What is the impact of trade on women's lives? How can we assess – or even predict – it? This research analyses the effects of changes in economic policies on women in Bangladesh and Zambia. It concludes that complementary policies are needed to enhance women’s ability to respond to economic incentives; reduce the many competing demands on their time; and improve their overall well-being and social welfare, which are not necessarily increased by economic gains.

The Women's Rights Watch Nigeria mailing list networks over 1000 national and international organisations. You will receive alerts on women's rights in Nigeria, updates on legislative reforms and landmark judicial decisions. Join us in campaigning against violations of women's rights in Nigeria.

Gender activists in Swaziland said a decision to halt a lawsuit challenging the absolute power of the monarchy was a serious setback for women's rights in the country. Lindiwe Dlamini, the mother of 18-year-old Zena Mahlangu went to court last month to demand that her daughter be returned after palace aides allegedly abducted the girl from school to become King Mswati III's 10th wife.

If the plight of women in war is to be improved, the United Nations and governments must make a greater effort to include women in all aspects of peace operations, including crafting peace and reconciliation programs acording to the Independent Experts Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and the Role of Women in Peacebuilding, launched by UNIFEM this week.

An end to poverty, access to a good education and healthcare, freedom from violence, protection of reproductive rights, and sustainable livelihoods are still basic objectives of gender equality work worldwide. This paper takes this historical gender equality work as a given, and instead highlights both the shifting backdrop for this work, as well as new considerations and work agendas that have emerged in our efforts towards gender equality. From militarization to globalization, a fast-changing global terrain is dictating new challenges and new ways of approaching the women's rights agenda. This discussion paper explores these trends as well as the convergence of work inside the fields of gender and development and women's rights. Also presented here, is an overview of the ways in which gender equality advocates are trying to improve how we understand and confront gender inequality.

"NEPAD is better understood as being in the category of empty lip-service to principles of gender equality. In principle NEPAD is much in favour of equal rights for women, but in practice it proposes almost nothing in the form of action to realise these principles," according to a paper presented at an NGO Forum held between October 14-16 in Banjul, The Gambia. The paper, authored by Sara Hlupekile Longwe, a feminist consultant and chairperson of the African Women's Development and Communications Network (FEMNET), discusses how women's gender issues have been ignored in the framework for African development adopted by African countries under the acronym NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development). The paper was distributed by Africa Action.

This paper starts from the position that trade liberalisation is not an end itself, and that for trade to be meaningful, it has to deliver some growth not just to a country, but also to all its citizens, especially the most disadvantaged. Trade policies should both protect and strengthen the capacity of nations and their citizens to address issues of poverty and social exclusion. Growth should be socially equitable and environmentally sustainable. Therefore, the central question for an analysis of the impact of trade policies from a gender perspective is whether trade liberalisation perpetuates, accentuates or erodes existing gender inequalities, and whether it promotes or hinders the eradication of poverty among women who are the poorest of poor.

Malaria prevention using insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs) can increase child survival, reduce illness among pregnant women and improve birth outcomes. But what is the best way to deliver ITNs to those at risk? Researchers from the Kenya Medical Research Institute, UNICEF and the Kenyan Ministry of Health assessed the success of a scheme to distribute free ITNs to pregnant women.

A consortium of women's development and human rights groups of South Kivu Province has made an impassioned plea to all stakeholders in the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to resolve their differences and to channel their efforts into establishing a peaceful and stable nation.

Feminist Africa is a publication which has grown out of the African Gender Institute's many years of commitment to capacity-building, research, networking and teaching in an environment in which market-oriented approaches now threaten to undermine progressive African gender initiatives. FA provides a platform for cutting-edge, informative and provocative gender work attuned to African agendas. As the first journal on gender with a continental focus, it provides a forum for the publication and dissemination of high quality feminist scholarship in African contexts.

Le Sociètè Femmes Rurales Parakou is a female rights activist group formed on the 5th of January 2001.We focus on the emancipation of rural women and girls in Bènin from traditional cultural practices which are discriminatory, hazardous to health and impedes the development of the female gender.

Based in Borgu department in Parakou prèfecturè, we are presently working in eight sous-prèfecturès, or local governments. We are made up of mostly women and girls - farmers, housewives and young unmarried girls. The executive of the group is made up of five women lead by Dr. Patience Alfa, a medical practitioner in private service. The only other professional in the group is Ms. Immacullatta Sovi, a legal practitioner and the secretary.

Angelina Atyam, from Northern Uganda, was the only woman who officially addressed the Security Council at the Arria Formula on Women, Peace and Security on October 23. Atyam spoke about the conditions facing women in Northern Uganda, where civilians bear the brunt of fighting between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.

On October 31st, the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security released their report 'Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security: Two Years On', an annotated compilation of activities and initiatives by governments and inter-governmental bodies outside the UN system in the past year. The report does not focus on activities and initiatives within the UN system because these are the subject of the Secretary-General's Report that was submitted to the Security Council this past week.

Participants at a roundtable policy forum on the 'State Responsibility and the UN Declaration on Violence Against Women' organised by The Ark Foundation, a non-profit advocacy organisation in Accra, have asked the government to strengthen the existing structures to deal with such phenomena in accordance with the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Forces on all sides in the Congo conflict have committed war crimes against women and girls, Human Rights Watch says in this 114-page report. The report documents the frequent and sometimes systematic use of rape and other forms of sexual violence in the Rwandan-occupied areas of eastern Congo. The report, which is based on numerous interviews with victims, witnesses, and officials, details crimes of sexual violence committed by soldiers of the Rwandan army and its Congolese ally, the Rassemblement congolais pour la dimocratie (RCD), as well as armed groups opposed to them - Congolese Mai Mai rebels, and Burundian and Rwandan armed groups. These combatants raped women and girls during military operations to punish the local civilian population for allegedly supporting the "enemy." In other cases, Mai Mai rebels and other armed groups abducted women and girls and forced them to provide sexual services and domestic labor, sometimes for periods of more than a year.

African health rights activists and researchers from all sub-regions of the continent will meet to discuss issues with policy makers and health service providers -- bringing a forum for debate on some of the most critical issues of Gender and Health in Africa. Panel Presentations and Round Table Discussions will be held by some of the most prominent International names in the fields of Health and Rights in Africa. There will also be Workshops on best practices, Skills Exchange opportunities, and Seminal Lectures by African thinkers, writers and scholars.

The launch issue maps current features of the African Higher Education landscape, and analyses the persistence of systemic gender inequality in the African higher education landscape. Contributions document some of the main institutional reform strategies that have been deployed to address the persistence and, indeed, the reproduction of gender subordination in higher education, and subject the sector to a critical feminist analysis.

Around 90 women from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya and Rwanda have gathered in eastern DRC's war-torn North Kivu Province to discuss and promote the role of women in conflict management.

The Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital provides specialised surgery offering a cure to Ethiopian women affected by fistula which can leave a woman permanently incontinent. The Fistula Hospital - one of only three of its kind in the world - was founded in 1975 by Australian-born doctor Catherine Hamlin and her husband Sir Reg Hamlin. Obstructed labour affects five per cent of all women in the world but in most cases the problem can be treated immediately by Caesarean section. In Ethiopia, and other places in sub-Saharan Africa, it's a different story.

More than 80 women ministers, parliamentarians and other leaders from sub-Saharan Africa met in Cape Verde last week to address the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS on the region's population, particularly its women. The meeting highlighted the need for African women leaders to actively participate in forging national policies against HIV/AIDS and agreed on measures to respond to its gender dimension.