Gender

CANADA: U.N. to Probe Missing and Murdered Native Women

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
As a United Nations committee initiates an inquiry procedure into the alarming number of missing and murdered Native women across Canada, human rights groups are hoping that an on-the- ground investigation by the international body will finally help stem systematic violence against Native women.

SRI LANKA: Female Unemployment Rises With Education

By - - and Amantha Perera
Every weekend it has been the same ritual for so many months. Buying the newspaper, going through the classified and the employment sections inch by column inch, marking job offers that could offer a chance, even remotely.

GUATEMALA: Women Pin Hopes on First-Ever Female Vice President

By Danilo Valladares
Women's rights groups are pinning their hopes on Roxana Baldetti, the first woman to be elected vice president of Guatemala, to boost the chances of increased female participation in politics.

KENYA: Women Set to Make Their Mark in Politics

By Protus Onyango
The August 2012 elections in Kenya will open doors to massive political participation by women for the first time ever.

PAKISTAN: Girls Defuse This Taliban Bomb

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
Suicide bombing is down, bomb attacks are fewer, but the Taliban are keeping up attacks on girls’ schools. In retaliation, a growing number of girls are going for school education – without school buildings.

MAURITIUS: Women Find a Political Voice, Locally

By - - and Nasseem Ackbarally
Under a new gender quota law introduced in Mauritius, at least one-third of the candidates in local elections must be women. But the adoption of a national quota is not yet on the horizon, even though just 18 percent of legislators are women and there are only two female cabinet ministers.

AFGHANISTAN: Catch ’em Young, for Prostitution

By Rebecca Murray
Soma was a teenager in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif when her grandfather arranged her marriage to a husband she had never met.

EGYPT: Islamist Parliament Inevitable ‘But Not Worrying’

By Adam Morrow
Following another Islamist landslide in the second round of legislative polling, Egypt's first post-Mubarak parliament will likely see Islamist parties - especially the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) - calling the shots. While high-profile secular figures warn of looming "theocracy", many local analysts believe an Islamist-led parliament won't make any radical legislative changes.

JAPAN: New Year Brings Economic Aftershocks

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
Hideo Sato, 47, and his family escaped to this snowy city 200 km from the radiation emitting Fuksuhima power plant that was struck by a massive earthquake-driven tsunami on Mar. 11.

NEPAL: Peace Brings More Violence Against Women

By - - and Sudeshna Sarkar
Four months after her murder, you can see Rosy Maharjan flashing the two- finger victory sign - from a Facebook page. With police arresting the 21-year- old’s boyfriend and the people he hired to kill her due to jealousy, agitated civil society members have opened accounts on social networking sites, demanding justice for the slain college student.

CUBA: Men for Non-Violence

By - - and Dalia Acosta
Promoting the first Men for Non-Violence platform is one of the challenges undertaken by a group of social actors who devoted November and December 2011 to the most intensive Cuban campaign ever against gender-based violence.
Afghan women in Herat. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS.

AFGHANISTAN: Husband, 60, Wife, 8

By Rebecca Murray
Activists voice concern that Afghan women’s rights continue to be marginalised, and nowhere is gender inequality more starkly illustrated than in the country’s flawed justice system.

Q&A: War Crimes Court Should Strengthen Victims’ Participation

By - - and Tressia Boukhors
Most of the cases brought before the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) include gender-based crimes, but advocates say the court is still falling short in ensuring that women play an active role in decision-making and outreach at the highest levels.

VENEZUELA: Putting (Mothers’) Faces to the Violence

By - - and Humberto Márquez
These women are not fashion models, nor are they advertising any product, yet their images look down on passersby from giant black-and-white posters in the Venezuelan capital. There are 52 of them, and they are all mothers who have lost one or more children to the criminal violence that is plaguing the country.

EL SALVADOR: Women Demand to Be Included in Climate Solutions

By - - and Edgardo Ayala
Some 100 rural women in El Salvador demanded that the government halt mining and hydroelectric projects that are harming their communities and establish specific programmes with a gender perspective for combating climate change.

JAPAN: Mothers Rise Against Nuclear Power

By Suvendrini Kakuchi
Japan’s nuclear power industry, which once ignored opposition, now finds its existence threatened by women angered by official opaqueness on radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was struck by an earthquake- driven tsunami on Mar. 11.
A sack of cassiterite (tin ore) at a trader

Conflict Minerals Law Hold-up Threatens Lives in DR Congo

By Amanda Wilson
Electronics are at the top of many holiday gift lists in the U.S. this season, but some of those products could be made using minerals from areas of the world where conflicts have led to widespread human rights abuses.

Moving Towards a Food-Secure Ghana

By Isaiah Esipisu
In Dundo village in Nyankpala district, Northern Ghana, 10 women are busy weeding a rice field on a piece of land donated to them by the village chief.

ARGENTINA: Things Slowly Getting Better for Transgender People

By Marcela Valente
Transvestites and transsexuals in Argentina, who were among the most marginalised minority populations, have seen respect for their rights grow in recent years, especially since same-sex marriage became legal in this country a year and a half ago.
More than 70 percent of Africans – the majority of whom are women –rely on farming for survival. Credit: Ignatius Banda/IPS

CLIMATE CHANGE: Waiting for the “Heavens to Weep”

By Ignatius Banda
Duduzile Sibanda takes a break from preparing her long stretch of land for her maize crop in rural Mberengwa, in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province. She wipes her brow under the scorching sun and looks upwards. The sparse clouds are a cause of concern as she studies the sky and wonders aloud when the "heavens will weep."
A pregnant woman in Kenya's North Eastern Province with one of her children. Overpopulation in the area contributes to poor maternal health. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

KENYA: A Shelter for Safe Delivery

By Isaiah Esipisu
The Garissa Maternal Shelter in North Eastern Province, Kenya is the only such facility in an area with the country’s highest maternal mortality rate. At 1,000 deaths per 100,000 live births, it is almost double the country’s average.
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