Calling For an End to Terror in Zimbabwe

Photo by Sokwanele-Zimbabwe on Flickr.

Last week, SAMGI along with several other NGOs participated in a protest outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre to defend democracy in Zimbabwe. We also wrote a memo to the Inter-Parliamentary Union urging them to put pressure on Zimbabwe to release the election results and uphold its constitution. We have yet to receive a response.

Since then, the situation there has taken an increasingly violent turn, with graphic photos surfacing of wounded Movement for Democratic Change supporters who were tortured, and news of Zim riot police raiding MDC headquarters, all an indication that there is no end in sight for this election disaster.

Women Political Leaders Hit a Glass Ceiling in Mauritania

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

Mauritania is often held up as a beacon when it comes to the proportion of women elected to political office – a 20 percent minimum quota was instituted in 2006 – but experts told IRIN once in power many women are still sidelined from taking important political decisions.

“While the quota is a major step forward, changing the situation of Mauritanian women is still a slow process because their colleagues discourage them from leading on issues,” Aminettou Mint Ely, head of the local non-governmental organisation (NGO) Association of Women (AFCF), told IRIN.

“As a result, many of these women cannot fight to overturn discriminatory laws in the country… such as those barring working women from claiming a pension, or paying elected women less than men for the same posts,” she said. [AllAfrica]

Read the rest of the story here.

Conference to Address Poverty, Role of Women in Politics

“There was a time when delegations participating in the annual (Inter-Parliamentary Union) assembly did not send any women,” said Gwendoline Lindiwe Mahlangu-Nkabinde, deputy speaker of the South African National Assembly, on AllAfrica.com. “Times have changed now, thanks to the efforts of parliaments worldwide.”

Although the focus of the Inter-Parliamentary Union assembly next month in Cape Town is poverty, delegates will address topics like the role of women in politics. They will also offer women delegates the “opportunity to raise matters of importance to them.”

Zimbabwe: Women in Politics

Women marching in the 50-50 campaign last year.

Late last year, numerous NGOs in Zimbabwe embarked on a campaign to include women in 50 percent of the campaigns in the country’s elections on Saturday. Instead, Zimbabwean women, who are half the country’s population, will make up just 13 percent of candidates for the House of Assembly and 30 percent of candidates for the Senate, according to statistics provided by the Women in Politics Support Unit. In an interview with a reporter from Inter Press Service, Luga Shaba, executive director of Women’s Trust, discusses why the NGOs did not meet their mark.