Participation

In fulfilment of Section 15 of the United Nations Mission in Liberia's (UNMIL) SOP, soldiers of the Ghanaian Battalion (GHANBATT) 13 were awarded UN Medals on Friday 08 April 2011 at the Battalion Headquarters in Buchanan, Liberia. It was an occasion for the UN to honour the troops and to show appreciation and gratitude for their contribution to peace and stability in Liberia.

In a speech at Ahfad University for Women in Omdurman, Sudan, on April 9, USAID Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg announced a new USAID global grant program to increase the substantive involvement of women in peace processes.

The Federation of African Media Women in Zimbabwe (FAMWZ) says there is lack of gender sensitivity in Zimbabwean media.

FAMWZ said female media practitioners continued to be trampled upon, with very few women to date having managed to get into the higher echelons in the media fraternity.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched a film documenting how the hopes and dreams of women, indigenous and disadvantaged groups in Nepal were fused into the country's new constitution.

With the exception of the three nations of Nepal, Bhutan and Iran, Cornell University's Kathryn March, Feminist and Professor of Anthropology, Gender, Sexuality Studies and Public Affairs says, "Every single country there has had its highest political position occupied by a woman, at least once."

A senior commissioner has urged President Benigno Aquino III to appoint a woman to the remaining vacancy in the Commision on Elections (Comelec).

More than 100 female business and political leaders gathered in Harare for a three-day international conference on "Women's Economic and Political Empowerment and Peace Building".

The event was held at the five-star Harare International Conference Centre (HICC), currently undergoing a major million-dollar spruce-up.

The two women from Egypt had just started their presentation Monday when Leymah Gbowee spoke up from the audience. “I'm sorry to break up this meeting, but I cannot contain my joy,'' said the peace activist from Liberia. “The president of Ivory Coast has just been captured!''

Women from all the main parties are set to join forces next week — to demand an increase in females in the next Assembly.

Yet only one in six candidates fighting it out for the 108 seats are women — a marginal drop compared to the last Stormont election.

Women now represent a slight majority in the province (51%) even before the next census figures are revealed.

The Saudi government's refusal to let women vote in municipal elections in September 2011 unlawfully deprives women of their rights to full and equal status under the law, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on the election committee to allow women to vote and to run for seats on the municipal councils.