While women are active in political campaigns, few manage to stand for election themselves. Mauritius - along with Botswana, Malawi and Madagascar - did not sign the Gender Protocol at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in August. While the island nation has made some recent progress in political representation of women at the level of Parliament, much remains to be done to allow women to enjoy their full rights in the political arena.

“I do not find religious arguments against homosexuality persuasive because I have come to learn that historically religion has been manipulated and misinterpreted to oppose the rights of various minority groups such as women, slaves, etc.” So said Reverend John Makokha of the United Methodist Church of Kenya in his August 16 open-letter to Bishop Daniel Wandabula who is allegedly silent, after numerous complaints by Makokha that he is getting hateful messages from the church, based on his positive views on homosexuality.

The agony for Eudy Simelane’s family and friends continues due to the failure of the South African justice system. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) activists, social movements and Kwa-Thema residents held a public protest on September 10 aimed at raising their concerns over the delays in the Eudy Simelane court case.

Moroccans and rights groups are speaking out against a recent fatwa that would allow parents to marry off their underage daughters. Opponents to Cheikh Mohammed Maghraoui's fatwa say the marriage of nine-year-old girls is a violation of human rights in general, and children's rights in particular.

People who practise female circumcision should be jailed for life, a Cabinet minister has proposed. The practice, according to Gender and Children Affairs minister Esther Murugi, was entrenched in all but four communities in Kenya and the prevalence was alarming. Ms Murugi said previous attempts by the Government as well as local and international organisations bore little success, going by the number of incidents reported.

The UNICEF Goodwill ambassador Angelique Kidjo in collaboration with Children Associated with the War [CAW] at George Street in Freetown said that the practice of forcing girls into prostitution must stop, and the girls must be given a chance to rebuild their lives.

Pandemonium broke out in Igueben Local Government Council of Edo State when a widow and mother of three, Patience Iyah was set ablaze by her uncle, Ahmed Okoro Evbohon over her refusal to take to prostitution abroad. The attack which took place when the widow arrived her village for the burial ceremony of a late relation created confusion in the community as the villagers wondered whether all was well with him.

The sixth African Development Forum (ADF VI) will be convened on the theme " Action on gender equality, empowerment and ending violence against women in Africa " from 19 to 21 November 2008 at the United Nations Conference Centre in Addis Ababa , Ethiopia. The Forum, one of the principal events of the Economic Commission for Africa 's 50 th Anniversary celebrations, is being jointly held with the African Union (AU) and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Officials from the Zimbabwe High Commission this morning barred African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) from delivering a letter of solidarity with the women of Zimbabwe. While at the Zimbabwe High Commission, an official came to the gate to meet the FEMNET staff and activists from Men for Gender Equality Now (MEGEN) and assured them he was going to make arrangements for the letter to be officially delivered to authorities inside the offices.

Locked iron gates, entry by invitation, absence of the media and controlled noise behind one of Gaborone’s town houses appeared to be an illustration of innate fear by Batswana lesbians, gay and bisexuals to be outed and recognised as homosexuals during a pride party hosted by the Lesbians, Gay and Bisexuals of Botswana (LeGaBiBo) recently.

Hatua, a cutting edge talk show on Kenya’s Citizen Channel, unraveled a topic of homosexuality for the first time on Saturday 23 August. With the topic, Hatua, a project of the Mohamed Amin Foundation, supported by a grant from the Open Society Initiative for East Africa (OSIEA), aimed to highlight human rights issues surrounding the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community in Kenya and to open a dialogue around homosexuality.

When Khadra's* husband fell sick, she became the sole breadwinner in her family. As an internally displaced person (IDP) who fled Mogadishu a year ago, work opportunities were few and she had to resort to the risky occupation of collecting firewood."I had to walk 10 kilometres out of town every day with my two young daughters. We would collect firewood and sell it for 30,000 Somali shillings (about $US1)," she told UNHCR in Baidoa, some 230 kilometres north-west of the Somali capital of Mogadishu, adding that this income was not enough to provide for the family.

One of the highlights of the recent Southern African Development Community (SADC) Summit 2008 was the launch of the SADC Free Trade Area (FTA). Increased integration could bring a wealth of opportunities for the region, yet for the most vulnerable, especially women, these benefits will largely depend on their access to finance, training, and productive resources needed to participate fully in the regional economy.

Globally half of the people living with HIV and AIDS are female. Biologically, women are more likely than men to acquire HIV. Gender inequalities and human rights violations heighten girls' and women's vulnerability. Investing in comprehensive HIV prevention for women and girls is also an investment in the health and well-being of boys and men and of communities.

For years now, women’s groups in Southern Africa have campaigned tirelessly to ensure that the Southern African Development Community adopt the Protocol on Gender and Development. Yesterday, the SADC finally took that historic step. Member states will be obliged to amend their laws to ensure equal rights for women across a wide range of issues, from provisions that require member states to enshrine equality in their constitutions, to firm commitments to reduce maternal mortality by 75 per cent.

Pick up the promotional brochure of any government, NGO or corporate social investment programme and you will read that poor women are an important beneficiary group – if not the most important target of social relief and investment programmes. Many millions of Rand are raised and spent in the name of alleviating the plight of poor black women, particularly those living in rural South Africa.

During my studies, I went to one of the local courts to attend a proceeding for the seizure of a widow’s property. Seated in one of the benches was a frail looking woman whom I could tell had been sobbing. When the court house was empty, as the matters for the day had been completed, I passed her on my way out; she did not even noticed my presence until I tapped her shoulder, then without lifting her bowed head she said, “I don’t have anywhere to go; they should have dug a grave for me also.”

We women from 15 West African countries and Mauritania, representing 33 organisations and networks of the sub region, at the West African Women’s Consultative Meeting on Aid Effectiveness and Gender Equality, organised in Lome, Togo from 25th to 27th June 2008 by Women in Law and Development in Africa, (WiLDAF) with financial support from UNIFEM Regional Office for West Africa and OSIWA (Open Society Institute for West Africa);...

Early in September 2008 the world will hold another one of its mega gatherings in Accra Ghana - the third high level forum on aid effectiveness. World leaders will convene to append their priceless signatures to a document now popularly called the triple A, which stands for the Accra Agenda for Action. The triple A, an outcome document ostensibly from the three days of intense discussions and lobbying is actually a prepackaged condensation from evaluations of the implementation of the Paris declaration and consultations about them conducted between 2006 and 2008 in all the regions of the world. It includes promises to expand and include more of the actors/agents of development such as the civil society organisations (CSOs) who were sidelined in the earlier rendition of the Paris declaration. It charts the broad actions that will no doubt occupy many development actors between now and December 2011 when the fourth high level forum on aid effectiveness takes place.

This paper attempts to show how and why the text of the triple A had to be different from the Paris declaration. The custodians of the Paris declaration insistently make the point that the triple A does not overtake, override nor overwrite the Paris declaration. The former only reasserts the latter.

CNN's Anderson Cooper will be highlighting the plight of women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the CBS news magazine, 60 Minutes, this Sunday. This is a re-airing of the piece televised in January and included a visit to Women for Women International’s offices in the DR Congo. The program will be broadcast at 7:00 pm ET on Sunday, August 17. Please check your local listings for 60 Minutes air times.