Great Lakes: Women's low input in follow-up to regional pact decried

Women are often the victims of armed conflicts in Africa's Great Lakes region yet they are underrepresented at the UN-sponsored meetings to implement a declaration signed in November 2004 by heads of state in the region on regional peace, security, democracy and development, a UN official said on Wednesday. "No women representatives were at the peace and security thematic task force [meeting]," George Ola-Davies, the spokesman for the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), told IRIN on Wednesday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, during an ICGLR gender experts' strategy workshop.