Gender gaps in schooling in Senegal are pervasive, says a paper from the Population Council, USA. In both urban and rural areas girls suffer from marked disadvantages relative to boys in all three measures of schooling. In wealthier urban households, girls' disadvantages are smaller, but not completely eliminated. Furthermore, no systematic reduction in female disadvantage is apparent in rural Senegal, even in the uppermost stratum of households. Judging from these findings, income growth alone is unlikely to close the schooling gap between urban and rural areas or between boys and girls in Senegal.

Senegal is pushing to plant a "Great Green Wall" of trees stretching for nearly 7,000 km (4,375 miles), from Dakar to Djibouti, to stop the relentless advance of the Sahara desert. Environment Minister Modou Fada Diagne said the West African country, which hosted a meeting of experts this week, would start planting trees this year in the eastern Ferlo region which borders Mauritania and Mali. "Instead of waiting for the desert to come to us, we need to attack it," Fada Diagne told Reuters in an interview late last Thursday.

In Senegal, gender gaps in schooling are pervasive and are only modestly influenced by standards of living, says this report from the Population Council, USA. In both urban and rural areas girls suffer from marked disadvantages relative to boys. In wealthier urban households, girls' disadvantages are smaller, but not completely eliminated. Furthermore, no systematic reduction in female disadvantage is apparent in rural Senegal, even in the uppermost stratum of households. Judging from these findings, income growth alone is unlikely to close the schooling gap between urban and rural areas or between boys and girls in Senegal.

Senegalese opposition leader Abdourahim Agne has been charged with threatening state security after urging peaceful demonstrations against the president. The authorities said a recent speech he made was an incitement to rebellion. Mr Agne, who was arrested on Saturday, could be sentenced to five years in prison if convicted.

How is education faring in Africa five years after the World Education Forum? This is the question posed at a regional conference organized by UNESCO Dakar from June 13-15 in Dakar, Senegal. The Conference is expected to: Review and analyse the state of the art of educational development in Africa; Highlight and discuss policies, practices and interventions that work, analyse factors behind them; Identify the nature of problems and constraints hindering the Education for All process and propose ways and means of moving the process forward; and Define concrete proposals on how to move the EFA process forward.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites applications from African scholars to fill a vacant position of Program Officer in the Department of Training, Grants and Fellowships in its pan-African Secretariat located in Dakar, Senegal. This position is categorized as belonging to the senior staff of the Council and as such is filled on the basis of an international announcement. The successful candidate will work as a member of the Secretariat under the overall supervision of the Executive Secretary of the Council.

PeaceWomen has received a Diola translation of SCR 1325 from the Women in Peacebuilding program (WIPNET) of the West African Peacebuilding Network (WANEP). Diola is spoken in the Casamance region of Senegal (South). The Diola translation was prepared for women involved in WIPNET's Rural Women's Peace Initiative, which took place earlier this month. Approximately 40 women in the communities of Kaguitte and Djibidone were trained using WIPNET's Community Women Peacebuilding Manual. The goal of this initiative was to build the capacity of rural/grassroots women's groups to play active roles in preserving peace in their communities. The translation was disseminated to the women in order raise awareness of the resolution and its meaning.

Back in 1997, 13 Senegalese villages publicly declared that they would no longer permit female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM) as it's called by critics. In the eight years since, the number has grown to 1,527, representing 30 percent of Senegalese communities where FGM has been practiced. Dozens more villages are preparing to make similar declarations in the coming months. The sea-change in Senegal is being credited to a slow but steady program of human rights education that allows villagers to make up their own minds about whether to abandon female circumcision. Spearheaded by a local rights agency called Tostan, the program's success is proving so eye-catching that the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is endorsing it as a model.

Senegal has one of the lowest HIV infection rates in Africa, but the central town of Touba, a Muslim shrine where over one million people gathered last week, is a hotspot where prevalence rates have shot well above the national average. “We don’t know exactly what the HIV prevalence rate is in Touba, but it is considerably higher than the national average of 1.5 percent,” Doctor Mamadou Dieng, who works in a health centre in Touba, told IRIN.

Senegal, which is considered one of the African countries that has "most effectively" responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, is facing a "pivotal and worrying moment" as it attempts to provide education and treatment to its residents, the Financial Times reports. Public health advocates are worried that the country might be "in danger" of "sacrificing historical progress made through sensible policy-making, helpful cultural practice and geographical good fortune" and might waste incoming international aid funds, according to the Times.

Senegal's homosexual men are peeping out from behind the mask, but social and religious taboos run strong. "We are always pretending," said one of a couple of the leaders of the country's underground movement who had agreed to come out of the woodwork to talk to PlusNews on condition of anonymity. "Sometimes we feel sick of the lies."

Senegal's fledgling gay movement is battling for recognition in the struggle against HIV/AIDS and hopes to win its first ever government grant to assist homosexuals living with the disease. The problem is that homosexuality is illegal in devoutly Muslim Senegal, and the MSM movement - the acronym stands for "Men who have sex with men" - is asking for funds from the government-run National Council to Fight AIDS (CNLS).

Amnesty International has welcomed the adoption by the Senegalese Parliament of the bill abolishing the death penalty. Senegal becomes the fourth member state of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to outlaw recourse to capital punishment (after Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Ivory Coast). Under the lead of President Wade, the bill had been adopted unanimously by the government in July 2004. It was passed with an overwhelming majority. Senegal has not carried out executions since 1967 but has continued to hand down death sentences, most recently in July 2004.

"The follow-up committee for the ratification and the implementation of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) on the Rights of Women in Africa informed us that the law on the ratification of the Protocol was adopted unanimously Wednesday the 1st December at the National Assembly. The law has now to be transmitted to the President of the Republic will promulgated it. The instrument of ratification will then be deposited at the African Union." (Also available in French)

The road between Ziguinchor, capital of Senegal's lush southern region of Casamance, and Cap Skirring, a once booming beach resort, is only 70 kms long. But the journey takes three hours because of military roadblocks and killer pot-holes caused by two decades of strife-related neglect. The Casamance, wedged between Guinea-Bissau to the south and Gambia to the north, was once Senegal's bread basket and a tropical haven for European tourists. But for 22 years it has been the scene of an on-off separatist conflict that has displaced 50,000 people and left hundreds injured by land-mines.

Working with women's groups to mobilize community members about the importance of blood supplies in the fight against maternal mortality, CEDPA/Senegal is aiming to achieve nationwide coverage for all blood needs by organizing 11 regional blood drives. In Senegal, the maternal mortality rate is 510 deaths per 100,000 live births. More than 28 percent of these deaths are related to hemorrhages, and the local blood banks do not have the resources to respond to the demand for transfusions. More than 50 percent of all requests for blood transfusions are issued by maternity services.

As its poorer West African neighbours, Guinea and Sierra Leone, grapple with endemic cholera, Senegal is facing a rare but telling explosion of the disease in low-income neighbourhoods of its busy capital, Dakar. The first cholera epidemic to surface in Senegal in eight years broke out on 11 October in a crowded, low-income suburb of the capital, highlighting the link between disease and the poverty across the continent that is associated with urban decay and rural exodus.

Cholera has broken out in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, for the first time in eight years, government doctors said on Tuesday. Doctor Bassirou Johnson, an epidemiologist at the Ministry of Health, told IRIN that 66 cases of the highly infectious water-borne disease had been reported in slum areas of the city since 11 October, but there had so far been no deaths.

The biggest technology player in francophone Africa is CFAO Technologies. Bought by French magnate François Pinault, he decided to make it a major African technology player and its rapid growth put the heat on local ICT suppliers. Now there's a Senegalese company that's biting back. Launched by Mamadou Dieng, Netcom is a systems integrator that is rapidly building itself a regional presence through local acquisitions. Interestingly, there are few independent regional companies like this in anglophone Africa of any scale.

The 4th International Conference & Exhibition on Traditional Medicine "Traditional Healing & HIV/AIDS" originally scheduled for October 4-6, 2004 in Dakar, Senegal, has now been postponed to April 11-13, 2005.