Egypt has criminalised sexual harassment for the first time, in a move that campaigners say is just the first step towards ending an endemic problem.
Source: Voice of America
Dakar — More than 200 West African elected officials and civil society leaders have converged on Dakar this week for a conference on female leadership. As parity laws bring more and more women into local and national governments, experts say it isn't translating into improved policies on so-called women's issues like health, women's rights and development.
Source: The Star
In a single week last month, Jill Abramson, the first woman to serve as Executive Editor of the New York Times, resigned under duress, and Natalie Nougayrède resigned as Editor-in-Chief of France's leading newspaper, Le Monde, complaining in an open letter of having been undermined. What, if anything, do these high-profile dismissals tell us about women in senior workplace positions?
Source: Tunis Afrique Presse
Tunis, — The Young Women's Leadership in Political and Social Development (YWLD) Programme was launched, on Thursday, at a news conference held in Tunis.
Source: Tanzania Daily News
Dodoma — THE government has admitted that gender violence remains a big problem in the country with 6,000 cases reported in 2013 alone.
Source: The Point
The World Health Organization classification of"FGM defines type 1 "mutilation" as excision of the prepuce with or without excision of part of the entire clitoris.
Source: World Food Programme
Rome — The heads of two frontline United Nations agencies today urged donors to support a swift response to end the suffering of thousands of malnourished as well as sick women and children fleeing violence in Central African Republic (C.A.R.).
Source: The Daily Independent
The Nigerian Women Trust Fund, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), on Thursday urged all stakeholders to provide opportunities for women to occupy elective positions in the forthcoming 2015 general elections.
Source: The New Times
TWENTY-YEAR-OLD Diane Uwamahoro is a dentist at Remera Rukoma Hospital in Kamonyi district. She attributes her passion for sciences to Ni Nyampinga, a magazine dedicated to empowering girls.
Launched in 2011 by Girl Hub Rwanda, Ni Nyampinga is a platform for girls to learn, connect, and explore the opportunities around them.
Source: Christian Aid
PRESS RELEASE
Journalist Jineth Bedoya Lima, a survivor of sexual violence in Colombia's conflict, is in the UK to attend the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. There she will highlight the ongoing impunity for crimes of sexual violence in the country's continuing internal armed conflict.
Source: IPS News
MBABANE, Jun 5 2014 (IPS) - For months, Nonkululeko Msibi could not find her voice each time she wanted to share the news to her husband. She had learned that she was infected with HIV at the age of 16 when delivering her firstborn baby at Swaziland's Mbabane Government Hospital.
Source: Magharebia
An international programme is gathering Maghreb youth to help guide their countries into the future.
Source: This Day Live
Women rights activists and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) recently gathered in Istanbul, Turkey to address the failures of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on the rights of women, and proffer solutions for inclusion in the post-2015 agenda, at an event organised by the Journalists and Writers Foundation of Turkey.
Source: GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP for EDUCATION
Access to free, primary school education is a promise to children that all world leaders have made through the U.N. Millennium Development Goals and the Education For All movement. But the right to education, particularly for girls, is still too often denied – sometimes violently as the recent abduction of more than 200 school girls in Nigeria shows.
Source: Voice of America
A senior Nigerian official says President Goodluck Jonathan's administration has launched a nationwide sensitization campaign to inform citizens about the government's effort to improve security, combat terrorism and update people on the search for over 200 school girls abducted by the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram.
Source: The Herald
More than half of teenage girls in Zimbabwe do not have access to sanitary wear and use unhygienic alternatives such as leaves, a senior Government official has said.
Source: Radio Netherland Worldwide
In the Democratic Republic of Congo there have been more than two decades of armed conflict, sexual violence against women and widespread impunity for their abusers in the DRC. The Survivors Speak OUT! Network, a group of torture survivors, calls upon the United Nations to encourage the DRC government to respect the human rights conventions.
Source: Timeslive
Meriam Ibrahim, 27, has been in prison in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, since January on charges of abandoning Islam and of adultery. The sharia court refused to recognise her Christian marriage.
Source: UNFPA
LUKULU DISTRICT, Zambia – Olivia Kaunda, 34, just moved to a shelter in the Luvuzi Rural Health Centre in Western Zambia. Eight months pregnant, this is the place she will call home for the next few weeks as she prepares to give birth in the adjacent clinic.
Source: BBC Africa
Niger has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, and is struggling to stop the practice, writes the BBC's Fergal Keane.