Fifty Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) officers yesterday concluded a two-day course on "prevention and response to conflict-related sexual violence in peacekeeping theatres."

The training took place at Rwanda Peace Academy in Musanze District.

Windhoek — Gender Based Violence (GBV) is one of the greatest threats to achieving some of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, the Director of Gender Equality and International Affairs in the Ministry of Gender Equality and Child Welfare, Victor Shipoh, said.

A mother of a three year old baby identified as Kadiatu Momoh Sheriff, a resident of Mobi Village in Sierra Leone has been arrested by officers of the Women and Children Protection Section of the Liberia National Police and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and illicit trafficking of humans in Liberia.

Over 770 people have filed their bids for participation in the parliamentary elections in Chechnya, a republic in Russia's North Caucasus, election commission chair Ismail Baikhanov said on Wednesday, August 14.

At a meeting with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Baikhanov said more than 200 of them were women.

The South African government announced this week that it will reintroduce 22 sexual offences courts by the end of 2014, with the first opening on August 16.

The idea for courts that deal specifically with cases of sexual offence was first seen in South Africa in 1993, and grew to become 74 established courts across the country by 2005.

As Mogadishu's Liido beach became a popular spot, where young men and women are predominant during the holidays, women began last Friday to carry axes to the beach for protection, Garowe Online reports.

The National Research Council has begun an intense gender-based violence campaigned in several communities in Paynesville.

The campaign cross cut on religious lines, gender and status. Young men and women were seen with placards and public announcement system [PA system] in various communities sending out messages aimed at ending gender base violence.

The Female legislative Caucus of Liberia's National Legislature says it will shortly introduce a parity bill.

The bill, according to the chair of the Female Legislative Caucus Representative Josephine Francis (UP- District #1 Montserrado County), will promote equal participation of women and men at the level of the Legislature and in other places of work.

Juba — South Sudan president, Salva Kiir unexpectedly reversed an earlier order, appointing five ministers and an equal number of deputy ministers in the newly formed government.

Kiir, in an executive order issued Sunday, also split ministries that were previously combined with another, into separate institutions as it were before the entire government was dissolved on 23 July.

Women political activists in rural Zimbabwe have told Amnesty International they have been threatened with violence and forced to flee with their children for refusing to reveal their vote to supporters of Robert Mugabe's party during harmonised elections.