The deputy executive secretary of the United Nations Commission for Africa, Lalla Ben Barka, has urged governments and the rest of the international community to prioritize achievements of gender equality and women' rights as these are essential in the crusade of poverty reduction and the promotion of growth.

Sudanese women have called on the African human rights system to assist them reform the repressive laws back home in Sudan. In a paper they presented at the 46th ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and people's Rights in Banjul, the Gambia, a group of Sudanese human rights activists called for an urgent reform of the public order regime in Sudan.

Experts, civil society organizations and other key stakeholders in women's empowerment and gender equality issues have agreed to improve the lives of African women, a UNECA press lease has said.

It has become all too common that every newspaper edition carries at least one carry a story on domestic violence or rape. Efforts to engage men as partners in the prevention and response to gender-based violence (GBV) are critical to achieving positive results. This 16 Days of Activism, men across the region will lend their support for ending violence.

As the region’s technological capacity grows, a new kind of gender violence is emerging in Southern Africa. In this new media age, the information super highway has become a tool for social networking and the world has become a global village where people of different walks of life are meeting. However, women in countries like Malawi are quickly recognising technology, such as the internet, as both a potential asset and a threat.

Media has always, and will always, have a major impact on the lives of human beings, simply because it has the power to influence! In fact, one of the main objectives of media is to influence change. With 16 Days of Activism just around the corner, it is an appropriate time to reflect on media and gender, and media’s role in helping to put a stop to gender violence.

Women in North Africa have made tremendous progress in promoting and upholding their rights. Women in this region—commonly known as the Maghreb—are at the forefront of the Arab world in terms of individual rights and gender equality, and constitute models for other Arab women to follow.

African Union (AU) experts on women and gender affairs will submit their recommendations to establish the African Union Women’s Trust Fund feasibility study, the African Union Commission Gender Action Plan, and the Roadmap for the African Women’s Decade: 2010-2020 to ministers in charge of gender and women’s affairs on 21 November. In order to disseminate and monitor the implementation of the Action Plan the meeting proposed using faith-based groups, imams, and the media to sensitise and transmit messages to women and society at large.

, based in South Africa, has put together a programme of action for the

Zimbabwe has ratified the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Gender and Development, a regional instrument for advancing gender equality and women's rights. It is the second country after Namibia to ratify the protocol.

Carole Ageng’o takes a closer look at the interplay between gender relations and conflict in the three phases of Kenya’s electoral process – pre-election, election and post-election. Highlighting the barriers women face to participating in each phase despite international standards and regional instruments for protection of the rights of women, Ageng’o argues that entrenched social roles have ‘made it difficult for men and women to share power, privilege and status on the basis of equality'. A change in prevailing gender relations, Ageng’o suggests, is key to ‘empowering communities torn apart by war to build peace from below’.

Despite the wide adoption of protocols for gender equality across Africa, ‘violations of women’s human rights have reached epidemic proportions,’ Mary Wandia writes in Pambazuka News, ‘and unless we adopt a multi-sectoral approach in the implementation and monitoring of regional and international commitments, we shall continue to marginalise half of the continent’s population.’ With the Beijing +15 Africa Review meeting underway in Banjul, Wandia asks whether Africa’s ministers for gender and women will ‘rise up to the challenge’.

The Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) was unveiled some 15 years ago, leading Norah Matovu Winyi to ask what has really changed for Africa's women since the platform's inception. Over the last 15 years progress in women's position has on the whole been regrettably slow the author notes, with a wide gap between commitments and actual action still persistent. But with the unveiling of a new resolution to 'establish [a] new gender-equality entity in the United Nations', there is fresh hope that the international organisation will be able to work with governments and Africa's citizens to revitalise the drive for equality, peace and development.

Can religion and homosexuality ever be reconciled? Inclusive and Affirming Ministries (IAM) strongly believes so and says dialogue is a biblical way in which people of faith should tackle “sensitive and painful” issues, rather than debate which “only polarizes and divides people.”

It is one of the world's oldest professions, dating so far back that it is even mentioned in the Bible. But in the deeply cultural and religious country of Swaziland, Senator Thuli Msane stirred a hornet's nest when she publicly challenged a new strict bill opposing prostitution. Msane spoke out against arresting sex workers, when she said government should first address the humanitarian challenges that drive them into the trade.

Morocco's National Initiative for Human Development (INDH) has done a solid job of developing a charity network, but still needs more participation by women, children and local councils, according to a recent report by the initiative's oversight body.

At least 83,000 Somali children and women benefited from the Child Health Days Campaign carried out with United Nations support in the Afgooye corridor, which hosts displaced people who fled their homes owing to the violence in the capital, Mogadishu.

According to this September 2008 document from USAID entitled "Addressing Gender-Based Violence Through USAID's Health Programs: A Guide for Health Sector Program Officers", research demonstrates that gender-based violence has implications for almost every aspect of health policy and programming, from primary care to reproductive health programmes, because it not only results in injury and death of its victims, but also it can contribute to the spread of HIV. Reducing violence and coercion is among five high-priority gender strategies of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

The International Training Programmes are specially designed for persons qualified to participate in reform processes of strategic importance on different levels and who hold a position in their home organisation with a mandate to run processes of change. This methodology is based on the assumption that your country wishes to carry out changes and is willing to invest its own resources to achieve these changes.

Two Kenyan lesbians have been released on bail after being allegedly arrested for lesbianism, and later being charged with stealing, an offence which the women refuted suggesting it was blackmail. According to the co-ordinator from the Solidarity with Communities in Distress (SOLCODI) Program which advocates for the gay and lesbian community, the women are being blackmailed because they are lesbians.