The African Leadership Centre (ALC) was established in Kenya in June 2010 as a joint initiative of King's College London and the University of Nairobi. The ALC is pleased to announce a call for applications for the Peace and Security Fellowship for African Women for 2011/2012. This Fellowship is an intellectual and financial award to those who have demonstrated obvious or potential capacity to make a change in their field.

We are only 12 years old. We can't influence politics and the war, but we want to live! We wait for peace. Will we live to see it? -A class of school children. Those words convey the heartfelt hope of a group of African children who have seen first-hand the gory effects of wars and armed conflicts.

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) announced today that its initiative on gender and peacebuilding is now become a full programmatic center, naming Kathleen Kuehnast as director. Kuehnast, a socio-cultural anthropologist, joined USIP in 2008 following a 15-year career in international development and post-conflict.

Today a UN committee looked into whether Israel was complying with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). And, of course, human rights groups came out in full force to blame discrimination against Palestinian women on Israel — including the poor quality of girls' education, domestic violence, and early marriage.

Reports of Bangladesh, Belarus, Israel, Kenya, Lichtenstein, Sri Lanka and South Africa to be Reviewed

Climate change is the most urgent and critical issue of our time. Ensuring equitable participation of women and men in developing solution to this challenge is paramount to moving towards a sustainable future. Women's participation at all levels is integral to achieving the goals of sustainable development and poverty alleviation; as women and children are the ones greatly affected by the impact of climate change.

We hope the events and mediators we have assembled may be of interest.

Updated Media Advisory Jan. 14, 2011
Contacts:
Jonathan Talbot, 202-403-2016 / 202-997-4744 or talbot@huntalternatives.org
Jaime Horn, 917-523-0705 or jaime.horn@gmail.com

A New Approach to Ending and Preventing Wars – Women Mediators

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment UN WOMEN (formerly UNIFEM) is helping build the capacity of Liberian civil society by training local non-profit organizations to advocate for the integration of gender initiatives into the budget of local and national government through gender responsive budgeting (GRB).

Earlier this week, Mollie suggested that it's a good time to cover religious liberty questions, as we've seen continual reports of violence in Egypt, Iraq and other countries.

In religious liberty issues, sometimes we'll see an added dimension to violence, such as socioeconomics, race or sex. The New York Times has suggested sex differences may be part of Pakistan's blasphemy law implications.