The Aids and Rights Alliance of Southern Africa (Arasa) has organised a meeting for rights organisations to discuss human rights issues with a focus on LGBTI issues. It brings together human rights defenders from Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa.

Grady Johnson, on the site, discusses the issue of whether mapping gender violence online raises the unintended risk of spreading it. 'Feminist campaigners and activists have raised the question of the possible conflicts between the "I don't forward violence" action and the push to map gender-based violence. Does it contradict each other? How can we report on violence without spreading it, and forcing victims to relive their experience?'

This publication seeks to provide a gender analysis of Zimbabwe’s Global Political Agreement from the perspective of the participation of women in peace building and conflict resolution, and how peace agreements facilitate or hinder gender equality in post-conflict situations. The analysis was developed through a series of meetings convened by the Feminist Institute of Southern Africa (FISA) and the publication is a collaboration between FISA and the States in Transition Observatory of Idasa.

Emboldened by the revolution to claim a new voice in public life, many women are finding that they are still dependent on the protection of men, and that their greatest power is not as direct actors but as symbols of the military government's repression. It is not a place where Egyptian feminists had hoped women would be, back in the heady days of the revolution, when they played an active role, side by side with men, to bring down a dictator. 'Changing the patriarchal culture is not so easy,' said Mozn Hassan, 32, executive director of the seven-year-old group Nazra for Feminist Studies.

For the last seven years, the women of Fitampito have been defying tradition by helping their husbands to farm. Local traditions did not permit women to work the land. But that era is over, reports Farm Radio Weekly. Since women started farming in a few isolated villages in the High Matsiatra region, yields have improved significantly. In three years, rice yields have increased from two tonnes per hectare to five tonnes.

'Amr Moussa? He was pro-Mubarak and obedient. ElBaradei. What’s his history? Nothing. The others, what’s their history? Islamic groups, what’s their history? Their history is bad. Islamic leaders, their history is bad. They collaborated with the British and now they collaborate with the Americans and Saudi Arabia. So I have to study who is going to be the president by his character, his history, the program. It’s just individuals running to divide the cake. They want money and authority.' In this interview with prominent feminist Nawal el-Saadawi discusses women's rights in Egypt and makes the case for a female president.

Vigilante gangs of ultra-conservative Salafi men have been harassing shop owners and female customers in rural towns around Egypt for 'indecent behavior', according to reports in the Egyptian news media. But when they burst into a beauty salon in the Nile delta town of Benha this week and ordered the women inside to stop what they were doing or face physical punishment, the women struck back, whipping them with their own canes before kicking them out to the street in front of an astonished crowd of onlookers.

In this article originally from The Guardian UK website, Mona Eltahawy recounts her experience of being beaten and groped by Egyptian security forces. 'The last thing I remember before the riot police surrounded me was punching a man who had groped me. Who the hell thinks of copping a feel as you’re taking shelter from bullets? Another man tried to protect him by standing between us, but I was enraged, and kept going back for more. A third man was trying to snatch my smartphone out of my other hand. He was the one who had pulled my friend Maged Butter and me into an abandoned shop – supposedly for safety’s sake – and he wouldn’t let go of my hand.' She later tweeted: 'The whole time I was thinking about article I would write; just you fuckers wait.'

Formal women’s groups have historically been a part of the social and political organisation in the Niger Delta. Though these have tended to be based around cultural activities, they have also provided women-only spaces to organise voices of inclusion and assertion, writes Sokari Ekine in an article for Red Pepper. 'The success of women’s protests should not be seen solely in terms of the immediate impact on multinational oil companies. We should consider the wider impacts: the politicisation of women and the bringing together of communities such as the Itsekiri and Ijaw women in Delta State, who were driven into manipulated conflicts by the actions of the state and multinationals.'

This project includes the virtual Center for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema, which features a Primer for African Women Cinema Studies, a guide to the film and book, Sisters of the Screen as well as a timeline, related links, and 'voices' of African women in cinema from diverse sources. Moreover, it includes the ever expanding features of the Internet, Facebook pages, Youtube Channel (including Vimeo and Dailymotion, and Blog).

The goal of The Young Feminist Fund (FRIDA) is to provide accessible, strategic and responsive funding for young feminist-led initiatives. FRIDA invites applications from groups led by young women and transgender youth under 30 years for grants of up to US$5,000.

Thousands of Egyptian women have held rallies in Cairo against their treatment by security forces. Demonstrators brandished photos of a woman who was beaten and dragged along the ground, exposing her underwear - an incident that has outraged Egyptians. The rally took place in Tahrir Square, which has seen five days of deadly clashes between protesters and troops.

This report is the result of the work of an amazing group of women from Asia and Africa who came together to research the conditions of women in same-sex relations in their countries. With great determination and courage they set about revealing the many obstacles, humiliations and indignities these women face. They uncovered not only pain, invisibility and silence, but also the pleasures of bonding and the beauty of love.

In recent years, Malawian women have made significant gains in their struggle for full gender equality. Women are increasingly represented in national politics, for example. Malawi’s May 2009 federal election saw the proportion of female Members of Parliament rise from 14 per cent to 22. And though a minority, it is not difficult to find women’s names among the ranks of corporate board members.
Yet women in Malawi remain disproportionately affected by poverty.

Responses to climate change tend to focus on scientific and economic solutions rather than addressing the vitally significant human and gender dimensions, says this pack from Bridge. For climate change responses to be effective, thinking must move beyond these limited approaches to become people-focused, and focus on the challenges and opportunities that climate change presents in the struggle for gender equality, says the pack, which hopes to inspire thinking and action.

implements a system in Egypt for reporting incidences of sexual harassment via SMS messaging. The tool aims to give women a way to anonymously report incidences of sexual harassment as soon as they happen, using a simple text message from their mobile phone. By mapping these reports online, the entire system is intended to act as an advocacy, prevention, and response tool.

The United Kingdom has been surprisingly silent about Nigeria’s harsh new laws targeting homosexuals. This would be the perfect situation for the British government to launch its much-heralded policy of cutting aid money to countries that discriminate against homosexuals, but so far British money to Nigeria keeps flowing, and British officials remain silent, writes Simon Allison for the Daily Maverick.

A spokesman for Ghana’s Education Ministry has told the Accra Mail he is confident a programme in which teachers warn students of the 'adverse consequences' of being gay will make it 'a thing of the past'. LGBT Asylum News points out that the deputy director general of the country’s education service said in an interview this year that homosexuality 'started with single-sex schools'.

How should LGBT movements treat the Obama’s administration’s new offer of support? No one should be thanked for recognising human rights, argues Scott Long. Movements should insist on the values they stand for.

The dramatic changes to weather patterns as a result of climate change will have dire consequences for agriculture, the major source of food and income for Africa’s small-scale farmers, most of them women. Millions of people will be forced to migrate, seeking better environments to sustain themselves and their families as the land becomes unproductive. Not enough is being done in national adaptation strategies to acknowledge the different gender dimensions of climate change and migration.