As women around the world celebrate the international 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, the Women Won’t Wait. End HIV and Violence Against Women. Now (WWW) Campaign has expressed concern at the alarming trend of governments criminalizing HIV exposure and transmission worldwide. More than 58 countries worldwide have laws that criminalize HIV transmission and/or exposure or use existing laws to prosecute HIV positive people for supposed transmission of the virus, with another 33 countries considering similar legislation.

cc. In September of this year, UN member states passed a resolution to move swiftly to create a new UN agency for women, a move, packaged with a series of reforms on governance and funding, that they hope will result in renewed public faith in the UN system. Julia Greenberg, AIDS-Free World’s associate director, tells the inside story behind the sudden groundswell in support for the new women’s agency and why the global community of women living with, and affected by HIV/AIDS, should care.

cc. States in Transition Observatory look at the Zimbabwe’s botched election and the subsequent violence, and how this has specifically affected women. They underscore the fact that in times of crisis and conflict, such as those still being witnessed in Zimbabwe, it is always the women and children who are most victimized. The case of Zimbabwe shows how women suffer, both for perceived direct participation in the political process, but also by proxy, for their husbands’ or family members’ involvement. In Zimbabwe, as in other conflict areas, sexual violence continues to be a tool of war.

A woman in Malawi left her husband after years of abuse. He found her and raped her, an act not criminalised in Malawi when it occurs within marriage. The woman later tested positive for HIV and discovered that her husband had known his HIV-positive status for some time. When she confronted him about why he had infected her, he responded: "Because we must leave together".

The influential European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, is reported to have been "shocked" by the rushed move of the Burundian parliament to criminalize same-sex relations. Michael Cashman, an MEP representing Britain, was surprised by the sudden decision in Burundi, immediately raising the issue with EU Commissioner Michel, asking him to bring the matter up with the government of Burundi.

Efforts to improve agriculture in Kenya often miss the mark by targeting men instead of women. One woman spent 20 years organizing female farmers to share investments and training. Now men are joining too, and the women's work is paying off.

Still wearing a campaign t-shirt with the slogan "FED UP: with violence against women", Dlamini-Shongwe, the public relations officer for the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA) is fresh from the Nov. 25 launch of the16 days activism against gender-based violence at Jubilee Park in Manzini.

This 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is even more relevant this year to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) than ever. While gender violence continues to be an unrelenting problem in the region, the August 2008 signing of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development arms gender activists with a powerful tool to lobby and hold governments accountable to extending 16 Days to year-long action to fight gender violence.

Some of the poorest countries in Africa have put in place appropriate laws and policies to protect child rights than wealthier countries. The countries have allocated their limited resources to the provision of basic needs for their children and the funding arrangement has helped greatly in protecting the children against exploitation and harmful traditional practices.

One after the other the women sat infront of the audience and TV cameras and told of their ordeal. Each story was as heart wrenching as the previous. The women told terrifying tales of how men in uniform broke into their homes, beat them and violated them.

Women and girls in eastern Congo's North Kivu province are once again suffering increasing levels of sexual violence amid renewed conflict, instability and widespread displacement of civilians. An International Rescue Committee team conducted a three-day assessment of conditions in Kibati Camp, north of Goma, where roughly 55,000 people have settled. The team found that women and girls are being raped both in and around the camp.

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, OMCT joins its network members and partners to call for therecognition that human rights cannot be universal without the protection of women from gender-based violence and discrimination.

On 19 October 1999, at the 17th meeting of the Third Committee during the 54th session of the General Assembly, the representative of the Dominican Republic on behalf of itself and 74 Member States introduced a draft resolution (document A/C.3/54/L.14) calling for the designation of 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The violence that characterized the presidential run off elections left a trail of disaster in Zimbabwe. The state sponsored post election violence from May 15 to 29 July 2008 left hundreds of women and girls traumatized because of rape which was used and continue to be used as a weapon of war. Many women not only lost their homes they had worked so hard for the past two decades to own but also hands, fingers, legs and their genital organs.Betty Makoni, Founder & Director of the Girl Child Network in Zimbabwe, recently launched the Zimbabwe Rape Survivors Association (ZRPS)

Like many teenagers in rural Ethiopia, Shekuria Mume, 19, became pregnant, quit school and got married at 15. The birth of her first baby remains one of her most traumatic experiences, as an untrained traditional birth attendant (TBA) delivered her. "I had heard that some women die while giving birth so I was scared most of the time during my pregnancy; I didn't sleep much," Shekuria told IRIN.

Seven women and thirteen men from Anglophone and Francophone Africa and the Caribbean met during the last days of September in Gorée Island, Senegal. They have many things in common, but one in particular is their ability to make innovative connections in gender, agriculture and information and communication technologies (ICTs). This ability has led them to be finalists of the Gender, Agricultural and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants fund.

With the media perplexing lives of gay people in Nigeria, the government there plans to clamp down on them. This comes after Nigeria’s State and Federal governments announced to arrest all homosexuals and to ‘bring to book’ Rev Jide Macaulay of House of Rainbow Metropolitan Community. Macaulay’s church was closed two months ago after the media in that country claimed it was an exclusively homosexuals church.

Continued violence against women is one of the focuses of a continental meeting reviewing progress made towards achieving gender equality in Africa. Participants in the sixth African Development Forum (ADF VI) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital are putting their leaders to task over their failure to implement international declarations made to end violence against women.

Meriem and her friends, while washing their families' clothes in a stream near their rural homes, used to dream and giggle about having a romantic wedding someday. Her fairy tale would turn into a nightmare when she was 14 years old, however, when her father decided to give her away in marriage.

A traditional chief in Manicaland with strong ZANU PF links, has instituted civil proceedings to ban women from holding political posts in his chiefdom. So incensed is Chief John Rukweza about the emergence of an influential female MDC councillor in his area that he wants to ban her and all other women from political activities.