Full Coverage: Gender

31.10.2005 The African Protocol on the Rights of Women received its 15th ratification Thursday, starting the process in motion for the treaty to come into force in November, guaranteeing women a host of economic, social, and reproductive rights.

28.10.2005 Until Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration is taking comments from the public about the status of emergency contraception. The Feminist Majority Foundation is leading the call for emergency contraceptives--just like many other contraceptives--to be made available without a prescription.

27.10.2005 The Mookambigai College of Engineering, Kalamavur in Pudukottai district, and Anna University in Chennai jointly organised a 12-day programme to train self-help group women to establish information kiosks on college premises.

27.10.2005 National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Nepal organised an interaction programme with media persons to find out what was missing in the media relation in controlling human trafficking.

26.10.2005 APDIP and the UNDP Asia-Pacific Gender Mainstreaming Programme will be hosting a one-day workshop titled “Mapping Gender in the Information Society: From Reality to Discourse”. The event will be held on 31 October 2005 at the Menam Riverside Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand.

26.10.2005 Some of the proposed amendments to the Information Technology Act will give women facing abuse on the Internet a raw deal, say representatives of the Cyber Society of India (CSI), a Chennai-based organisation.

25.10.2005 Stoves requiring less wood or charcoal fuel not only help curb deforestation and air pollutants, they also decrease the time women and children must spend outside the safety of the camp, say refugee advocates.

25.10.2005 New mothers in Madagascar and Ghana have begun to hear about the importance of breastfeeding from many different sources--including their favorite singer--and the results are already beginning to show.

25.10.2005 The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration must have considerable experience with international crises, multilateral cooperation, and programs related to refugees and the reproductive health needs of women and adolescents. Unfortunately, President Bush's nominee fails on all counts, says a coalition of women's rights groups.

25.10.2005 Foreign experts at a session titled 'Internet Governance and Telecom Regulation' urged the Bangladesh government, civil society and the business community to work together to provide Internet facilities to every person of the country.

24.10.2005 The "Uzbekistan Development Gateway (UzDG)" component of the Centre for economic research in cooperation with Gender unit of the UNDP CO in the Republic of Uzbekistan developed the first edition of the "Gender equality in Uzbekistan" information e-newsletter.

24.10.2005 In the year 2000, the nations of the world came together to forge a unique compact. The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) sketched out a bold plan to halve extreme poverty by 2015. This unprecedented global initiative holds great promise. This yearÂ’s The State of World Population report stresses that gender equality and reproductive health are indispensable to the realization of this promise.

24.10.2005 The Supreme Court has urged courts not to deal with rape lightly and to refrain from suing the discretionary power vested in them to award a lesser sentence for the crime ‘indiscriminately’.

24.10.2005 The space for civil society and the people's sector in the Indian economy is shrinking though 90 per cent of the workforce is employed in this sector. For a group that comprises a large per cent of the economy there should still be space to grow and develop, Ela R. Bhatt, founder of the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) said on Tuesday.

23.10.2005 The grassroots organization Grupo Curumim has gained international recognition for working to reduce pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths in northeastern Brazil. Through collaborations with traditional birth attendants the group has raised awareness about accessing safe women's health services.

21.10.2005 Through community radio, students of Mudra Institute of Communications hope to help villagers find their voices and raise their concerns.

21.10.2005 Despite being integral to the grassroots peace building process, women are all but excluded from formal negotiations and political decision making. There is no peace, security, or justice unless both genders are fully involved in all stages of the peace process, says researcher Elisabeth Porter.

20.10.2005 It seems unlikely that whoever coined the term 'information superhighway' anticipated that the traffic on the internet would be in people, as well as information. How, and how much, the internet and other ICTs are implicated in trafficking is the subject of this issue paper.

17.10.2005 Time is ripe for giving some serious consideration to the introduction of ICT-based education at various levels. The use of ICTs as learning tools can supplement and strengthen the institutional system since it can encourage self dependence and creative learning, besides providing new tools for enriching the student-teacher interface.

17.10.2005 The presentation of a simple, innovative literacy tool in use in UNESCO-supported community learning centres in Tamil Nadu was presented at a UNESCO workshop on ICTs for Community Empowerment, held in Chennai, India, last week.