Africa

Putting Women's Faces on the Grim Statistics About AIDS.  [Africa] "In the Continuum" is about Abigail, a middle-class, married mother in Harare, Zimbabwe, and Nia, a teenager in the Los Angeles ghetto.  They are very different but have a dark connection: both are pregnant and H.I.V. positive, having contracted the virus from their men.  The authors were inspired to write about AIDS by the frightening increase in H.I.V. infection among black women in the United States and Africa.  Ms. Gurira, who is 27 and has a degree in psychology, was all too familiar with the disease because one of every four adults in Zimbabwe is estimated to have the virus.  Ms. Salter, 26, learned that AIDS was now the leading cause of death for African-American women ages 25 to 34 by watching a news program.
Women Seek Power as Liberia Prepares to Vote .  [ Liberia ] From girls in high heels brandishing Kalashnikovs to a grandmother who wants to be Africa's first female president, women in Liberia have always been a potent force.  But as the nation prepares to vote in its first elections since one of Africa's most brutal wars, women are taking over the political scene like never before.  More than half of the 1.3 million people registered to vote in Tuesday's polls are female, a statistic none of the 22 presidential candidates can afford to ignore.  Two of the candidates are women.  "During the war, men were all in hiding or away fighting.  Women were the breadwinners, going behind enemy lines to feed their children," said Jeanette Ebba-Davidson, one of the founding members of Liberia's Association of Female Lawyers. "Now the war is over, we're speaking out again and saying we don't want to be a deputy this or that, we want to be ministers and presidents," said Ebba-Davidson, who was forced to flee her home three times during the war.
Force-fed Women Fight the Fat in Africa.  [ Mauritania ] Mauritanian girls made to drink camel's milk to gain weight for marriage.  Mariem Sow was a little girl when her sister Zeinabou choked to death in front of her while being force-fed camel's milk by a family slave.  Beaten if she refused to swallow the rich diet of sweetened milk and millet porridge, Zeinabou was one of many Mauritanian girls fattened up because of an ancient belief that corpulent women make more desirable wives.
Mr. Bush, This Is Pro-Life?  [Niger] When I walked into the maternity hospital here, I wished that President Bush were with me.  A 37-year-old woman was lying on a stretcher, groaning from labor pains and wracked by convulsions.   She was losing her eyesight and seemed about to slip into a coma from eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy that kills 50,000 women a year in the developing world.  Beneath her, cockroaches skittered across the floor.  Fathi Ali rode a camel for 40 miles across the desert to reach a clinic, however before she could get proper medical attention she lost her unborn child.  "We're just calling for her husband," said Dr. Obende Kayode, an obstetrician.   "When he provides the drugs and surgical materials, we can do the operation," a Caesarean section.  Dr. Kayode explained that before any surgery can begin, the patient or family members must pay $42 for a surgical kit with bandages, surgical thread and antibiotics.  In this case, the woman - a mother of six named Ramatou Issoufou - was lucky.  Her husband was able to round up the sum quickly, without having to sell any goats.  Moreover, this maternity hospital had been equipped by the U.N. Population Fund - and that's why I wished Mr. Bush were with me.  Last month, Mr. Bush again withheld all U.S. funds from the U.N. Population Fund.  The Population Fund promotes modern contraception, which is practiced by only 4 percent of women in Niger, and safe childbirth.  But it has the money to assist only a few areas of Niger, and Mrs. Issoufou was blessed to live in one of them.  Even when they don't die, mothers often suffer horrific childbirth injuries.  In the town of Gouré, a 20-year-old woman named Fathi Ali was lying listlessly on a cot, leaking urine.  After she was in labor for three days, her mother and her aunt had put her on a camel and led her 40 miles across the desert to a clinic - but midway in the journey the baby was stillborn and she suffered a fistula, an internal injury that leaves her incontinent.  Village women are the least powerful people on earth.  That's why more than 500,000 women die every year worldwide in pregnancy - and why we in the West should focus more aid on preventing such deaths in poor countries.  Mr. Bush and other conservatives have blocked funds for the U.N. Population Fund because they're concerned about its involvement in China.  They're right to be appalled by forced sterilizations and abortions in China, and they have the best of intentions.  But they're wrong to blame the Population Fund, which has been pushing China to ease the coercion - and in any case the solution isn't to let African women die.  (Two American women have started a wonderful grass-roots organization that seeks to make up for the Bush cuts with private donations; its website is www.34millionfriends.org.)
Obasanjo Wants More Women Representation in Elective Offices.  [Nigeria ] Olusegun Obasanjo, wants more women representation in elective offices in Nigeria.  Receiving the caucus of Female Parliamentarians of the National Assembly, at the State House Abuja, the president expressed concern over the few number of women in elective positions even as he observed some level progress in advocacy, persuasion and understanding.  He, however, said that much needed to be done to ensure the increase in the quantity and quality of women in elective offices.  There are about 27 women out of the 469 members in both the Senate and House of Representatives.  "Women must be given a pride of place in this country.  If women are about 50 per cent of our population, not to give them the rightful place in all facets of our developmental and human activity, is like talking about development with half of the population or if you put it in another way, if you say men and women in a country form the two legs or wings, if you do not give or enable the women, then it means that one wing is impaired.
South Africa Brutalises Women, Girls.  [South Africa] A woman is raped every 10 minutes in South Africa, one is beaten up every six minutes - and seven women are murdered, on average, every day.  This harrowing picture of widespread brutality against women and young girls emerged from the police annual crime statistics released this week.  And police say the truth is even more shocking as two-thirds of all rapes may not be reported because "victims often depend on the perpetrators for a livelihood".  The SA Police Service's annual report for 2004/2005 says that "the details of the crimes are of such an intimate and traumatic nature that the women and, especially, children involved will not easily share these with anybody".  The police figures show that rape increased nationally by 4% between April 2004 and March 2005.  Countrywide, 55 114 cases were reported.  Sixty percent of the victims were adult women, and 40% children.  The province with the highest number of reported cases is Gauteng (11 923), followed by KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.

Back