More than a thousand people, including leading celebrities, took to the streets of Johannesburg on Sunday to protest the vicious cycle of women and child abuse.

Last week, women from Ovwian and Aladja communities in Delta State besieged the Delta Steel plant to register their grievances against the company. This Day newspaper investigates the issues at stake.

Participants at a two-day training workshop on survivors of domestic violence have agreed that emotional, psychological and spiritual violence can be as devastating and destructive as physical violence.

The Awutu Bawjiase Rural Bank in the Central Region has granted over 786 million cedis in the form of loans to about 2,188 women under its "Credit With Education" (CWE) scheme. The scheme, apart from helping to alleviate the poverty of women and inculcating the habit of saving, also aims at educating them on environmental and domestic hygiene, family planning, home management, HIV/AIDS and ecological protection.

Steps have been taken at Zimbabwe's Tongogara refugee camp to stamp out allegations of sexual abuse following two incidents at the camp earlier this year, David Mlambo, UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) administrator at the camp told IRIN on Monday.

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In the summer of 1994, an estimated 800,000 to 1 million people were killed over a three-month period, when Rwanda's Hutu government set out to eliminate the country's ethnic Tutsi minority. Most were killed with guns and machetes. But for many Tutsi women - accused by the Hutus of being too prideful - the Hutus used AIDS as part of their arsenal, raping them to infect them. A handful of programs are assisting women who were raped and infected with AIDS, but thousands more go without help.

Picture this. Anastacia Namusonge is over 70 years old, a grandmother and a farmer in Uganda. She has had no formal education but can confidently turn the 'pages' of a CD- ROM on setting up small-scale businesses. The content of the CD-ROM is in her local language, Luganda, and includes text, images and audio messages, and instructions that she can understand. Aware of the surprised responses of those who watch her, Anastacia demonstrates her IT skills with ease and style.

Tens of thousands of women and men around the world launched a 16-day global mobilization Monday to raise awareness about the extent of violence against women and demand that it be halted.

Women must play a pivotal role in bringing an end to wars that have ravaged the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia’s minister for women said on Monday.

A 16-day campaign targeting violence against women was launched on Monday in the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown, by the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).

HelpAge Zimbabwe (HAZ), the country's leading organisation championing the rights and welfare of the elderly in Zimbabwe is perturbed by what has been happening to senior citizens. What transpired in Harare suburbs and Chitungwiza, where some residents, acting on allegations of witchcraft, attacked four elderly women was uncalled for. We call for the policy makers to come up with legislation that allows older people to live in dignity and security, free from exploitation and abuse and fair treatment without discrimination.

The growing internet rush in Tanzania is bringing more women to the web. In contrast to other African countries, reports the BBC, the increasing number of cyber-cafes in cities and rural areas are contributing to this boom by offering cheap internet access. A growing number of female net-cafe owners provide easy internet access to their female customers.

Otjozondjupa region governor Grace Uushona has called on Namibian women to unite in the fight for their democratic rights. Uushona says women of the country should free their minds and resist enslavement by men.

With help from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a small but influential Kenyan women's group is helping researchers preserve bottle gourds, one of Africa's earliest domesticated plants and one of its most endangered. Located 160 kilometers west of Nairobi in the village of Kitui, the group has established a Gourd Museum that houses a growing community genebank, as well as an informal library of songs, stories, and indigenous knowledge.

Violence against women has its root cause in women's unequal status in society. If the scourge of gender-based violence is to be overcome, then the warped attitudes and resultant discrimination that perpetuate them by preventing women from participating in society on an equal basis with men must be addressed. Human rights provides the framework for this undertaking, says United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Unplanned pregnancies account for a substantial proportion of births in Kenya and can have a variety of negative consequences on individual women, their families, and the society as a whole, says a paper from the Department of Social Statistics, University of Southampton. The paper shows that unplanned childbearing in Kenya is associated with a number of factors, including urban/rural residence, region, ethnicity, maternal education, maternal age, marital status, birth order, length of preceding birth interval, family planning practice, fertility preference and unmet need for family planning.

AIDS is the leading killer of women in South Africa and is claiming increasing numbers of lives every year, according to a government study released last Thursday. AIDS-related illnesses were responsible for 9.8 percent of female deaths in South Africa in 2001, up from 5.6 percent in 1997, the survey by Statistics South Africa showed.

Despite Cabinet’s April decision to offer free anti-retroviral drugs to survivors of sexual assault, the programme is being undermined by time lags and survivor’s failure to complete the course of drugs. The programme is being rolled out in Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu Natal and the Free State, but the AIDS Law Project’s Liesl Gerntholtz says the drugs are not readily available in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and the Northern Cape.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) has expressed its deep concern at the high levels of violence against women that persist throughout the world. "Women and girls continue to be exclusively or disproportionately subjected to a number of different forms of violence within the context of the family, in the community and at the hands of State officials," said an OMCT statement on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, marked on November 25.