More Ethiopian women die in hospital from illegal abortion complications than for almost any other medical reason, the World Health Organisation (WHO) told IRIN on Monday.

The president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, wants the Southern African Development Community to focus more on gender development, as his country takes over the SADC Presidency.

Failing to recognise women as farmers in their own right is tantamount to failure to recognise their existence. The 1951 Land Husbandry Act made the economic and social position of women precarious. The legislation perpetuated and compounded the subordination of women under the patriarchal system that was justified under the guise of "respecting" African customs.

The African National Congress (ANC) Woman's League and Congress of South African Students (Cosas) have called on King Mwatsi III to return the three girls allegedly abducted by the king to the care of their parents immediately. ANC Woman's League representative Lulu Xingwane said the woman's league supported and respected cultural and religious practices as long as they were not harmful and did not violate women's rights or dignity.

Mass unemployment in Ethiopia is leading to an alarming rise in the illegal trafficking of women, according to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

Women and children are generally most affected during times of conflict. During wartime, women and children are at particular risk of human rights abuses because of their lack of status in most societies. Such abuses include sexual and gender based violence, sexual exploitation and recruitment as soldiers, says a fact sheet prepared and circulated at the United Nations on October 23 by the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security.

The International Women's Tribune Centre (IWTC), working in partnership with the International Development Research/Eastern and Southern Africa Office (IDRC/Nairobi), has developed a new information tool that offers direct access to information for women who are among the most marginalized in development --poor women with little or no reading ability. The starting place for this initiative is Africa and the starting point is a CD-ROM Rural Women in Africa: Ideas for Earning Money.

Women lawyers in Swaziland have embarked on a campaign to alert both genders to the need for women's rights in a proposed new national constitution.

There is growing concern over the disproportionate increase in the number of women living with HIV/AIDS in Africa.  A paper by the Women Empowerment and Reproductive Rights Centre (WERRC) critically examines factors that promote the vulnerability of women to HIV infection under the patriarchal system in Africa, with a focus on Nigeria.

"This fund supports projects that specifically target gender issues. These projects focus on gender and development and are intended to either add a gender dimension to an existing Higher Education Link or to stimulate interest in a gender area in a particular country to form the basis for future Higher Education links activity. These GAD projects can also be used to supplement existing main link activities, for example the wider dissemination of outputs that illustrate a gender dimension of a project".

Edith's son Hein was barely 11 months old when he was removed from his mother and placed in foster care. His mother, a former computer consultant, who is serving 15 years, speaks of her heartbreak in Pollsmoor Prison's recently launched newsletter. The 26-year-old mother of two from Alberton is one of nine female inmates from Pollsmoor - serving time for murder, theft and fraud - to produce the prison's first newsletter.

Christian Fiala, an obstetrician, came to Uganda ready for poverty and its related problems - not women dying of pregnancy related complications. He was not ready to see women die simply because a cheap and safe drug is not available in the country. To him, this is the most obvious form of gender discrimination in Uganda.

Seeking to address the disproportionate impact of violent conflict on women and girls, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has submitted a series of concrete proposals aimed at protecting their rights to the Security Council for adoption.

Discussion list run by the Gender, Research and Training  (GREAT) unit of the School of Development Studies at the  University of East Anglia, UK, which "aims to bridge divides  between gender and development researchers, practitioners  and individuals at dispersed locations." Much of the  discussion is relevant to gender, agriculture and rural  development.

The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) Young Women and Leadership (YWL) programme offers an on-line forum to share ideas and important information; initiate debates around issues that affect young women in their different contexts; provide a space for young women to network across various contexts; allow young women to articulate their visions and perspectives for the advancement of the women's rights and social justice agenda internationally; and share updates on the YWL programme.

Envision a world without poverty, without violence, without discrimination; a world where everyone's needs are met and their human rights are protected; a world where women's rights are both a means and an end of development. Envision it? Now GLOBALIZE IT!

The UN Human Rights Committee this week began its examination of the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Togo. In its alternative country report entitled "Violence against Women in Togo", which has been submitted to the Committee, the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) has expressed its grave concern at the widespread violence against women in the private and community spheres as well as at the hands of state officials.

A concerned mother took southern Africa's last absolute monarch, King Mswati III of Swaziland, to court this week, challenging the selection of her daughter as his bride. Lindiwe Dlamini told the Mbabane High Court on Tuesday her daughter, Zena Soraya Mahlangu (18) was abducted by two men employed by the king of Swaziland, a small kingdom landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique.

The General Assembly's Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee concluded its annual debate on the advancement of women last Friday morning with speakers linking violence against women to poverty and armed conflict.

A statement prepared by participants at the first-ever meeting on gender, ICTs and agriculture in Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific (CTA Observatory meeting, September 11-13, 2002, Wageningen, the Netherlands).