women

Women in Ethiopia live under constant fear of violence, illness, hunger and poverty but they are now also facing a new threat - human trafficking, according to veteran women's rights campaigner Bogaletch Gebre.

Although a state-led industrial drive has transformed Ethiopia into one of Africa's fastest-growing economies, a third of its 99 million citizens still survive on less than $1.90 a day - the World Bank's measure of extreme poverty.

Two reports have warned of an explosion in cancer deaths among women, with a toll, mainly from breast cancer, of some 5.5 million per year by 2030 -- roughly the population of Denmark.

This represented a near 60-percent increase in less than two decades, said an analysis conducted by the American Cancer Society (ACS), released Tuesday at the World Cancer Congress in Paris.

As the global population grows and ages, the highest toll will be among women in poor and middle-income countries, it said, and much of it from cancers which are largely preventable.

Various nonprofits organisations have added their voices calling for the inclusion of minority groups in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Director of the social, health and empowerment part of the African Trans Women, Leigh Ann van der Merwe, says transgender women continue to be stigmatised by some health workers.

Peter Adamu in his article titled ‘Women and youth activism a let-down’, says that he has the opinion that the work and voice of human rights and civil rights activists has been compromised by the political happenings in Zambia.

Adamu argues that he has always echoed the need for people especially those working in non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or civil society organisations (CSOs) to be sober and focused on the work they are meant to do.

Women’s Action for Development (WAD), a Namibian non-governmental organisation started by the indefatigable Veronica de Klerk, has reached more than 50 000 members.

WAD members carry forward the drastic efforts to reach less privileged women, young people and the poorest of the poor across the 13 regions of Namibia.

Sketching their 21-year history of commitment, the WAD executive director, Salatiel Shinedima, describes WAD as a Self-Help organisation which follows a two-pronged programme based on the socio-economic and socio-political empowerment of rural women and men.