U.N. Faulted for Failing to Curb Gender Violence
Inter Press


The United Nations is admitting its "collective failure" to curb the spiralling violence against women and young girls in conflict and post-conflict situations worldwide.

Despite the adoption of a Security Council resolution four years ago calling for the protection of women, gender-based violence has continued to grow recently in politically-troubled countries such as Afghanistan, Burundi, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), former Yugoslavia and Sudan.

"While sexual and gender-based violence is by no means a new phenomenon, it is a relatively new issue for the United Nations," says Thoraya Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).


"And the U.N. system is clearly grappling to devise a coherent and effective response," she added in a statement before the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.


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Health-Mozambique: The Condom And Culture Clash
Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
October 31, 2004
Bayano Valy
Maputo


Earlier this year, a chilling statistic cropped up repeatedly at a conference on reproductive rights that was held in London.

Delegates to 'Countdown 2015: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for All' (which took place at the beginning of September) heard that on average, men in sub-Saharan Africa only have access to about three condoms a year.

As condoms have long been acknowledged as a key part of efforts to contain the spread of AIDS, this limited supply of prophylactics would appear to have dire implications for Africa. In Mozambique - one of the poorest countries on the continent - an examination of condom availability offers cause for both hope and concern.



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UGANDA: US gives US $100 million to combat HIV/AIDS


KAMPALA, 1 November (IRIN) - The United States has given Uganda an additional US $100 million to fund HIV/AIDS projects, including programmes to support orphans and other vulnerable children, the US embassy announced in a statement released on Monday.

"The United States announces $100 million in new grants to support orphans and vulnerable children as a part of the president's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief," the statement said.


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Legal and material progress
Lesbian, gay, bi and trans pride series part 19
By Leslie Feinberg


After World War II, as productivity and social reorganization in the German Democratic Republic--"East Germany"--rose to meet the needs of the population as a whole, the more specific needs of individuals and groups within society, including gay men and lesbians, could be more easily addressed.

Canadian researcher Jim Steakley, who published the results of seven months of research in East Germany in 1976, outlined some of the concrete conditions under which East German workers tried to construct a planned economy--socialism.

He paid careful attention to the period between the establishment of the GDR in 1949 and the construction of the defensive Berlin wall in 1961. "With the formal founding of the GDR in 1949," Healey explained, "the cold war hostilities between socialism and capitalism intensified and entered a period of chronic crisis. The West used every means at its disposal to destroy the GDR, ranging from economic sabotage to CIA subversion."

He noted that a calculated "brain drain" lured away some 10 percent of the GDR's population--mostly middle-class professionals--and that a campaign of smuggling across the open border also served to bleed the resources of the workers' state