The number of women dying in childbirth in Liberia has nearly doubled since the 1980s, according to a recent UN report that has policymakers calling for urgent attention to reproductive healthcare. While the report shows encouraging trends in infant and child survival, it puts maternal mortality at 994 women per 100,000 live births in 2007 compared to 578 in 1987.

Queer Muslims can expect much more than just spiritual upliftment during The Inner Circle (TIC)’s Annual International Retreat starting on 24 - 27 April in Cape Town, they are in for educational empowerment and recreation too. The impact of the Shariah on gender and sexual minorities in Africa is this year’s theme which, according TIC, was inspired by a rise in queer related incidences in Africa such as the fact that homosexuality is illegal and carries a death sentence in 12 Northern states that impose the Shariah Law.

The gay community in Kenya is demanding justice, protection and that government takes into serious account, increasing threats and attacks of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) people in that country. This comes come after a brutal attack of a lesbian in one of Nairobi’s prominent nightclubs, Madhouse, by a woman unknown to the victim, violence which the country’s gay community says was clearly motivated by homophobia.

Gender activists are calling on the new South African government to improve the country’s gender legislation. Current gender policies focus on women, ignoring the rights, roles and responsibility of men and boys, they say. "Not a single political party has made gender equality part of their manifesto, let alone focused on how they might involve men and boys in achieving this," said Bafana Khumalo, co-director of the Sonke Gender Justice Network, an NGO working with boys and men. "This has to change with utmost urgency."

Climate change is widely considered to be one of the gravest threats to the sustainability of the planet's environment, the well-being of its people and the strength of its economies. Mainstream scientists agree that the Earth's climate is changing from the build-up of greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide, that result from such essential human activities as electricity generation, transportation and agriculture.

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 2009/2010. These Fellowships1 are intellectual and financial awards for personal, professional and academic achievements, as well as the recognition of future potential.

cc As Zimbabwe celebrates 29 years of independence, Nyaradzai Mugaragumbo-Gumbonzvanda honours the ordinary women who fought for freedom and life with dignity, and reflects on the meaning of the liberation struggle both for her late mother Mbuya Rozaria Dizha and for Zimbabwean women of different generations. Mbuya Dizha ‘gave her daughters and sons to the liberation’, provided food and financial contributions for freedom fighters and was among the many thousands of rural women who voted for the first time in 1980, her contribution to creating ‘a new nation’. While the early eighties ‘were sweet moments for us, as girls old enough to understand the…dynamics brought by this wave of change and its possibilities,’ writes Mugaragumbo-Gumbonzvanda, ‘today’s young Zimbabwean girls are desperately looking for education, employment and hope.’

Awa was killed by her husband last November in Guelendeng, 150km south of the Chad capital N’djamena. Her death was the tipping point for the town’s women, who, appalled by the rampant violence they face, have decided to fight for their rights. In December dozens of women took part in a protest march, the first of its kind in Guelendeng, to condemn the violation of their rights and to call the government to account over the impunity that prevails.

Sierra Leone village chiefs, community members and women who perform female genital cutting have signed an agreement stating that girls in northern Kambia district will not undergo genital mutilation – or ‘cutting’ – before age 18. The number of girls being cut during the December 2008-January 2009 initiation season in Kambia dropped drastically, according to Finda Fraser, advocacy coordinator at local non-profit Advocacy Movement Network (AMNet), which runs a ‘Say No to Child Bondo’ campaign in the district.

For the first time in Ethiopia, gay people are meeting and making concrete connections despite religious leaders in that country calling on government to, in addition to the penal code, ban homosexuality on the constitution as well. Members of Ethioglbt are meeting and working to effect positive change, something that they admit, will take time.

Moroccan government has vowed to clamp down on homosexuals in a statement released by the Interior Ministry last month, citing that any practice that is a degradation of moral and religious values upheld in that region will not be tolerated. The latest attack has been sparked by the media in that country who have put pressure on government to allow homosexual voices to be heard.

The Parliament of Uganda strongly condemned homosexuality during its session on Wednesday 15 April where Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo presented a hard-hitting statement that the country should not compromise on the values it stands for. Following Buturo’s statement, several MPs also condemned homosexuality and called for stern action.

In an ambitious plan to educate women in the Maghreb about married life, activists from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia drafted a new marriage contract that, if certified, will provide better protection for women's rights. The idea was presented April 11th in Tunis at a meeting organised by the Global Rights Maghreb organisation and attended by human rights activists, members of women's organisations and legal experts.

cc Surveying the range of manifestoes and political stances offered by South Africa's political parties, Liepollo Lebohang Pheko exposes a common paternalistic thread underpinning parties' approaches to women's representation and rights. With many women legitimately concerned about politics being a 'dirty' game in the country – as elsewhere across the world – Pheko writes that those championing women's greater involvement face considerable obstacles, not least of which is the lack of space for critical thinking around how a dominant, masculined state fails to provide for women's citizenship. Female political candidates are at once excluded from their parties' strong backing through prejudice and the persistence of a self-serving 'old boys' club' behind the selection of candidates, the author notes. Attaining true liberation for women, Pheko argues, requires tackling injustice at each and every level it is encountered, a strategy that will ultimately necessitate an effective challenge to the state's ghettoisation of women's issues.

cc Despite studies which suggest that as many as one in two women in some parts of South Africa are affected by domestic violence, political parties in South Africa lack concrete, practical strategies to address violence against women, a debate organised by Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, Women’sNet and the department of political studies at Wits University has revealed. Party manifestos failed to adopt a multi-dimensional response to violence against women that go beyond the parameters of the criminal justice system, responses to the societal, economic and material dimensions are almost entirely absent, and no party recognises the unique circumstances and needs of marginalised groups of women who experience violence, write Lisa Vetten and Sally Shackleton.

Judges and gynaecologists in Benin have undergone training on the interpretation of forensic evidence in cases of violence against women, as well as in investigative procedures when dealing with rape cases. The training took place in Cotonou, the country’s economic capital, at an international conference held Mar. 16 to 19 as part of the Women's Justice and Empowerment Initiative, a U.S. government-funded programme to strengthen awareness of gender-based violence and prosecution of perpetrators in four African countries.

A ban on civil servants in Botswana wearing tight or revealing clothes to work is "sexist", a women's group says. The new directive said they could be disciplined for turning up in tight skirts or trousers, sleeveless tops, or clothes that showed cleavages or backs. The BBC's Letlhogile Lucas says women are particularly angered by a ban on headscarves and elaborate hairstyles.

IGLHRC, Global Rights, INTERIGHTS, ICJ-Kenya and CAL are pleased to announce a call to writers, in the broader sense of the word, to submit pieces of writing of less than a thousand words on the topic LGBT rights are human rights.

The lives of Zimbabwean women have deteriorated dramatically over the past decade, writes activist Prespone Matawira, but now is the time to be creative and confront, unpick, challenge patriarchal and capitalist power in order to make lasting change real for women. Feminist consciousness, says Matawira, challenges many of our deep-held assumptions which are not often noticed because they are so pervasive. And its complexity helps us understand other related oppressions based on race, class, age, sexual orientation, and disability.

Zimbabwean activist Prespone Matawira has devised a board game representing the game Zimbabwean women play every day, that of health, life and death.