One year after the formation of South Sudan, the country’s women say that independence has not resulted in the positive political, economic and social changes that they had hoped for. Women activists worry that even after separation from Sudan, when South Sudan became the world’s newest country and Africa’s 54th nation, the government has not done enough to improve the lives of its women. But as people across the country celebrate the first anniversary of independence from Sudan, after a 21-year civil war, the year has been fraught with crises.

Kenyan women match men almost coin for coin in the now vibrant mobile money transfer market, surveys published by an international polling firm show. According to three studies on payments and money transfer behaviour carried out in Kenya and another 10 sub-Saharan African countries carried out by Gallup and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, both genders are involved in mobile money transfers in equal measure.

A high court judge in Uganda, Justice Eldad Mwangushya has said security agencies should 'infiltrate' gay rights groups to ascertain if children are 'recruited into homosexuality'. The judge made in Kampala at the beginning of the hearing of a case brought by gay activists against the government and Ethics and Integrity Minister for forcing the closure of a gay rights workshop in February this year.

In 2010 and 2011, the International Land Coalition (ILC) supported five community-based projects promoting the legal empowerment of rural women. Projects piloted innovative ways to enhance women’s land rights, but also identified models for replication and scaling up. Activities included raising women’s legal awareness through grassroots mobilisation, community trainings, and consultations and the provision of paralegal services, with the aim of improving women’s ability to use legal and administrative processes and structures to gain or maintain land rights and to benefit from them. This briefing note captures lessons learned from these five projects and from the learning exchanges.

The women of Sudan have had enough, says this post from blog Africa is a Country, about the protests in Sudan. 'What started as a protest by a small group of women escalated, by the following Friday, into a sandstorm, which has continued to today. That includes protests, crackdowns, arrests and disappearances, State violence. And the women keep on keeping on.'

A survey of international refugee assistance organizations has found widespread failures to protect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) refugees. As increasing numbers of refugees flee persecution because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, the Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM) and Indiana University sociologists have released the first ever survey of attitudes of the international refugee assistance non-governmental organizations (NGOs) serving asylum seekers and refugees worldwide.

The way of life of minorities and indigenous communities in East and Horn of Africa is under threat as governments and investors expand natural resource extraction on their lands, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says in its 2012 annual report. 'State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2012' documents the scale and severity of the impact on minorities of an unprecedented competition for scarce resources, prompted by the prolonged drought that wreaked havoc in the region and the knock-on effects of the global economic downturn.

Long before people took to the streets of Tunis and the squares of Cairo, two important acts of mass civil resistance tipped the balance of power and forced concessions for democratization in Guinea (2007) and Madagascar (2009), with women maintaining visible leadership within the top tiers of the mobilizations.

The way of life of minorities and indigenous communities in East and Horn of Africa is under threat as governments and investors expand natural resource extraction on their lands, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says in its 2012 annual report.

This page provides information for the communications procedure of the Commission on the Status of Women. 'Any individual, non-governmental organization, group or network may submit communications (complaints/appeals/petitions) to the Commission on the Status of Women containing information relating to alleged violations of human rights that affect the status of women in any country in the world. The Commission on the Status of Women considers such communications as part of its annual programme of work in order to identify emerging trends and patterns of injustice and discriminatory practices against women for purposes of policy formulation and development of strategies for the promotion of gender equality.'

This is a short clip from the event 'No Economic Justice without Gender Justice: Building Inclusive Movements for Change', held at the AWID forum in Istanbul, April 2012, and organised as part of the BRIDGE Cutting Edge programme on gender and social movements. It discusses gender relations within social movements.

Egyptian women's rights activists have only bad options in the current power crisis. If the Islamists in parliament hold power, they could erase years of legal gains for women. But if the military has its way, a police state could re-emerge, reports

Plan International says it is deeply concerned at new proposals by the Egyptian parliament to reduce the legal age for girls to marry to 14 - just four years after a successful campaign increased the age limit to 18. 'Early marriage can have a devastating impact on girls’ lives – they are more likely to be forced out of school, live in poverty, have early pregnancies and endure health complications or die during childbirth.'

Uganda said on Wednesday 20 June it was banning 38 non-governmental organisations it accuses of promoting homosexuality and recruiting children. Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo told Reuters the organisations being targeted were receiving support from abroad for Uganda's homosexuals and accused gays and lesbians of 'recruiting' young children in the country into homosexuality.

The life and work of Thomas Sankara can be taken as a reminder of both the power and potential for human agency to enact transformation.

This report is the result of the work of an amazing group of women from Asia and Africa who came together to research into the conditions of women in same-sex relations in their countries. 'With great determination and courage this group of women set about revealing the many obstacles, humiliations and indignities these women face. They uncovered not only pain, invisibility and silence, but also the pleasures of bonding and the beauty of love,' says the preface. Major themes in the research were female masculinity, the silencing and invisibility of Women-Loving-Women (WLW), and attempts at organizing on the basis of non-normative sexualities.

Police in Kampala, Uganda on Monday raided a gay rights meeting and arrested several LGBT activists gathered at the Essela Hotel in Najjeera, a Kampala suburb, accusing the participants of 'propagating gay issues in Uganda'. East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project, the organization behind the workshop, said that police interrupted the meeting and began questioning attendees at the event, including activists from Canada, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.

It is reported that several bars and clubs in the major cities have declared an all out war against persons who are perceived as gay, lesbian or transgender. From reports gathered in Nairobi, Nakuru and Mombasa, popular drinking joints are now enforcing a strict no-entry rule on men who are deemed too effeminate or women seen as too ‘masculine’ or ‘butch.’

Negotiations for Rio+20 have been fraught with attempts to take 'people' and social development out of the equation and lay the solutions at the altar of market driven forces through the 'green economy.' For women and young people, this means that fundamental issues affecting them, such as their right to health and education, are in danger of being sidelined, says this article.

Although the overarching view that Africa is a hyper-masculine society with no social space for women persists, numerous examples show how resilient and innovative women reacted when faced with patriarchal hegemony.