Following the recent eruption of Indonesia's Mount Merapi on October 26, the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA) has provided critical medical and other assistance to tens of thousands of pregnant women who are among the 340,000 people uprooted from their homes.

UNICEF Children's Advocate Graça Machel says it is important for Zimbabwe to put children's and women's rights onto the agenda of the country's constitution making process.

Graça Machel said she visited Zimbabwe this week to learn how it was dealing with developmental challenges, particularly in relation to women and children, since the formation of the unity government last year.

Tougher measures are needed if Southern Africa is to attain its 50-percent target for representation of women in political and decision-making positions at all levels by the 2015 deadline.

The low number of women who made it into parliament in the recent elections held in some Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries in 2008 and 2009 proved a major setback towards achieving the desired goal by 2015.

IT IS an irony, a painful one, that peacemakers who seek to broker a swift end to conflict and a lasting and enduring peace are often at the receiving end of violence and threats.

Women leaders rallied behind Secretary Teresita Deles of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) as they gathered to launch WE Act 1325 on November 17, 2010, at Miriam College, Quezon City.

In a press release distributed by Myra Tambor, Executive Director of a woman's group in Samar called Katungod han Samareña Foundation (KSFI), it said that the movement has four objectives.

Kampala — More Ugandan women have come up top take the lead in various fields among others entrepreneurship.

Kampala. The tendency for women to lag behind in most developing societies, still lingers on and this extends to the area of economic empowerment.

This happens in a number of ways including lack of up-to-date knowledge and skills to grow their businesses yet those who have brilliant ideas never live to see them turn into actual businesses. This, in a way has seen many would be promising women businesses stagnate as others collapse.

Taking paid employment on top of domestic work and farming isn't easy for many Ugandan females, but times are changing and women are increasingly finding ways to enter the cash economy. Veronica Oakeshott reports

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is a smart, highly-educated politician, and a skilful negotiator, but I wonder whether she did the right thing in agreeing to head the United Nations' new agency for women's rights, scheduled to start operating Jan 1. She will face formidable obstacles to get things done.

The new decade begins with the election of another woman president. Dilma Rousseff, the Labor Party's candidate, won the presidential elections in Brazil with 56 percent of the votes. Similarly, Laura Chinchilla, candidate for the Partido Liberación Nacional, won the presidential race in Costa Rica with 47 percent of the vote. In Chile, meanwhile, Michelle Bachelet ended her term with an approval rating of 83 percent.