Women are yet to make significant inroads into the media 15 years after the Beijing Platform of Action recognised its centrality in advancing women’s rights. Preliminary findings of the 2010 Global Media Monitoring Project conducted by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) suggests that women constitute less than a quarter of those interviewed, heard, seen or read about in mainstream broadcast and print news.

Sitting in my office in Johannesburg reading the daily newspaper published for the Beijing+15 Review at the Conference on the Status of Women in New York, I feel a sense of discomfort, a sense of a world going wrong. First, I read the article ‘Playing it safe or losing ground?’ where we find out that the Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, is not present at the meeting. Second, the governments' have agreed to come out with a Declaration after the Review, not an outcomes document.

Deputy UN Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro has lauded women groups for their achievements in advancing gender equality globally. Speaking at the opening of the 54th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW) in New York, Migiro urged the women to move their achievements on gender equality "from commitment to action in several key areas".

The UN Millennium Campaign, Femnet and Oxfam GB have announced the commencement of a series of global conversations to discuss the status of the promises world leaders have made to women in the Millennium Development Goals.

More than 450,000 people have signed an online petition urging Uganda's parliament to drop a bill that would impose the death sentence for the crime of "aggravated homosexuality" - when an HIV-positive person has sex with anyone who is disabled or under the age of 18.

Pan African Devevlopment Education and Advocacy Porgramme (PADEAP) Nigeria is situated in Funtua, Katsina State Nigeria. Northwest Nigeria is currently the focus of our work. With an estimated 36 million people, it is one of the most populated zones, yet one of the most neglected in terms of infrastructure. Consequently, the zone has high rates of maternal and child mortality and poverty, low literacy rates and an abysmally large literacy gap between men and women.

The 45-member Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), presiding over one of the largest gatherings of women at the United Nations, listened Monday to dozens of speakers spelling out the successes and failures of gender empowerment worldwide.

'The story of Lillian is very sad and its just one example of the thousands of women who die at child birth,' writes Caroline, while Susan says that it 'is sad that our people die out of preventable circumstances'.

The Conflict, Security and Development Group (CSDG) at King’s College London together with the Africa Leadership Centre (ALC), is pleased to announce a call for applications for the Peace and Security Fellowships for African Women for 2010/2011. These Fellowships are intellectual and financial awards for personal, professional and academic achievements, as well as the recognition of future potential.

Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa interviews Freedom Nyamubaya, one of the few field operation commanders in Zimbabwe’s war of independence. She is now a writer and rural development activist. Makoni-Muchemwa finds Freedom shaped by her past: ‘If I weren’t in the struggle, I wouldn’t be the same person. It was an education in itself; it was managing to live with nothing.’ When asked about her past desire to start a political party in Zimbabwe, Freedom states: ‘Politics is no longer about any ideologies, or policies, it’s not about building the country. I would like to be remembered as somebody who contributed to the development of the youth, or the development of Zimbabwe.’

8. ( a ) Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate;
23. (1) In women's institutions there shall be special accommodation for all necessary pre-natal and post-natal care and treatment. Arrangements shall be made wherever practicable for children to be born in a hospital outside the institution. If a child is born in prison, this fact shall not be mentioned in the birth certificate.
(2) Where nursing infants are allowed to remain in the institution with their mothers, provision shall be made for a nursery staffed by qualified persons, where the infants shall be placed when they are not in the care of their mothers.

This dossier is an answer to the pressing and serious need to inform the funding Authorities on the new and unknown patterns which the trafficking for sexual exploitation machinery is assuming. In particular, Be Free wishes to report the modalities through which many African women, mainly Nigerians, are illegally taken into the Country, after a long journey that foresees a forced stay (up to one year) in Libya, before their final destination voyage to Lampedusa (Sicily) by wreck boats.

The High Court of Swaziland ruled on 23 February 2010 that some married women will be allowed to register property in their own name. It has been five years since the new Constitution granted women equal status, after centuries of being classified and treated as minors.

Margot Wallström starts March 1 her two-year stint as special U.N. representative on ending conflict-zone sexual violence. She says she'll be going right away to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a global epicenter of mass rape.

2010 marks the 15th anniversary of the Beijing World Conference on Women. In recognition of this anniversary, the NGO Committee on the Status of Women, NY is organizing an NGO Global Women’s Forum to consider implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA).

Angolan women, particularly in government, want to achieve equal representation in the number of decision makers in the coming years, the Minister of Familiy and Women Promotion, Genoveva Lino has said.

By age 15, Annonciata Nduwimana was an accomplished fighter for Burundi's opposition Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and knew how to kill in battle. "My father was killed, accused of sheltering rebels. We [her mother and two elder brothers] then fled to Bujumbura to seek safe haven," she said.

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched a new online database that exposes the widespread gender gap in land rights around the world. The Gender and Land Rights database allows users to produce comparative reports on several different statistics, such as the total number of women landholders and rural households headed by women, in almost 80 countries

A number of South African Methodists are angry and upset about the ruling that a well-liked minister must be "defrocked" because of her gay marriage. Reverend Ecclesia de Lange of Cape Town married her life partner in December and was suspended by the church in January.

Despite arrests presently rocking the Kenyan gay community, human rights institutions recently held the first ever Public Lecture on Sexual Minority Rights aiming to address the rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals among students and members of faculties of different academic institutions in Kenya.