General - News

Peru's government has reopened an investigation into a controversial birth control programme of sterilisation. The announcement has brought fresh hope to the many women and men who feel their rights were violated. "You give birth like pigs or hamsters!"

On Sept. 21 Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff became the first woman ever to give the opening speech at UN General Assembly session. She called this ‘the century of women'. Barely a fortnight later, three women won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2011; Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, peace activist Leyma Gbowee from the same country and democracy activist Tawakkul Karman of Yemen — the first Arab woman to win the prize.Women have made dramatic gains in electoral politics, winning high profile national leadership positions and seats in parliaments around the world.

The Permanent Missions to the United Nations of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States submitted to the Security Council's Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1533 (2004) concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the name of Ntabo Ntaberi Sheka, to be added to the list of individuals and entities subject to a worldwide travel ban and asset freeze.

Seventeen young women arrived in Durban to ensure that decisions made at the 17th Conference of the Parties on climate change (COP17) take gender issues into account.

Three countries in South America's Andean region, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, have a great deal to teach and share with those meeting in Busan, South Korean this week to discuss, among other things, how to make sure that development aid incorporates a gender focus in order to be effective. "Tell me what you spend on and I'll tell you what your priority is," Juana Quispe, who lives in one of the dusty shantytowns in the hills on the outskirts of Lima, told IPS.

As ACFODE celebrates her 26th birthday this month, and as the country prepares for the 16 Days of Activism Campaign Against Gender Based Violence (GBV), ACFODE wishes to express concern over the high levels of violence against women in Uganda, and to emphasize that such acts are a violation of their human rights, peaceful existence in homes, communities and in the nation.

As we mark the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, we appeal to everyone to participate in promoting “Peace in the Home by Challenging Militarism and Ending Violence against Women”- in line with this year's global theme.

Master Andrew Adansi Bonnah, the 11-year-old Ghanaian schoolboy who recently launched a global campaign to raise $13 million for victims of famine in Somalia, has been appointed Goodwill Ambassador for Girl Soldier Eradication in Africa.

More attention is being paid today to the inter-relationality between gender and war/conflict than ever before, raising interesting and often frustratingly confounding questions. For example, do the gender roles which dictate our wartime behaviour create a cyclical effect in which our behaviour in wartime further reinforces and defines our peacetime gender roles? Societies which experience more gender equality are less likely to be war prone, suggesting there could be a strong argument to be made for gender peacetime roles and gender wartime roles directly affecting or relating to one another. An evaluation of rape as a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) demonstrates that indeed this correlation exists.

The deputy minister for Gender, Child and Social Welfare Dr. Priscilla Nyanyang Joseph has called on women to learn and claim their human rights as enshrined in the constitution. “When women know they have rights in the constitution, they will be able to stand up and claim their rights; because rights are claimed, they are not given”, said Dr. Nyanyang.