Government officials, representatives of United Nations agencies and members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines will be meeting from 29 November through 3 December to discuss their efforts and plans to implement the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. They are talking about national victim-assistance plans, including how landmine survivors are involved in designing, carrying out and monitoring such work. They are talking about issues that affect women like me.

Gender Based Violence (GBV) is a distressing reality effecting millions of women and girls in almost all societies around the world. The continuous violation of women’s basic human rights through GBV hinders not only their development, but also the progress of the communities and countries they live in. In Africa and in most parts of the world, the root cause of GBV is the unequal power relations that exist between females and males and the low status of women. FEMNET’s involvement in the Men to Men Project started with a men to men consultation held in December 2001. The consultation brought together men from Kenya, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa, representing community organisations, human rights and legal groups, religious organisations, universities and the police. Visit their site to find out more.

Uganda Health and Science Press Association (UHSPA-Uganda), a network of groups and individuals working to mainstream minority rights in Uganda’s public health policies and laws is concerned about the omission/exclusion of sexual minorities from accessing vital health services in the soon to be launched Health Sector Strategic Plan III.

The aim of the research was to understand the lived lives of lesbian identified woman in Tshwane (Pretoria). The idea was to investigate their psychosocial and sexual histories through in depth qualitative interviews. Most funded research projects exclude lesbian, bisexual and transgendered women, since the focus is mainly on MSM. This translates into a lack of appropriate service provision to lesbian identified woman. The health, specifically sexual health issues of lesbian women, is often completely ignored, especially when it comes to HIV issues.

Achieving universal gender equality is an ambitious goal, one that has been articulated in the UN Charter and many resolutions, conference outcome documents and decisions of governments. It will require a shift in the way we think about gender roles and financial resources will have to be made available. Compared to military spending, however, the amount seems ridiculously small. In 2008, the world's military expenditure was estimated to be US$1,464 billion.

November 25 marked the beginning of 16 days of activism for ending gender-based violence against women, and also the Take Back the Tech! (TBTT) campaign. Take Back the Tech! is a collaborative campaign to reclaim information and communication technologies (ICT) to end violence against women.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Sunday ordered for the arrest of gay couples. The PM asserted that the recent census showed there were more women than men and there was no need for same sex relationships.

The theme of this year's event, to be held between 22 February and 4 March 2011, is 'Access and Participation of women and girls to Education, Training, Science and Technology, including for the promotion of women's equal access to full employment and decent work. This Femnet update on the event has information about registration, parallel events and advocacy.

Commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on Women’s Rights in Africa, L. Amede Obiora and Crystal Whalen stress that ‘the noteworthy lesson is that there is a need to balance campaigning for ratification with a corresponding focus on impactful strategies for domestication and implementation’.

Minorities in Somalia are being subjected to a previously unreported pattern of gross human rights violations including summary executions, reported beheadings and rape, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says in a new report. The report, 'No redress: Somalia'’s forgotten minorities', says the situation for minorities is worse than for other groups in the current conflict because, unlike the majority population, they lack protection from the traditional clan structure.

September 2010 cast a dark cloud over Zambia’s chances of ending gender-based violence in the country when two political leaders beat up their wives. Early September, Opposition Patriotic Front (PF) Member of Parliament for Kasama Central and prominent Lusaka businessman, Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba, beat up his wife after a dispute at their residence in Lusaka. About two weeks later, Livingstone District Commissioner Francis Chika also assaulted his wife after a domestic argument. Both incidents were widely reported in the Zambian media.

This year’s 16 Days of Activism campaign focuses on women and conflict, a timely theme considering we are also reviewing 10 years since the adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution 1325. This resolution linked violence against women during conflict and their marginalisation during peace processes with the challenges of maintaining international peace and security. In the Southern African Development Community (SADC), this review takes place when many countries in the region have recently emerged from conflict and are in the process of peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction.

At the fifth anniversary of the coming into force of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, Corey Calabrese and Caroline Muthoni Muriithi argue that the focus for women’s rights activists across Africa should be on the protocol’s legal domestication, ensuring its provisions become ever further embedded within individual country’s laws.

Without reporting by states that have ratified the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, how can we assess what progress they've made in implementing it, asks Karen Stefiszyn.

With the African Union declaring the period 2010–20 to be the African Women’s Decade (AWD), Monica Ighorodje considers what the decade means for women’s rights activists and civil society organisations across Africa.

A Women for Women International report being released on international Stop Violence Against Women Day (25 November) finds ‘violence against women is the single biggest threat to peace’ and countries are falling strikingly short on UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) and UN (SCR) 1325 development and security goals. The report found that at the ten year mark, goals signed up to by UN members to eliminate poverty and empower women, have fallen strikingly short of expectations. While many countries are behind on their promises to meet the MDGs, particularly those goals in which gender is explicit, conflict-affected countries, are further behind.

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) calls again the attention of the world to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), theatre of the most deadly conflict of the last 50 years and massively affected by rapes committed on a daily basis by belligerents. The women and men fighting against this scourge in turn become victims of criminals who act with total impunity.

The trial of the two women's rights defenders, Dr. Isatou Touray and Amie Bojang-Sissoho, has been adjourned to 1 December. State prosecution officer Sainey Joof told the court that the case against GAMCOTRAP was not a civil case but that it was the state that had brought the case against the two senior officers of the organisation.

The International Development Law Organisation has carried out research to compile comprehensive, accurate and strategic information on how best to enhance the protection of girls through legal empowerment approaches in four target countries, Bangladesh, India, Kenya and Liberia. The research focused on: access to birth registration, access to education, access to property rights, protection from child labour, protection from trafficking, protection from commercial sexual exploitation and protection from underage marriage.

The rapid growth of the ICT market in Uganda has been greeted with optimism over its potential to boost the country’s development. But less attention is being paid to the increase in gender based violence due to the use of information and communications technology. The rapid adoption of mobiles has also seen a rise in invasion of privacy through SMS stalking, monitoring and control of partners’ whereabouts.