "Selected list of Fellowships, Scholarships, Grants and Other Training Opportunities for African Women Students and Scholars". The list can be downloaded in pdf format (685KB) or in Word (699KB).

Hundreds of families and guests came to Adidome, Ghana, on 10 November, 2001 to celebrate with 128 women freed from years of forced labour in the service of local priests. The women were graduating from a vocational centre run by a local non-governmental organisation, International Needs Ghana (ING), which helps women reclaim normal lives in their communities.

The African National Congress Women's League last Friday said it accepted the outcome of the fraud and theft case against its president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. A Pretoria Regional Court magistrate sentenced Madikizela-Mandela to five years in jail after her conviction on dozens of fraud and theft charges on Thursday.

A Zimbabwean woman, Virginia Mupanduki, has won the annual Desmond Tutu Footprints of Legends Leadership Award for her commitment to community economic development. She was identified by the Development Innovation Net-work (Ired) which, together with the Leadership Regional Net-work, under the University of Zimbabwe and CASS Trust, provides a variety of learning experiences designed to transform leadership qualities.

The application of ICTs as a tool for effective enhancement of learning, teaching and education management covers the entire spectrum of education from early childhood development, primary, secondary, tertiary, basic education and further education and training. This document however focuses on attempts at introducing ICTs in formal primary and secondary school education in Africa. (Source: Eldis)

Globally, unsafe abortion claims the lives of nearly 70,000 women every year. Nearly half of those deaths--and countless related injuries--occur in Africa. In Ethiopia alone, more women die in hospitals from complications of unsafe, usually illegal, abortions than from almost any other cause, the World Health Organisation reports. In Ethiopia, as in other countries, most of the women affected are very poor and very young. These deaths are senseless.

Thank you for inviting Human Rights Watch to testify about women's property rights violations and how they fuel the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. This is a particularly timely briefing given that AIDS will kill millions of women throughout sub-Saharan Africa in the coming years because their subordinate status increases their vulnerability to HIV infection. Property rights violations, which are often accompanied by sexual and physical violence, are emblematic of this subordination. This briefing is also timely because of the important AIDS legislation pending in Congress.

A strategic planning meeting will be organised by Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS) at the Meridien Hotel in Dakar, Senegal, from 24 to 26 April 2003 to discuss the efficient implementation of gender mainstreaming and women's effective participation in all programmes and structures of the African Union (AU) and its specialised mechanisms such as NEPAD, CSSDCA, and the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

We have just emerged from a month of mourning and burial of a number of young women whose lives were abruptly cut short at the hands of young men they had come to know intimately. The incidences of murder of young women by husbands, lovers, fiancees or other male liaisons have become quite a regular occurrence in Botswana today with the increase in population density, rapid and frequent interaction, and ease of movement.

The goal of this report from the Commonwealth of Learning is to provide guidance to those using ICTs for open and distance learning to ensure that women have equal access and are able to contribute to their full potential. The authors' objective is to provide a practical tool for those working in the field. It provides a synthesis of a series of research reports and regional expert group meetings that explored the barriers that women experience in using information and communications technologies (ICTs) for open and distance learning (ODL).

About 1,000 Liberian women staged a peaceful assembly before the Monrovia municipal office last Friday to demand an immediate halt to hostilities between the Liberian government and rebels.

The Commission on Human Rights has opened debate under its agenda item on "integration of the human rights of women and a gender perspective", hearing a series of countries describe national efforts to eradicate violence against women and improve the situation of women overall. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, said actions taken around the world to eradicate such violence included the development of national plans of action, law reforms, new legislation, sensitization of criminal justice systems, provision of support services for victims and data collection on what was once an invisible crime.

As African leaders and business executives gather in South Africa's commercial capital Johannesburg on Monday for a three-day dialogue within the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), African businesswomen say the ”gender blind” blueprint needs a major overhaul to benefit women.