SA: Women’s rights top priority in pandemic
Date: March 9, 2021
By Colleen Lowe Morna
Johannesburg, 9 March: The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the challenges faced by women worldwide, said ambassadors, other government officials and civil society leaders at the Gender Links Women’s Voice and Leadership Awards ceremony on International Women’s Day yesterday.
It is a year since Covid-19 sent nations across the world into various forms of lockdown, with the first anniversary of South Africa’s official lockdown coming up on 27 March. The pandemic has caused social and economic upheaval across the globe.
Christopher Cooter, head of the Mission of Canada to the European Union, said at the ceremony that reinforcing women’s rights organisations so that they were “strong and sustainable” would ensure that there was progress towards solving issues affecting women, because these issues would be kept on the political agenda.
KEPSA targets 2,000 Kenyan SMEs in ecommerce booster program
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The Kenya Private Sector (KEPSA) has launched an ecommerce booster program targeting at least 2,000 Micro, Small and Medium sized Enterprises (MSMES).
The program is funded by the European Union and UK’s Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, with support from TradeMark East Africa. Amari Consulting will provide the technical support for the booster program.
The program targets businesses with little or no digital presence for training and on-boarding to e-commerce platforms. This is in an effort to ensure MSMEs can increase and diversify their revenue streams during this period of COVID-19 pandemic.
UK in Malawi joined over 55 like-minded allies to back the Canadian initiative to enhance international cooperation to end the practice of arbitrary arrests, detentions or sentencing.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab: The practice of arbitrarily detaining individuals as leverage over another government is indefensible and the UK will not tolerate it
The Canadian Arbitrary Declaration seeks to enhance international cooperation and end the practice of arbitrary arrest, detention or sentencing, to exercise leverage over foreign governments.
In a statement issued on Monday by the UK Foreign Commonwealth Development Office , UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says the declaration increases the diplomatic pressure on those who choose to detain foreign and dual nationals with no legal basis.
Women take the lead: resolving a 30-year conflict in Yemen
In 2020, we supported the National Organisation for Community Development (NODS) to work with communities in Taiz, Yemen to end a 30-year conflict over water distribution. We look at this historic achievement led by women in Sabr al-Mawadem district. This case study is based on a video report of the project (in Arabic), produced by Almushahidnet.
Since the 1980s, residents of al-Shaab, al-Adouf, and al-Amiqa villages in Taiz have disputed the distribution of water from the al-Siwari well, which serves over 6,800 people. After the conflict between communities of al-Shaab and al-Adouf escalated in 2011, the issue reached the national government but failed to meet an agreement. Tensions reached boiling point when violence erupted and residents began destroying the 7,200 metre water pipe network connected to the well. Countless litres of water were wasted and communities were without easy access to water for more than eight yea
New EU/CARIFORUM project coordinated by PAHO will tackle climate change and health impacts in the Caribbean
New EU/CARIFORUM project coordinated by PAHO will tackle climate change and health impacts in the Caribbean 1 Dec 2020
The first-of-its-kind initiative involves government, civil society, and international organizations
Bridgetown, Barbados, December 1, 2020 (PAHO) – International, regional, and government leaders announced the launch of a broad-based project to support actions to mitigate climate change and its serious health impacts in Caribbean nations. The EU/CARIFORUM Strengthening Climate Resilient Health Systems Project – a joint project of the European Union and CARIFORUM that PAHO is coordinating – will advance public understanding of climate change effects and strengthen the ability of health systems to respond to climate-related health impacts.