September 1st, 2014 marks the first anniversary of the creation of the Special Envoy on Gender at the African Development Bank[i] (ADB). The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) spoke to Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the first Special Envoy on Gender Issues at ADB, to learn more about the Bank's main goals and challenges for gender equality...
...Research has shown that addressing gender inequality in agriculture would see a much-needed increase in global food security.
The same is also true in the context of climate change. For example, rural women are often more vulnerable than men to climate shocks - but given the right support, they can significantly boost yields and help make farming more resilient....
...The report is clear that we must carry through a high level of ambition into 2015. It is time for us to charge into next year and ramp up the fight to end extreme poverty by 2030, and here are three opportunities to do that even before we finalise the new goals....
By Nevia Pavletic, Implementation Science Intern, TRAction Project. The fact that nearly one in three women globally has experienced intimate partner violence, a form of gender-based violence, is widely known.
...Recognizing gender-based violence as a medical and public-health emergency – and reinforcing the World Health Organization’s recent declaration that gender-based violence is aglobal threat “of epidemic proportions” – The Lancet’s special edition is blunt about the grim toll of violence that deliberately victimizes women and girls: “Every day, millions of women and girls worldwide experience violence. This abuse takes many forms, including intimate physical and sexual partner violence, female genital mutilation, child and forced marriage, sex trafficking, and rape....
High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres on Monday marked World AIDS Day by stressing the importance of closing the gap between people who have access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support services and those who are being left behind.
The theme of this year's World Aids Day is "Close the Gap," which Guterres said was also an important call to action at a time when the world is setting ambitious new Sustainable Development Goals for the next 15 years. "Ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030 should be a central component of the post-2015 development agenda," he said in a message to staff.
Improving access to finance for women farmers in Africa is critical to sustaining food security and empowering women to improve productivity in agriculture as they account for 70 percent of the farming labor force in most African countries. Although they play a significant role in farming, they are still often perceived as not being "real farmers".
Kenya’s hot and arid north has been suffering droughts and dry spells for years, which locals say are getting more severe. Herders have seen their animals die, leaving them with nearly nothing...
While social problems continue to exist, there is a new storyline emerging from Africa. One that is full of promise and hope.
This next generation of savvy young Africans also cares about the environment. They have been taught to value charismatic megafauna like the cheetah from a young age, as having these wildlife species ensures tourism, which drives the economy. They also understand the importance of biodiversity in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. This is because many have either visited Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia as part of their basic education or participated in one of CCF's school outreach programs....
Gender inequalities, and the violence that maintains them, are not simply a matter of individuals and their behaviours; they are maintained by the social, economic and political institutions that structure all of our lives. So, what can men do to work with women in challenging the institutionalised nature of sexual and gender-based violence?
Through exploring ways of engaging men as gender activists within their every-day contexts, the Mobilising Men programme is working to better understand what it takes to confront sexual and gender-based violence in institutional settings. Since early 2010, the Institute for Development Studies, with support from UNFPA, has partnered with implementing civil society organisations in India, Kenya and Uganda to identify, recruit, train and support teams of male activists to work with women in developing campaigns to challenge and change the policies and cultures of specific institutional settings that condone or even fuel sexual and gender-based violence.
‘Mobilising Men in Practice’ brings together stories and lessons from this work, as well as some of the tools used by the partners in India, Kenya and Uganda. It is intended to inspire and guide others who are committed to engaging more men in efforts to address sexual and gender-based violence within the institutions in which we live our lives.
Make Every Woman Count would like you to join its efforts to contribute to the global campaign to end gender violence “From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World: Let’s Challenge Militarism and End Violence Against Women!”.
To mark the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, Make Every Woman Count will be running a series of articles under the theme "Celebrating the Resilience and Courage of Women Survivors of Gender-Based Violence" toshowcase the life histories of 16 African women survivors of gender –based violence be it at home or in conflict.
Women survivors of violence are usually portrayed as victims, in this series, we will be showing the resilience and the courage of these women to move from victims to be inspiration to other women by changing not only their life but the life of other women as well.
We will be posting one article each day about their journey during the 16 days of activism to celebrate these inspirational women.
If you know any woman who should be featured in our 16 days of activism series (you can also nominate yourself), please send us her contact atblog.makeeverywomancount@gmail.com
War affects women in a unique and disproportionate way. It is our hope that this series will engage with women from across Africa and around the world to lead the way to a more peaceful and secure 21st century than the last, characterized by military dictatorships, civil wars, state conflicts and genocide.
....The droughts in the US and Russia and their impact on harvests have dominated the news in the last few weeks. And with the latest USDA announcement that the US maize crop would be the smallest in six years and the soybean crop the smallest in nine years, there is media speculation about the future impact on global food prices. The food price spikes of 2007/08 and 2010 have shown us that national and regional risks can have global implications. But for smallholder farmers in Africa - at least half of whom are women - droughts are but one of the many hurdles that they may need to overcome in the course of each agricultural cycle..
With barely three days to the end of The “Sixteen Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence,” a group of women activists want the role of Traditional Herbalists addressed.
The campaign hopes to raise awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue at the national, regional and international level. This year’s theme is ”Let’s challenge militarism and end violence against women.”
Farm Africa has worked with farming communities in Ethiopia for 25 years. For the past four years, the charity has worked in rural parts of the country to reduce food insecurity by empowering local women to increase their household income.
County Governments have been asked to enact laws and policies that can stump out gender based violence.The remarks were made in Kisii during the kick-off of the 16 days of human rights activism.
When the 69th UN General Assembly opened in September, negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda remained an abstract concept in many ways. Organizational issues for the September 2015 summit to adopt the agenda were not settled. The co-facilitators for negotiations on the agenda were not yet appointed, and the timeline for even initial consultations on organizing the negotiations was unknown. In Second Committee sessions, delegations expressed uncertainty about how negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda would be handled alongside the Committee's annual agenda.
Following several events in late October and early November, the sustainable development landscape started to come into sharper focus, with many pieces falling into place in rapid succession. This policy update will give an overview of the journey to the post-2015 development agenda thus far, including: the people guiding the way, checkpoints that must be cleared, and translations of a few key terms.
“Women’s empowerment is vital to stop man-inflicted violence,” former president of Ireland Mary Robinson has told a seminar organised by the Irish Consortium on Gender Based Violence (ICGBV).
“We have to address the equality and empowerment of women as part of this. We have to value women’s rights in every country,” she said. The world has to give “a sense to the girl child that she is as important as her brothers.”
Women's rights organizations meeting in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia from 14-16 November have called on African governments to re-dedicate themselves to upholding national, regional and international laws and policies that advance women's rights and gender equality on universal human rights standards already agreed upon and protect them from social moral and cultural arguments and positions.
Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) were discussing the progress made in the field of women's and girls' rights 20 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPfA) was adopted.
...The rights, priorities and needs of African women and girls must intentionally be highlighted in the ongoing regional and global discussions such as the 59th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 59) scheduled for in March 2015, where governments will be reviewing and appraising implementation of the BDPfA. In addition, CSOs are keen to strengthen gender equality and the empowerment of women in the Post-2015 development agenda through the integration of a rights-based and gender perspective....
There is a lot to learn from Rwanda when it comes to women empowerment and political participation, a top UN official told visiting parliamentarians yesterday.
Diana Ofwona, the acting UN resident coordinator, who is also the UN Women Representative in the country, addressed about 50 women legislators from Africa's Great Lakes and Sahel regions, who are on a study tour in the country.
For five days since yesterday, the parliamentarians will learn about Rwanda's success in women political empowerment as Rwanda is ranked the country with the highest number of women in Parliament in the world.
The women parliamentarians are from Burundi, Burkina Faso, DR Congo, Republic of Central Africa, Mali, Madagascar, Niger and Eritrea.
The Rwanda Men's Resource Centre trains men to change negative and violent behaviour. During the trainings, plans are formulated on how to address gender-based violence at the community level.
RWAMREC is a local, grass-roots organization founded in 2006 by a group of Rwandan men who wanted to engage men in gender issues and promote ‘positive masculinity’, which encourages men to be loving, caring fathers and partners who are supportive of gender equality and women’s empowerment. RWAMREC educates and mobilizes entire communities to reject violence and redefine masculine identity.
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