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KAFANCHAN
(John Dada for APCNews) – Since January, sectarian strife has ripped
through Nigerian communities. “A mass burial took place the day before
yesterday and body counts are close to three hundred with over 80% of
them women and children,” APC
member John Dada told APC.
“It is ironic that in the month of the Celebration of Women’s Day, such
atrocities are being visited on innocent women and children.” Women are
culturally respected as the givers of life and John blames deepening
poverty and economic alienation for the cultural reversal but he sees a
potential solution. More
>>
CALGARY
(LC and KAH for APC) – In rural Pakistan girls
schools are sometimes burned to the ground, so when twenty-nine year
old Huda Sarfraz and her team started to teach Punjabi girls how to
create websites and use online chat,
she feared they might be run out of town. However the girls clamoured
to learn as much as the boys did and —overturning societal taboos—
over-subscribed for the extra-curricular classes – ending up producing
prize-winning websites. As a result of exposure to APC’s Gender
Evaluation Methodolgy (GEM),
and despite their own cultural reservations, Sarfraz’s team focused
specifically on getting girls and women teachers involved. “Initially,
we only saw two groups to work with — students and teachers. However
because of GEM,
we looked at them as four—girl students, boy students, women teachers
and men teachers,” says Sarfraz. More
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NEW
YORK 3
March 2010 (GenderIT.org)
A small team from the APC
women’s programme is in New York from March 1-12, blogging and
tweetting from the UN headquarters. While governments are busy
reviewing the Beijing Platform for Action, civil society organisations
are being kept at bay
and struggling to take part. Yet they are still managing to keep busy
by organising side events, networking,
and advocating for the inclusion of a women’s rights perspective in all
the discussions. APC is
closely following the discussions about communications rights and the
role technology plays within. Our coverage is on GenderIT.org.
More
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Coverage
from APC via the GenderIT.org
site
More than 20% of human genes are patented in the US – preventing people
from accessing affordable and appropriate testing and diagnoses of
genetic diseases. This is only one example of how restrictive
intellectual propery
legislation is impacting human
rights. At the Yale Information Society Project’s conference, where APC was an organising partner,
these issues including the impact on innovation, scientific research,
freedom of expression
online and education were
discussed by civil society and adademia. Watch some video interviews. More
>>
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