Ngwa Amos, who earns a living by taxiing people from town to town on his motorbike, is now a single father of four. His wife died in labour on a recent morning at the Bamenda General Hospital in northwestern Cameroon. The African Union, along with government and nongovernmental organisations, have pledged to reduce maternal deaths in this region, but Cameroon is moving further from that goal. Cameroon's maternal mortality rate was 550 deaths for every 100,000 births in 1990 – the reference year for the goals. Since then, the key figure has risen to 1,000 deaths, according to the latest UN statistics.

‘Imagine if all African women could break the silence of sexual abuse without fear of shame and reprisal,’ writes Kabahenda Nyakabwa.

Five years after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) revised its laws against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), these crimes continue to go unpunished because of judicial inaction and a legal culture at odds with the changes. The laws, ignored and misinterpreted, have left escalating numbers of sexual violence survivors unprotected, and perpetrators free to violate again. When the penal code was amended in 2006, it was intended to 'prevent and severely reprimand infractions relating to sexual violence and to ensure systematic support for the victims of these crimes,' according to the text. To this end, it included previously ignored sexual violations addressed in international humanitarian law, and toughened up sentencing for those who violated the vulnerable, including children, the disabled and subordinates.

'In a world of changing priorities, can we spare some change for female-initiated preventive technologies, such as microbicides and female condoms, to support HIV-positive women and not just to protect women who are HIV-negative?' asks Morolake Odetoyinbo in this article from the UN Chronicle. 'Can we dare take a look at those national laws and policies which make women second-class citizens? Is it conceivable - and that is no accidental pun - that women’s rights can include sexual, reproductive, inheritance, and property rights?'

Screwdriver in hand, Doussou Konaté unscrews a broken solar lantern. She patiently cross-checks the cables. And within a few moments, it is fixed. Mrs. Konaté has never attended school. But two years ago she was one of seven Senegalese women who travelled to India to be trained as a solar power engineer at the Barefoot College in Rajasthan. When darkness falls in the small village of Keur Simbara, 76 kilometres from Dakar, the lights come on. Mrs. Konaté, a 57-year-old mother of six, is known locally as the 'light woman'. With a bright smile, she says, 'When night falls, everybody lights up their lamp and you can go anywhere you wish because everything is clear. It is just wonderful.'

Since discovering that her 13-year-old daughter was pregnant about a month ago, Juanita* has paid several visits to the local chief in her village in western Kenya, seeking justice for her daughter and punishment for the man who abused her. 'She told me it was her teacher who did it. I confronted him and he admitted [he was the father] - he told me we could just settle it as adults,' Juanita, 47, told IRIN at her home in Migori District. 'We have been going to the chief because the teacher tells me he wants to marry my daughter and take care of the child, but I don't want that. Let him take care of the child who is a result of his bad behaviour, but leave my daughter alone because I want her to go on [with her education],' she added.

A senior Egyptian general admits that 'virginity checks' were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities. The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the 9 March protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks. The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.

Global efforts to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS and improve the lives of people living with and affected by HIV are abundant, ranging from government initiatives to the multi-stakeholder Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria to NGO projects of all sizes. Much of this international body of work focuses on technical, bio-medical approaches to HIV prevention and treatment and fails to recognise the value of grassroots women's work in breaking silence, raising awareness and expanding access to testing and care - a crucial component in linking marginalised communities to testing and available treatment. Increasingly, grassroots women's groups are taking leadership within their communities by creating local programs for HIV/AIDS care and prevention that incorporate and respond to local contexts and needs.

From 9-26 April, Nigeria held parliamentary, presidential and governorship elections. During the last parliamentary term, only 7.3 per cent of the representatives in Nigeria’s upper and lower houses were women. In this year’s election, 200 out of 2400 (8.33 per cent) candidates for the House of Representatives and 80 out of 720 (11.11 per cent) candidates for the Senate were women. Abiola Akiyode of the Lagos-based Women Advocates Research and Documentation Center (WARDC) says that overall, 909 out of 10037 (9.06 per cent) candidates for all elective positions were women. These positions include the Presidency, governorships and parliamentary seats. There has been an overall regression in women’s representation in political decision-making positions.

Police in Nigeria freed 32 teen girls from an alleged 'baby factory' used to feed the region's exploding sex trade and human trafficking markets, authorities said. Cops in the southern Nigerian city of Aba raided the clinic, known as The Cross Foundation, Monday after receiving a tip that the owner was harboring pregnant girls and selling their babies, Nigeria's Daily Champion newspaper reported.

The four-day Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) meeting of ministers responsible for gender and women’s affairs ended in Windhoek on Thursday, 2 June. Issues on the agenda included the SADC regional gender programme and review of progress made by member states towards promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. Progress made in the signing and ratification of the SADC protocol on gender and development was also on the agenda. Thus far 13 member states have signed the protocol, while seven have deposited their instruments of ratification with the SADC Secretariat.

The South African ambassador to Uganda, a former columnist for South Africa's Sunday Sun paper, has been found guilty of hate speech for an anti-gay article. South Africa's Equality Court fined Jon Qwelane $14,450 (£8,920) and ordered him to apologise for promoting hatred in the column published in 2008. Headlined 'Call me names but gay is NOT OKAY', it caused an uproar at the time. Mr Qwelane, who was appointed last year to Uganda where homosexual acts are illegal, did not mount a defence.

Civil society organisations from across the Arab region met in Kuwait, from 4 to 5 May, within the framework of the Forum for the Future 2011, and unanimously adopted a declaration calling for the governments of the region to take urgent measures to eliminate discrimination against women. Based on universal standards and international law, the declaration calls on governments to abolish all discriminatory legislation within the next two years; to adopt laws to fight discrimination, violence and trafficking of women; and to withdraw all the reservations they have entered to the Convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW Convention).

Members of the gay and lesbian community have said they will lobby for the abolition of laws which criminalise their sexual orientation. Speaking at a dinner to mark the international day against homophobia and the minority groups, they said they will seek to have sections 162 to 165 of the Penal Code repealed. It was hosted by the Coast regional office of the Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals,Transgender and Intersexuals.

On 3 May journalists the world over commemorated World Press Freedom Day with gusto and pomp. They used the opportunity to reflect on the past, present and future events that have shaped the profession. But as the world commemorated, there were concerns in a Declaration issued by a Namibian conference about the lack of gender equality in the media.

A new blog known as Society's Perfection aims to bring issues affecting the LGBT community worldwide to the fore, although it has a focus on Africa.

‘As feminists, we see the arrest of former International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges as an opportunity to increase public awareness and as a wake-up call to renew action against sexual violence, not only in the US where his arrest occurred and in France, where media and many public figures are portraying him as the victim, but around the world.’ demanding ‘freedom from sexual assault and harassment’ for women ‘at all strata of society and in all corners of the globe.’

Looking at how Kenya's inheritance laws leave women in the lurch, Salma Maoulidi says it's impossible for African women to celebrate Africa Day when they are ‘not celebrated in the most intimate of spaces’ – their families and communities.

Pambazuka Press and The Africa Centre invite you to:

In the field of international security, discussions about women and children are usually marginalised. But is it possible to achieve human security without placing women at the centre of the policy agenda?

Discussion with Funmi Olonisakin, Awino Okech, Ecoma Alaga and Ekaette Ikpe, chaired by Patricia Daley.

The speakers' important new book,

In Cape Town, African women who think that AIDS is man-made are half as likely as other African women to have used a condom during their most recent sexual encounter, researchers report in the journal AIDS and Behavior. In addition, African men who believe that HIV is harmless while antiretroviral drugs are harmful are half as likely to use condoms as other men. There are important differences in the findings for men and women, which suggests that gender is crucial to understanding AIDS conspiracy and denialism in South Africa.