Featuring Norah Matovu-Winyi, Monica Amollo and Pollyne Owoko, of a United Nations 'global conversation' video-stream on women's rights, gender equality and maternal health. Drawing on their experiences as gender activists, the participants discuss the women's movement, meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the future challenges for achieving sexual equality in Kenya.

Domestic workers around the world are organizing to challenge the harsh, abusive, often slave-like conditions in which they work. They are organizing unions and support networks, and they are mobilizing in support of an international Convention that will finally recognize them as workers and establish their rights in international law.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya's (UOC) Department of Food Systems, Culture and Society are partnering to offer a fully accredited, online certificate in Food Security: Assessment and Action.

This International Women's Day, we not only mark the 3 year anniversary of the Women WON'T wait. End HIV and Violence Against Women. NOW. campaign, but also reflect on where we are since the historic 4th World Conference on Women in 1995. The Beijing Platform of Action contained milestone commitments to the world’s women, such as the possibility of a future where it was possible to end all forms of violence against women; women’s poverty and our unequal share of caring work within and outside the home; as well as socio-cultural discrimination, sexual disciplining, and political exclusions of various categories of people, including women.

EG Justice Needs Your Help.

now to STOP the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences.

In 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) created the UNESCO-Obiang International Prize for the Life Sciences, named for and financed by the autocratic and abusive president of the oil-rich West African country of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The prize is said to recognize 'scientific achievements that improve the quality of human life.' Meanwhile, the quality of life in Equatorial Guinea today remains abysmal. In spite of having attained the highest GDP per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa, 60 per cent of Equatoguineans live on less than US$1 a day in conditions comparable to Haiti or Chad. President Obiang has neglected to invest available resources in basic social services, resulting in declining primary school attendance, poor health indicators, and needless poverty.

The UNESCO Obiang Prize is a cynical ploy to co-opt the worthy name and reputation of UNESCO to enhance the image of a notorious dictatorship. The prize amounts to international approval for this kleptocratic and abusive regime and it undermines UNESCO’s mission to promote education, science, culture, and human rights.

You can help, by signing this petition to UNESCO!

Let’s send a message to UNESCO that corruption and abuse should not be rewarded and that funds used to create this prize should be reinvested in the people of Equatorial Guinea.

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) is deeply concerned at the continued restrictions and threats to opposition parties in the run-up to Rwanda’s presidential elections on 9 August 2010 and urges the Rwandan government to take immediate steps to ensure respect for the basic, universal rights to freedom of expression, freedom of association and peaceful assembly of opposition parties. The absence of these rights is tantamount to breaches of the Commonwealth’s fundamental political principles that insist on free and fair elections (Harare Declaration 1991).

Coinciding with International Women's Day, a group of personalities from the United States have sent a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, asking them to immediately grant humanitarian visas to two Cuban women so they can visit their husbands in US prisons.

This is a statement prepared by participants at the special meeting of the African Union s Extended Technical Committee on the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa in Pretoria, February 18-20. The Statement reflects the views of participants, on how to move forward with approaches national and regional strategies for country-driven pharmaceutical innovation and access to medicines.

In response to the request by ICC Judges of 18 February 2010, the Prosecutor has clarified that senior political and business leaders associated with the main political parties, the PNU which was in the government at the time of the violence and the ODM which was the main opposition party at the time, organized, enticed and/or financed attacks against the civilian population on account of their perceived ethnic and/or political affiliation pursuant to or on furtherance of a State and/or organizational policy.

ARTICLE 19 welcomes the recent bold move by the Uganda Parliament to pass the Whistleblowers Bill, a critical milestone in the country's efforts to stem corruption and embrace transparency and accountability. The Bill, approved by Parliament on 3 March 2010 in Kampala aims to create an enabling environment for citizens to freely disclose information on corrupt or improper conduct, both in the public and private sectors. In enacting the law, Uganda is the third country in Africa to adopt such a comprehensive law.

We the members of civil society organisations across Africa are shell-shocked at the news of the arrest and detention without bail of Edward Chileka, Howard Jimu and Awonenji Chimera (associated with Eye For Development, a youth-based NGO) in Malawi. This is an event that we cannot take lightly.

Participants from the African Regional Conference on the Right of Access to Information have released the Regional Findings and Plan of Action to advance the right in Africa. The conference found that while access to information is a fundamental human right, political and institutional constraints in Africa have limited the opportunities to exercise the right. Taking into account the realities of Africa, the regional document serves as an annex to the global Atlanta Declaration and Plan of Action.

Africa's economic growth could be held back for another generation unless global investors help the world's poorest continent to improve its unreliable energy networks, a British minister has said.

This year's 8th Annual Digital Africa Summit is set to be Africa’s premier ICT business summit, creating more opportunities for learning, partnerships and business, with ICT’s, telephony and broadband being globally recognized as a prerequisite for social and economic development the opportunity to engage positive change has never been greater.

Three major public-sector unions launched a general strike Wednesday (March 3rd) after two months of negotiations with the government reached an impasse. "We're not fans of strike action," Democratic Labour Federation general secretary Abderrahman Azzouzi said, "but after a two-month halt in the negotiation process, we had to do something."

The 4th International CBA conference (21-27th February) gathered representatives from the developing world to share knowledge and developments in community-based adaptation. The Community Based Adaptation Exchange (CBAX), an IIED and IDS project, collaborated with the AfricaAdapt Network to report from the conference via blogs, photos and videos. The coverage of the event has been hosted on the CBA-X platform.

About 27 students, suspended from UMthwalume high school, on suspicion that they are homosexuals, have been allowed back in school. This was a result of a meeting between parents of suspended learners, the school governing body and the Department of Education of Ugu Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has signed a grant agreement of US$8 million with the Republic of The Gambia to improve the production and marketability of livestock and horticulture products, specifically targeting rural women and youth nationwide.

HIV stakeholders are calling on the Medicines Control Council (MCC) to speed up the registration of critical anti-HIV medication or face legal action. The Southern African HIV Clinicians Society has sent an appeal to the health minister to intervene and address the MCC registration process which they describe as the single biggest obstacle to getting affordable access to medicines.

A study presented at the recent Seventeenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections founds that Ugandans presenting at a TB clinic grossly overestimated the likelihood that they had HIV. It also found that those who thought they had HIV were significantly less likely to refer members of their household for HIV testing than those who did not think so.