Participation

The Microfinance Unit of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in collaboration with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), and CARE International, has completed a weeklong financial training program for more than one hundred women representing five community based organizations.

Women Democracy Group, an NGO, has launched a campaign to train 3,000 women who are to contest for various seats in the forthcoming general elections.

The coordinator of the organisation, Ms Rita Aciro, said the programme is aimed at equipping woman candidates in the 2011 general elections with fundraising, management and publicity and public speaking skills among others.

Members of Rwanda Women Parliamentarians Forum (RWPF), who are currently meeting in the Western Province, have acknowledged that poverty among women remains a major challenge.

The lawmakers are meeting evaluate their 2009 activities and part of 2010 and set projections for the coming year.

“Rwandan and Congolese rebels gang-raped nearly 200 women and some baby boys over four days within miles of a U.N. peacekeepers' base in an eastern Congo mining district,” wrote Michelle Faul of the Associated Press in an August 23, 2010 article. She cites an American aid worker and a Congolese doctor as her sources.

In a country where machismo is still the rule, Sandra Torres doesn't cut the demure figure of past first ladies.

She doesn't host social events or boost charities. What she does do is give orders -- lots of them.

Torres oversees President Alvaro Colom's huge state program of social assistance, which involves anti-poverty handouts to hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. She oversees the work of several Cabinet members.

The White House was quick to deny a Financial Times report two weeks ago that U.S. President Barack Obama has conditioned an arms sale to Turkey on Ankara's adopting a more sympathetic approach to Israel, but the Turkish-American arms deal is still being delayed.

It is not that Obama objects to the deal, but rather Congress that doubts whether Turkey is still a friend of America.

Intimidation of candidates for the upcoming vote for the lower house of parliament in Afghanistan undermines reconciliation, Washington said.

Afghanistan is preparing for Sept. 18 elections for the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of parliament.

Life is not easy for many women in Sudan. Because of decades of civil war, they have suffered extreme violence and trauma due to displacements, the loss of life and instability of their country.

One Hundred (100) women have successfully graduated in forestry management in Kamakwie, northern Sierra Leone after a two-day intensive workshop organized by a non governmental organization, Young Green Women-Sierra Leone (YGW-SL). The training which targeted women between the ages of 18 and 35 was based on the topic ‘Sustainable Forestry Management for Community Development and Participation.'

When she gets up in the morning, Ghadeer Malek, a young Palestinian feminist activist, checks her Facebook page to keep up on new developments and messages linked to her work.